Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews

The protagonists of Henry Fielding's novels would appear to be marked by their extreme social mobility: Shamela will manage to marry her master, Booby, and the "foundling" Tom Jones is revealed as the bastard child of a serving-maid and Squire Allworthy himself, just as surely as Joseph Andrews is revealed to be the kidnapped son of Wilson, who himself was "born a gentleman" (Fielding 157). In fact Wilson's digression in Book III Chapter 3 of Joseph Andrews has frequently been taken for a self-portrait: "I am descended from a good family," Williams tells Joseph and Parson Adams, "my Education was liberal, and at a public School" (Fielding 157). Goldberg helpfully notes of this passage that such education was defined in Johnson's Dictionary as an education "becoming a gentleman," although fails to note that Fielding himself was educated at the most lordly of all the English public...
[ View Full Essay]