Characterisation in Joseph Andrews�

Mrs. Ritu Bajaj

Associate Professor

Department of English

Hans Raj Mahila Maha Vidyalaya, Jalandhar

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Characterisation in Joseph Andrews�

• A novel of character. Joseph Andrews is written in the picaresque tradition and as such it should be described as a novel of adventure. But so fascinating are it’s characters so vitally and persuasively alive that if we in the twentieth century still read it with interest, it is for their sake rather than for the sake of their adventures which are often ridiculously childish. A careful study of the novel should immediately reveal that these adventures are used merely as an excuse to introduce certain characters and depict some interesting incongruities of human nature.

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• Joseph gets robbed and Adams loses the way so that some bragging hypocrites may be exposed. Hadn't Joseph been deprived of all his belongings and thrown into the ditch, virtually naked and half dead, how could we have known the interesting but shameless drama of human behaviour enacted by the passengers in the stage coach in Book I chapter 12? It is clear that but for these adventures we would have been deprived of the entertaining, (they were not entertaining to Adams and company) company of Mrs. Tow-wouse,Parson Barnabas, Parson Trulliber, the Squire of fools and the Squire of False Promises. Digeon is quite justified in describing Joseph Andrews as a character novel.

Characters are life-like

• Joseph Andrews takes us into a vast gallery of characters. Some of them like Parson Adams and Mrs. Slipslop are delineated with considerable fullness of details; others like Barnabas, Peter Pounce or Beau Didapper are just touched off with a few bold strokes. Some of them reveal themselves gradually and progressively; others are known and understood at first glance. But all these characters share one important quality: they are all so life-like. Fielding describes them with such a confident air that they all throb with life. They draw their vitality from their creator who gives one the impression that he knows everything there is to know about his characters whether or not he is telling us all.

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• In Tom Jones he claims that it is my business to relate matters of fact with veracity and he vindicates this claim in all his writings. That is why Hazlitt thinks that as an observer of human nature. Fielding is little inferior to Shakespeare and Byron remarks that Fielding is the prose Homer of human nature. It is noteworthy that Fielding’s characters are both true to human nature and interesting. They are not essentially amiable or admirable: in fact some of them-Lady Booby, Beau Didapper, Trulliber-are definitely repulsive and contemptible: but they all have the capacity to fully engage the reader’s mind. The one character that appears to be uninteresting is Mr. Wilson but even he is not completely wooden.

Characters are clearly distinguished from one another�

• An important feature of Fielding's art of characterisationin Joseph Andrews is that it is utterly free from vagueness and indefiniteness. All characters are clearly distinguished from one another. This is particularly remarkable in view of the very large number of characters following the same profession. In the course of the novel we meet at least ten representatives of the publican class, landlords and landladies of inns and alehouses, but each one of them is clearly individualised. In Book I chapter 11 we meet the owner of The Lion. Timotheus commonly called plain Tim. In countenance he resembles the lion while his disposition savours more of the sweetness of a lamb.

• Being well-versed in history and politics with a smattering of law and divinity he is well qualified to render himself agreeable to all his customers. . In book chapter 3,we meet another innkeeper who astonishes Parson Adams by his flipping attitude towards religion. We meet yet another one in Book II chapter 5, a surly fellow whose jealousy leads to a very furious battle in which Adams is doused with blood.

• The innkeeper we come across in Book II chapter 17 has been the master of a brigantine and has seen the world. Adams discovers him to be quite kind hearted. There is nothing common among the four innkeepers referred to above, except the fact that they have a common profession. The first landlady we meet in Book I chapter 12 is Mrs. Tow-wouse. She is so ill-mannered and short tempered that we have to believe her when she boasts she can make her house too hold the Devil. She is quite different from the obsequious and garrulous wife of the landlord of The New Inn.

• In the same way the several clergymen and country squires who are introduced in the novel are clearly distinguished from one another. The native and gullible but noble and dignified Parson Adams bears no similarly with either Parson Trulliber whose corpulence, a loud braying voice and hypocritical greed give him a hoglike appearance. A critic draws our attention to another very interesting feature when he illustrates how the same passion or pre-possession manifests itself differently in the different individuals who harbour it ‘This the same appetite or lust operates in one way in the gentle and cultivated mind of Lady Booby.

• In another way in the coarser disposition of Slipslop and in yet another way in the simple little Betty, the chamber maid at ‘The Dragon’. Likewise the same greed or avarice takes one from in Parson Trulliber, another in Peter Pounce and another in the miserly father of Leonara in the ‘History of the Unfortunate Jilt'. Fielding confessed that the delineation of such differentiations cost him much labour and particularly recommended the study of them to his judicious readers.

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Characters are transcribed from life�

• Fielding usually models his characters after someone he knows very well. Parson Adams is partially modelled on the Reverend William Young. Like Adams is partially modelled on the Reverend william Young. Like Adams he was a scholar and devoted to Aeschylus. He also resembled him in his trick of snapping his fingers and his habitual absence of mind. Peter Pounce is modelled on the miserly Peter Walter of Stalybridge Park. Fielding knew him personally as a notorious usurer and disliked him. He was also satirised by Pope. Timotheus the landlord of The Lion appears to be drawn after Timothy Harris, a pleasant, well mannered publican.

