Hardy’s Philosophy or Tragic Vision of Life

Hardy, the novelist,  was essentially  a poet and an artist rather than  a philosopher. Hardy was  primarily a story-teller and should be viewed more as chronicler of moods and deeds than  a philosopher. He repeatedly affirmed that the 'Views' expressed in his novels were not his convictions or beliefs; they were simply "impressions" of the moment. In The Return of the Native, Hardy proves a dismal view of life in which coincidence and accident conspire to produce the worst of circumstance due to the indifference of the Will.

    

In order to understand  Hady’s philosophy, we should have a fair idea of Hardy’s biography. Hardy lived in an age of transition. The industrial revolution was in the process of destroying the agricultural life, and the subsequent shifting of population caused a disintegration of rural customs and traditions. It was a period when fundamental beliefs — religious, social, scientific, and political — were shaken to their core and brought in their stead the "ache of modernism." The new philosophies failed to satisfy the emotional needs of many people. As a young man, Hardy read Darwin's Origin of the Species and Essays and Reviews (the manifesto of some radical clergymen), both of which influenced Hardy’s attitude toward religion profoundly. He found it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the idea of a beneficent and benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient deity with the fact of omnipresent evil and the persistent tendency of circumstances toward unhappiness.

Hardy's novels can be best understood in the light of the author's fatalistic outlook on life, for Hardy fluctuates between fatalism and determinism. Fatalism is a view of life which acknowledges that there is some malignant power that controls the universe, and which is out to thwart and defeat men in their plans. It is especially hostile to them who try to assert themselves and have their own way. Determinism, on the other hand, acknowledges that man's struggle against fate is futile and man is but  puppet in the hands of destiny. In Tess of D’urbervilles, we are told that,

    “Justice was done, and President of Immortals(in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.”

In The Return of the Native, Hardy again reminds us that,“What a sport for Heaven this woman Eustacia was!”

In Hardy's novels, then, Fate appears in the form of  chance and coincidence, nature, time and woman. None is Fate itself, but rather all of these are manifestations of the Immanent Will. Fateful incidents are the forces working against  men in their efforts to control their destinies. In addition, Fate appears in the form of nature as a powerful agent, that affects the lives of the characters. Those who are most in harmony with their environment can find some solace, but those who are indignant and rebellious,  it destroys all their happiness.Eustacia suffers in The Return of the Native, because of her direct confrontation with Edgon Heath, which symbolizes nature. In the end Eustacia laments:

       “How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me. I do not deserve my lot…I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control.”

Hardy remarks: “ What of Immanent Will and its designs? It works unconsciously as heretofore, Eternal artistries in circumstance.”     

In Hardy's considered view, all life is suffering. Man suffers from the moment of his birth upto his death. Happiness is only occasional, it is never the general rule: "Happiness is but an occasional interlude in a general drama of pain"

There is none who gets more than he deserves but there are many who get much less than what they deserve. Not only man suffers, but all life suffers. Suffering is writ large on the face of nature. A ruthless, brutal struggle for existence is waged everywhere in nature. All nature is red in tooth and claw and life lives upon life. Thus all life, including human life, is subject to this law of suffering and none can escape the operation of this law.

Hardy’s characters are also a prey to irony of circumstance. Right things never happen at the right time : they happen either not at all, or too late, when their happening brings nothing but misery and suffering in their train. The heroines of Hardy, like Tess and Eustacia, as well as his male characters, like Clym, Henchard, Angel, Alec are all the victims of the irony of circumstance. In ill-conceived scheme of things there is nothing but “strange oschestra of victim shriek and pain.” Almost all of the Hardy’s characters are susceptible to this omnipresent evil power.

In The Return of the Native, Hardy suggests the philosophy of Rustic Resignation. Man must be resigned to one’s lot. It is useless to complain or resist for nothing can refom “ill-conceived scheme of things.” If he is rash, hot-headed and obstinate, like Henchard or Eustacia, he can bring about his own downfall. On the other hand, if he is contended ang resigned to his own lot like Thomasin, he can make much of his limited opportunities.

Summing up, Hardy’s philosophy in The Return of the Native is certainly ‘twilight’ and gloomy one but it is not too much pessimistic or nihilistic, for nihilism implies negation of life, a wish not to have been born at all. It is only in his last novel “Jude of Obscure” that some cynicism enters, and Hardy becomes pessimistic otherwise he is an acute realist. “My practical philosophy”, says Hardy, “is distinctively meliorist”, an honest facing of human suffering.

