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The Benefits of Failure in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones

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The Benefits of Failure in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue e Letterature Europee, Americane e Postcoloniali European Joint Master’s Degree in English and American Studies Tesi di Laurea The Benefits of Failure in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones Relatore Ch. Prof. Flavio Gregori Correlatore Esterno Ch. Prof. Frédéric Ogée Correlatore Esterno Ch. Prof. Christoph Houswitscka Laureanda Claudia Marin Matricola 840172 Anno Accademico 2012 / 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 4 Abstract 5 Introduction 7 Chapter One: Historical and Social Background. The representation of Reality and its Conflicts 15 1.1. Eighteenth-Century England on a National Scale: Historical and Philosophical Changes 16 1.1.1. Historical Background 16 1.1.2. The Connection between Philosophy and Literature 17 1.1.3. London 19 1.2. Crime in the Society of the Eighteenth Century 23 1.3. Representations and Perceptions of Crime 31 1.3.1. Henry Fielding’s Enquiry 31 1.3.2. Law Enforcement and the Transition from Private Prosecution to Public Prosecution 37 1.3.3. Artistic Representation of the Decay of Society by William Hogarth 41 Chapter Two: The Importance and Benefits of Failure 46 2.1. Eighteenth-Century Society that Drives the Man towards Failure 49 2.1.1. The World as an Imperfect Place 49 2.1.2. The Concept of Failure 53 2.2. The Process of Personal Improvement 58 2.2.1. Good Nature, Goodness of Heart and Benevolence 61 2 2.2.2. Experience 67 2.2.3. The Ability of Learning from Mistakes and Prudence 70 2.3. Fielding’s Idea 73 2.3.1. According to Religion 75 2.3.2. According to a Legal Perspective 76 Chapter Three: Fielding’s Teachings on Judging Failure and the Active Role of the Reader as a Technique 80 3.1. Fielding’s Moral Aim 82 3.2. On Judging 87 3.3. Fielding’s Technique to Teach the Reader How to Judge 95 3.3.1. The Strict Connection between Reader and Narrator 98 3.3.2. The Active Role of the Reader 100 Conclusion 105 Bibliography 107 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Christoph Houswitschka for his precious guidance and assistance during and after my mobility year at the University of Bamberg. Besides, I would like to thank the English Literature Department of the same University, Susan Brähler and Johannes Weber for their kind welcome, support and lovely initiatives. I am obliged to Prof. Pia Masiero of Ca’ Foscari Venice University and Elisa Gamba of the International Office for the help and support provided during these two years of European Joint Master’s Degree. Special thanks go to Viola, for her priceless motivation and encouragement in this last month, and to Jozef, for his unlimited patience with my computer skills during my final editing. I would also like to thank all my friends for having tolerated my months of partial absence due to my focus on this project. I must acknowledge all the special people I have met in Bamberg, for making me feel at home despite being so far away, for teaching me so much every day, and for making this last year more than memorable. Last but not least, this research would not have been possible without the love and support throughout my entire life of my family, father, mother, sister. I would also like to thank my grandmother, for her invaluable help and assistance. 4 ABSTRACT This research argues for the very peculiar ideas Fielding had as far as personal failure is concerned, possibly seen by the author of the famous novel Tom Jones not as an alternative to success, but as one of its stages. The long Eighteenth Century, with its scientific discoveries, is a moment in which the component of experience and the knowledge deriving from it starts to matter. Fielding attests, especially as a man of law, that the world has become an imperfect place, responsible for driving the man towards failure. The main purpose of this study is to show that after this acceptance of failure, the man is led towards a process of personal improvement, fulfilled only if the individual is good-natured, tender-hearted and has acquired that precious prudence which comes ultimately from experience; one example of this complex process could be best resembled in the character of Tom Jones. My approach has an affinity with cultural and legal studies. I have decided to select, among the bibliography, important contributions made by Sharpe, Langbein, Bender, Gladfelder, in order to help me to provide a clear overview of the period of time, marked by a general diffusion of crime and moral vice. I have analysed for my second chapter philosophical texts written by Hobbes, Locke and Hume and Miller’s study of the Miscellanies, which helped me to research the aspect of good nature. In the last chapter, dealing with the educating aim