• He was very cordial and courteous with his customers, though he often confessed in private that being the owner of an inn, he was often forced to keep company with uncongenial guests. Parson Trulliber was Fielding's first tutor. Mr. Oliver of Motcombe, though the resemblance was denied by his widow. The Squire of Fools at whose instance Person Adams is subjected to some humiliating practical jokes in Book III chapter 7 is almost certainly drawn after John Second Duke of Montagu, an aristocratic buffoon, notorious for his stupid school boy pranks.

• The original behind Beau Didapper has not been identified but his description is so maliciously realistic that it appears for certain that he was some young gentleman whom Fielding knew at close quarters and who had somehow incensed him. . The depiction of Fanny has obviously been influenced by Fielding’s wife Charlotte Cradock. However it should be clearly understood that Fielding does not just transcribe from life His characters draw from both observation and invention. He takes real life models but fuses fact and fancy and adapts them to the needs of the novel.

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• He recombines the traits, exaggerates here, moderates there, sometimes heightens an idiosyncrasy, sometimes tones it down and produces a character quite original. In this respect, in his Preface to Joseph Andrews Fielding remarks. For though everything is copied from the book of nature and scarce a character or action produced which I have not taken from my own observations and experiences:yet I have used the utmost care to obscure the persons by such different circumstances, degrees and colours, that it will be impossible to guess at them with any degree of certainty.

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No psychological analysis of characters�

• In the delineation of his characters, Fielding usually makes no attempt at any minute psychological analysis in the manner of Richardson. This refusal to go into the inner recesses of his characters minds is a conscious decision on the part of the novelist and doesn’t at all imply that his knowledge of human nature is in any way inferior to that of Richardson or as Dr. Johnson believes that Fielding is contented with the husk of life while Richardson is concerned with the ‘kernel’ or that Fielding being a superficial observer draws only characters of manners while Richardson being capable of diving into the recesses of human heart, portrays characters of nature.

• The fact is that Fielding’s characters are as much distinct individuals. Characters of nature as those of Richardson. Only the two great masters differ in their methods of character-delineation. Fielding has essentially a comic vision and a writer of comedies has to avoid the analytical method. Secondly while Richardson reveals his understanding of the recesses of human consciousness by means of diaries and letters which are in reality soliloquies, Fielding reveals it by means of dialogue. Richardson is analytical. Fielding is dramatic, however, when Fielding chooses to analyse, he is not incapable of it, for example he give a very convincing account of the violent emotions in the heart of Lady Booby in Book I chapter 9 and again in Book IV chapter 1.

• There is also the internal conflict in Leonara's mind upon the claims of her rival lovers in Book II chapter 4. However, in general Fielding is content to reveal his character through dialogues. The single dialogue between Peter Pounce and Parson Adams in the chariot in Book III chapter 13 reveals the true nature of Peter Pounce an convincingly as might have been obtained from half a dozen pages of analysis. Characters are both local and universal . As pointed out earlier, Fielding has real life characters as most of his models. His characters are the true representatives of the eighteenth-century society.

• In fact Fielding is the true historian of the eighteenth century manners.. Booby and Didapper, Turlliber and Barnabas, Peter Pounce and Slioslop are all typical products of the eighteenth century. But underlying their local and temporal forms, these charactes also reveal the true univedrsal nature. They are the hypocrites, the gallants, the misers and the debauches one cvan find anywhere. These characters are local as well as universal, individual as well as types, that is their beauty.

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• No caricatures. Fielding usually avoids caricaturisation. He does have a perceptive eye for eccentric and comic traits and takes delight in depicting them. Occasionally he heightens them also. .The peculiarities of Slipslop and trulliber are obviously heightened and intensified. But this is at best accentuation and not distortion. It does not stagge our belief in the substantial truth of these characters. The one great master in the art of caricaturisation is Dickens : his characters – Mr. Micawher, Mrs. Gamp, Mr. Pecksniff – catch the reader’s eye. But they are flat in E.M. Forster’s sense of the word. They are incapable of surprising us.

• Most of the characters in Joseph Andres are episodic and make only short appearances, but we do get the feeling that there is more to them than we see. They can definitely surprise us. Fielding claims to describe a species and not an individual. Trulliber may stand for every boorish, Semi-illiterate parson of the day who was more farmer than priest : but in the first instance he is Trulliber. He appears in one chapter but he is rendered with such fierce intensity that we feel that he and the type he represents, have been caught and pinned down for ever and for good.

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Characters only homely and pedestrian�

• We do not need to know more of him ; but we are persuaded that if we wished to we could. Fielding’s world is mainly the world of middle and lower classes. A character like Lady Booby makes only a rare appearance. Fielding usually avoids depicting members of the aristocratic classes. The aristocracy was perhaps a little too artificial and conventionalized to arouse genuine interst in an imaginative writer. Secondly, Fielding understands best only homely and pedestrian men and women. One of the eminent critics points out.

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• He (Fielding) could not understand either a great saint or a great sinner. He had no comprehension of spiritual favour or exaltation, which he would have deemed mere ebullition of hypocrisy or folly ; nor, on the other hand, did he really plumb the abysses of the reprobate and abandoned soul. Ordinary human nature, not exceptionally glorified nor exceptionally debased, was the subject of his investigation; the extraordinary potentialities of humanity for good and evil were not taken into account in his philosophy.

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