“If a way to the better there be, it implies good look at the worst.”

    Hardy is a humanist, a poet who wants men to turn from nature to their own kind for

                              “There at least discourse trills around                                                                                                  There at least smells abound                                                                                                                 There same-time are found                                                                                                                        Life-Loyalties.”

     

ParsonAdams: CharacterAnalysis

    Although Fielding's first novel bears the title “Joseph Andrews” , its main interest centers in Parson Adams. The immense popularity enjoyed by the novel can be fully attributed to him. In fact , it is difficult to imagine even the existence of this novel without the endearing figure of the absent–minded Parson Adams. “If he is not the real hero of the book”,says Dobson,”he is undoubtedly the character whose fortunes the reader follows with the closest interest.”

Dudden remarks:

“The agreeable youngman, Joseph may be the centre of plot; but it is the ‘old foolish parson’ that is the centre of interest.”

     

  Adams is one of the most original creations; Fielding himself claims that he is ‘not to be found in any book now extant’. Fielding explains in his preface that he has made Adams a clergyman "since no other office could have given him so many opportunities of displaying his worthy inclinations”. While all other characters remain types, Adams emerges as an individual. He is a positive force not only as a clergyman who puts his principles of charity into practice, but as a man who manages to confront the physical obstacles of the world in the most awkward ways, and prides himself rather too much as a teacher of Latin and as a writer of sermons.

      Adams’ physical appearance is really interesting. He has a “comical face, with bearded chin and deeply wrinkled cheeks”,  a fist “rather less than the knuckle of an ox”, with a wrist, ”which Hercules would not have been ashamed of”. His legs are so long that they almost touch the ground when he drives on his horse’s back. He usually wears a “tattered old cassock” and a “periwig” on his head. In addition, he is in the habit of snapping his fingers. He has so shabby an appearnce that Parson Trulliber mistakes him for a hog-dealer.

      Adams serves as the novel's moral touchstone;Fielding bestowed on his exemplary parson, childlike innocence: “He is an innocent … so completely sincere in his beliefs and actions that he can’t imagine insincerity in other; he takes everyone he meets at face-value”. Adams is a dreamy idealist;he is as ignorant of the world  of his own day “as an infant just entered into it could possibly be”. The devious ways of contemporary mankind are quite beyond his comprehension. Being naïve and guileless he is constantly imposed upon. He is easily taken in by the sentimental bragging of pseudo-patriot as by the pious platitudes of hypocritical Parson Trulliber. Adams’ endless tribulations at the hands of others serve as an index of society’s alienation from ethical and moral codes.

     Although simpleton and naïve , Adams is a man of exceptional learning. Educated at the university of Cambridge, he has made himself familiar with many languages, and, in particular, has acquired masterly knowledge of the Greak and Latin: “Mr. Abraham Adams was an excellent Scholar. He was a perfect Master of the Greek and Latin Languages; to which he added a great Share of Knowledge in the Oriental Tongues...”

     His favourite author, however, is  Aeschylus and he carries a transcript of Aeschylean tragedies for more than thirty years. With the modern literature --- except a few books of divinity---he does does not have even a nodding acquaintance. The history of last thousand years is to him almost a blank.  

Parson Adams is only a curate. He lives in the parsonage in Sir Thomas Booby’s parish.He is about fifty years old and has a wife and six children whom he can barely support on his very small income as a curate. He considers all his parishioners, especially Joseph and Fanny, as his children. In contrast with Parson Trulliber and Barnabas, Parson adams is extremely sincere in his profession .He gets a very small income from the church but his virtue remains utterly uncontaminated. He refuses to become a puppet in the hands of Lady Booby when the latter forbids him to publish the banns of Joseph’s marriage with Fanny .

     

   Fielding has made adams a comic character . He has made him absent-minded and given him amusing mannerisms. However this does not detract Adams’ greatness as a true Christian. Simple, kind, generous and courageous, Adams is the epitome of true feeling and goodness of heart. Adams’ impulses always prompt him to help anyone in distress.He is ever ready and ever willing to fight for the right cause. Although fifty years of age, Adams is magnificently strong and healthy. He knows how to use his huge fists in defending others. 