of the writer, I have consulted Battestin, Preston, and other moral studies on Fielding, as much as direct examples from the novel itself to strengthen my theory. Among the most important findings and results, apart from the already-mentioned importance of failure in terms of the personal development of the individual, I would also like 5 to mention Fielding’s significant lessons on how to correctly and accordingly pass judgement. The narrator, indirectly and behind the mean of artifice, constantly warns the reader to avoid quick and harsh comments (also on other people’s failure and flaws), because reality is often deceiving and far from what it appears to be. In conclusion, in order to solve this dichotomy of appearance and reality, the narrator urges the reader to be active and attentive when reading the novel, so to understand what lies behind the carefully-planned plot. The narrator does not leave anything to chance, and does not reveal explicit moral lessons; on the contrary, he wishes the reader to understand how to behave and become a better person with the powerful and convincing character of Tom Jones, through his experience, failure, and acquisition of prudence. 6 INTRODUCTION Henry Fielding, eighteenth-century novelist and magistrate, was in many ways an avant-garde writer. Not only because he was, along with Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson, one of the first developers of the English Novel as a genre, but mostly because of his very modern views. He retained positive feelings about changes, especially those in people, to such an extent that it became one of the most tackled topics in his novels. He was a supporter of the importance of being in constant personal development, in order to reach a possible state of perfection, as a result of a long process called experience. It is for this reason, that making mistakes and failing emerge to be from his writings, not only the biggest step in one’s life, but also a necessary one in terms of personal growth. This project investigates the role of Henry Fielding in reforming society and his positive concerns about the failure of good-natured men, as a needful step towards the acquisition of prudence and benevolence. It also explores his extensive use of the novel in order to educate masses and spread that sort of exclusive knowledge Fielding had gained as a man of law, who daily sought to fight the evils of society. Fielding is nevertheless moving in a very peculiar environment. The social reality of the Eighteenth Century had undergone multiple changes that will be analysed in depth in the following chapter. However, it is necessary to state from the very beginning, that one of the most influential developments was the importance the use of reason had acquired in every- day life. The famous Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), a text written during the previous century, is only one of the many examples of a change in thoughts. It was also still very influential for the future Enlightened philosophy of the empiricist Locke, who saw knowledge 7 as “not the product of innate ideas or imaginative ingenuity, but of sensation and reflection, both mechanical processes rooted in the real world of everyday experience” (Mahoney:4). The reality-oriented and often labelled “Age of Reason” was in England an important key change between the Renaissance and the Romanticism. It has often been depicted as a calm and peaceful epoch, yet it was not free from troubles proper to a transition. The late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century could represent, in a way, the beginning of modernity, seen as the start of the modern state, of a possible constitution, of the restoration of monarchy and of pure social matters. Fielding is one of the many voices attempting to depict society with a personal wish for a change for the better. He started his career as a playwright when Walpole’s conservatism was at its peak. Because of his straightforward ideas, he saw himself forced to turn to law, after the Licensing Act of 1737 had prevented him from going on writing satirical plays. Fielding therefore became a lawyer and later on a magistrate, in close contact with the new social reality of London, whose population had increased exponentially. He was indeed deeply concerned with the fast development of the city, the widened discrepancy between rich and poor and the spread of corruption and criminal activities among lower, but also, and most surprisingly, upper classes (Sharpe:95). This unexpected failure of goodness at multiple level of society was also enhanced in Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728), which powerfully shed light upon upper-classes corruption. All this led Fielding to examine in depth that long- debated conflict between appearance and reality in his Tom Jones (1749), which is quintessentially a novel about judging.
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