Adams’s generosity, friendliness, and bravery appear to be tied to one another, as indeed they ought to be according to Fielding’s moral scheme. In Adams, however, bravery is excessive because he does not regulate it with prudence; “Simplicity,” or naïveté, is certainly more present in Adams’s character than in any other in the novel

        Parson Adams establishes a sort of unadorned criterion of simplicity against vanity and hypocricy of most of the other characters. He is a bundle of contradictions, a delightful mixture of scholarship and simplicity, and pedantry and credulity. He is eccentric and forgetful; he often leaves his hat and his sermons (which he intends to sell) behind, and has to return for them.He lands into misadventure after misadventure - he wanders from inn to inn without the means to pay his bills, he is beaten, swindled and mocked at, he is involved in hilarious nightly adventures -but he never loses his innate dignity and goodness. Martin C. Battestin sees in Adams "the Christian hero, the representative of good nature and charity, which form the heart of morality."

We can sum up  above discussion in the words of Dudden: “Adams emerges from testing adventures and experienceswith his sweet temper unsoured, his honourable character unsullied, and his innate dignity unimpaired”

  

Joseph Andrews: A Picaresque Novel

The title page of Henry Fielding’s first novel reads as, “The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his friend Mr. Abraham Adams, Written in imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote.” The allusion to Cervantes and his masterpiece Don Quixote is significant as it shows Fielding’s indebtedness to Cervantes . Parson Adams is indeed a truly Quixotic figure, and the structure of the book also follows Cervantes’ picaresque model. Joseph Andrews is a novel of adventures met while travelling on the road. Joseph loses his employment in Lady Booby’s service in London, on his way home to the country to his sweetheart Fanny, he meets Parson Adams. Together they run all kinds of adventures meeting a host of characters from low and middle-class layers of society: innkeepers, chambermaids, country squires and clergymen.

The picaresque tradition belongs to Spain and derived from the word “picaro”, meaning a rogue or a villain. The picaresque originally involved the misadventure of the rogue-hero, mainly on the highway. Soon, however, the rogue was replaced by a conventional hero – gallant and chivalric. The comic element lay in the nature of the hero’s adventures, through which, generally, society was satirized.

Fielding’s affinity with picaresque model appears first of all in the representation of rogue and villainous; secondly, in the humorous style which often takes a mock-heroic turn, and in the geniality of temperament; thirdly, in the portrait of characters of certain lower classes of men and women; and finally, in the humorous or satiric descriptions of the contents of the chapters and the introduction of side stories or episodes into the main narrative.

Thus, the journey in Joseph Andrews is not a mere picaresque rambling, a device solely for the purpose of introducing new adventures such as we find in the classic picaresque story, , but an allegorical journey, a moral pilgrimage, from the vanity and corruption of the city-life to the relative naturalness and simplicity of the country. The picaresque motif helps Fielding to fulfill his aim of ridiculing the affectations of human beings. The different strata of society can be represented through the picaresque mode. The travelers meet squires, innkeepers, landladies, persons, philosophers, lawyers and surgeons, beggars, pedlars and robbers and rogues. Fielding’s satire is pungent as he presents the worldly and crafty priests and the callous, vicious and inhuman country squires. Malice, selfishness, vanities, hypocrisies, lack of charity, all are ridiculed as human follies.

The Picaresque novel is the loosest in plot – the hero is literally let loose on the high road for his adventures. The hero wanders from place to place encountering thieves and rogues, rescuing damsels in distress, fighting duels, falling in love, being thrown in prison, and meeting a vast section of society. As the hero meets a gamut of characters from the country squire to the haughty aristocrat, from hypocrite to ill-tempered soldiers, the writer is able to introduce with the least possible incongruity, the saint and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. The writer has a chance to present the life, culture and morality prevalent in his time, and to satirize the evils.

Fielding acknowledged his debt to Cervantes, whose Don Quixote is the best known picaresque novel in Spanish. Like the Don Quixote and Panza, Parson Adams and Joseph set out on a journey which involves them in a series of adventures, some of them burlesque, at several country inns or rural houses. Like the Don, Parson Adams is a dreamy idealist. But there are differences, too, between Joseph Andrews and the picaresque tradition, vital enough to consider Fielding’s novel as belonging to the genre of its own.

The central journey in Joseph Andrews is not mainly a quest for adventure as it is in the picaresque tradition. It is a sober return journey homewards. Joseph and Lady Booby are taken to London and the reader is given a glimpse of society’s ways in that great city.

It is in Chapter 10 of Book I that the picaresque element enters the novel, with Joseph setting out in a borrowed coat towards home. The picaresque tradition is maintained uptil the end of Book III. Joseph meets with the first misadventure when he is set upon by robbers, beaten, stripped and thrown unconscious into a ditch. A passing stage-coach and its passengers very reluctantly convey Joseph to an inn. The incident gives ample scope to Fielding for satirizing the pretences and affectations of an essentially inhuman society.

The Tow-wouse Inn provides a grim picture of callous human beings – the vain and ignorant surgeon and the drinking parson. Once again kindness and generosity come from an apparently immoral girl, Betty the chambermaid. With the arrival of Parson Adams, the picaresque journey takes on a more humorous tone, with plenty of farce. The encounter with the “Patriot” who would like to see all cowards banged but who turns tail at the first sight of danger, leads to the meeting with Fanny. She is rescued by Adams in proper picaresque-romance style with hero. Several odd characters are met on the way – such as the hunting squire – the squire who makes false promises. Then comes the abduction of Fanny – and the reintroduction of something more serious. We also have the interpolated stories, which belong to the picaresque tradition. In his use of this device, Fielding shows how far he has come from the picaresque school.

To conclude, Joseph Andrews has a rather rambling and discursive narrative, which makes us to believe that it is a picaresque novel. But, on the whole, it is not a picaresque novel rather the picaresque mode has helped him in the development of his comic theory – that of ridiculing the affectations of human beings.

Concept of Morality in Joseph Andrews

Henry Fielding undoubtedly holds moral views far-ahead of his times. Morality is an approval or adherence to principles that govern ethical and virtuous conduct.

Fielding was accused of being immoral in his novels. Dr. Johnson called his novels “vicious and corrupting”. Richardson echoed the “charge of immorality” against him. Modern critics, however, has justified Fielding and gave him a credit of “an estimable ethical code”. Strachey declared him a “deep, accurate, scientific moralist”. Indeed neither “Joseph Andrews” nor “Tom Jones” strikes the modern sensibility as ‘low’ or ‘immoral’ either in purpose or in narration. Behind the truthful portrait of life, lies his broad moral vision. His aim was to correct mankind by pointing out their blunders.

“I have endeavored to laugh at mankind, out to their follies and vices.”
Fielding reacted sharply against the code of ethics as incited by Richardson in “Pamela”. He feels that Pamela’s virtue is an affectation and a commodity, exchangeable for material benefits. Virtue cannot and should not be to chastity alone. Mere external respectability is not morality. For Fielding:
“Chastity without goodness of heart is without value.”
A truly virtuous man is disregardful of material benefits. He is devoid of an affectation.
He finds:
“A delight in the happiness of mankind and a concern at their misery, with a desire, as much as possible, to procure the former and avert the latter …”

Fielding’s moral vision is much wider that Richardson’s. Morality is no longer equated with chastity or outward decorum. It is broad enough to include every aspect of human behaviour. One’s intentions, instincts, motives are equally important in judging a man.

In “Joseph Andrews” we are confronted with a chameleonic society that quickly changes its appearance to gratify personal lusts. Fielding’s  aim was to show human beings camuoflaged in various shades of vanity and hypocrisy and it is done ruthlessly and wittily in “Joseph Andrews”.

The stage-coach scene is perhaps the best illustration of Fielding’s concept of morality. In it we are confronted the haughty passengers which are all models of hypocrisy. The coachman simply bids the postillion to "Go on, Sirrah, we are confounded late”. The lady reacts in a contemptible manner: "O Jesus, a naked Man! Dear Coachman, drive on". The old gentleman deems: "Let us make all the haste imaginable, or we shall be robbed too".In addition there a lawyer who “wished they had past by without taking any notice",  although his final advice is “to save the poor creature's life, for their own sakes”. At last, it is the postillion, " who hath been since transported for robbing a hen-roost,  voluntarily strips off a great coat, his only garment" and swears that he would rather remain in a shirt than "suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition". Here Fielding shows the contrast between the attitude of the rich passengers and that of the poor Postillion. What sets him apart is not his class, but the fact that he alone dismisses his own comfort and he is the only person who considers Joseph a "fellow-creature" worthy of such rescue. Fielding emphatically declares: "High People" are "People of Fashion", but that they are not "higher in their Dimensions" nor in "their Characters"  The journey undertaken by Joseph and Parson Adams reveals vanity or hypocrisy at every stage.

It is significant that Parson Adams jumps with joy at the reunion of Fanny and Joseph. It reflects an ability to sympathize with other’s feelings. Simple, kind, generous and courageous, Adams is the epitome of true feeling and goodness of heart which is a vital aspect of Fielding’s concept of morality. Adams’ impulses always prompt him to help anyone in distress. He saves Fanny’s virginity two times.
“He is an innocent … so completely sincere in his beliefs and actions that he can’t imagine insincerity in other; he takes everyone he meets at face-value”.

Kindness achieved supreme importance in Fielding’s moral code. A good and a moral man takes joy in helping others. Fielding says: “I don’t know a better definition of virtue, than it is a delight in doing good.” Fielding is as liberal in ridiculing affectation as he is hard on the lack of charity. Adams’ definition: “A generously disposition to receive the poor”, is the simple test employed  to men by Fielding to  check the capability of charity. When Parson Adams asks for some shillings to Parson Trulliber, he declares in frenzy: “I know what charity is better than to give it to vagabonds.” This shows 18th century’s clergy’s degeneracy, who is reluctant to give some shillings. The rich Parson Tulliber, Mrs. Tow-wouse, Lady Booby and Peter Pounce lacks natural kindness whereas the poor postilion, Betty and Pedler are true Christians, for they are ready to help other man in distress asking nothing in return. But Mrs. Tow-wouse scornfully declares: “Common charity my foot.”

Fielding is against the prudish morality which considers sex as an unhealthy and dangerous for human life. He favours a healthy attitude towards sex. But he does not approve of Lady Booby’s desire for Joseph nor does he favour Mr. Slipslop’s extreme whims. But Betty’s desires spring from a natural heart and feeling. It is worth noticing that Betty is free of hypocrisy. She acts as ordered by her nature. “She is good-natured generosity and composition.”

Summing up, Fielding’s concept of morality is realistic, tolerant, broad and fairly flexible. Modern opinion has vindicated the moral vision of Fielding as healthy, wide and practical.

Realism in Joseph Andrews

Realism means conceiving and representing the things as they are. Henry Fielding is widely regarded as the first great realist in English novel. He is among  the few writers who, despite the wideness of their scope are capable of observing the demands of reality with perpetual ease. His novels hold up to view a representative picture of his age. He is as authentic a chronicler of his day as Chaucer was of the later 14th century.

 It is true that Richardson and Defoe have some claim to have brought realism to English fiction, it is Fielding who can be called the real pioneer in realistic mode of novel writing. Fielding  reacted against Richardson’s sentimentalism as a falsifying influence on the study of reality, although he does not reject sentimentalism altogether. “His desire”, says Cazamian, “is to give sentiment its right place; but also to integrate it in an organic series of tendencies where each contributes to maintain a mutual balance.”

Fielding’s realism is called “universal realism” as well as global. As Fielding says in the Preface to “Joseph Andrews”:“I believe I might aver that I have writ little more than I have seen.”

Fielding’s novels present the fairly comprehensive picture of English society in 18th century. Though Fielding does not give us material about the environment of the people, yet their mental and moral characteristics are displayed with “power of realism”. The landlords, landladies, doctors, lawyers, clergyman, postilions and coachmen – all go towards making the picture of society as comprehensive as possible. Fielding rejects burlesque and caricature, inspiring laughter with humour and amazing realism. The novel is infused with compassion, comedy, and a heightened sense of realism, which together turn into a vivid manifestation of the cankers of the society.

The eighteenth century society which appears on the pages of “Joseph Andrews” is not very pleasant picture. It is marked by an astounding callousness and selfishness. The insensitive hardness of such a society is brilliantly portrayed by stage-coach passengers who are reluctant to admit the naked wounded Joseph on account of various pretexts. Only  the poor postillion offers  a great coat “his only garment”, and vows that he would rather remain in a shirt than “suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition.” The surgeon, who is summoned to look at Joseph’s wounds at the inn, refuses to come out of his comfortable bed for a mere foot passenger. Parson Trulliber, who uses his Christian teachings to speak against beggars and refuses to lend Adam even a few shillings, scornfully declares:  “I know what  charity is better than to give it to vagabonds.”

 We have also flashes of kindness amongst this all repressive inhumanity. Parson Adams, the postilion, the reformed Mr. Wilson, Betty the chambermaid and four peddlers are only ones to act with generosity.

The society is divided into clear cut classes – the high and the low. Dudden notices a " gulf which seems to separate the classes–the ‘high people' from the ‘low people..."

 The two classes may have dealings with one another in private, as Fielding tells us, but they scrupulously refuse to recognize each other in public. The rich regard themselves as the better and superior in every sense to the poor. Lady Booby could not think in her wildest dreams of admitting Adams to her table, for she considers him to be badly dressed. Mrs. Slipslop does not deign to recognize a ‘nobody’ like Fanny at an inn. While Fielding exposes such behaviour to ridicule, we realize the hollow pretension of a society which indulged in so much of affectation.

The professional classes in general show a marked inefficiency and indifference. They do not take their work seriously. Parson Barnabas, Parson Trulliber, the rural magistrate, the Lawyer Scout – all are the illustration of the corrupt and selfish aristcracy of the day. Parson Adams is merely one good being against so many bad clergymen.

In his novel, Fielding has concentrated more on the countryside. But the little that he describes of town society is enough to give us its characteristics. The wealthy society of the town shows a high degree of degeneracy. The story of Mr. Wilson and Leonora as well as Joseph short stay in London provide us with the clear idea about the vulgarity, degeneration of morals, the vanity and hypocrisy which infested town society.

Fielding represents human nature as truthfully as he presents the society. Fielding effuses realism into his characters and his vivid dialogues. He presents before us the complete reality and does not intentionally ignore anything. In his Preface Fielding writes: “I have scarce a character or action produced which I have not taken from my own observations and experience.”

    

Fielding does not project realistic picture of society for mere entertainment. He has a moral purpose behind the realism. To laugh making out of folly is his professed aim. He satirizes  people in order to reform them:“I have endeavored to laugh at mankind, out to their follies and vices.”

Fielding shows a broad tendency of realism in “Joseph Andrews”. Social, psychological, individual as well as moral reality can be seen in the novel.

“As a painter of real life, he was equal to Hogarth; as a mere observer of human nature he was little inferior to Shakespeare.”

He not merely presented society but also criticized it in order to make the world a better place to live in.

Joseph Andrews as A Social Satire

       Henry Fielding is widely studied today as one of the chief begetters of the modernist movement in novel and as a master who embodied in realistic prose a panoramic survey of the contemporary society. With the novelty and vitality of the writings of Henry Fielding exerted a major influence on the succeeding writers and dominated the English fiction until the end of the 19th century.

         Fielding’s brilliant tour de force Joseph Andrews is an astounding encapsulation of the 18th century English social life and manners. It mirrors with rare force and realism, the blemishes of mankind in its true face. The novel, in its entirety, is an impassioned satire on the moral and social ills that beset the 18th century English society. In this novel we are confronted with a chameleonic society that frequently changes its appearance to gratify personal lusts of various kinds. The social life portrayed by Fielding is scrutinized in every facets of this society. The novel depicts human beings camouflaged in various shades of vanity, hypocrisy and narcissism. Here, Fielding essentially becomes a spokesman of his age and seeks to come out strongly against the affected behavior of the so-called respectable society of the day. The reader becomes a witness of characters who have a life of their own, but it is the essence of humanity, distilled through Fielding’s own vision. It is presented to us through the lines:

 “I describe not men, but manners, not an individual, but species”.

          Fielding's exploration begins with his survey on the nature and temperament of women of his time. Women of all classes were snobbish and amorous to some extent . The sensuality of women is reflected at its best through the representatives like Lady Booby, Mrs. Slipslop and Betty. Lady Booby feels greatly attracted by Joseph’s manliness and personality and seeks in vain to evoke his sexual response to gratify her sensual appetite. Mrs. Slipslop also follows her mistress’ path and tries to win Joseph as a lover. Even Betty falls in love with Joseph and seeks in vain to have sexual gratification from him. All these amorous intentions show a fair picture of the amoral side of the 18th century women.

      The society that Fielding portrays in Joseph Andrews is extremely inhuman, callous, indifferent, uncharitable and narcissistic. The insensitive hardness of this society is clearly exposed in the stage-coach scene in which we find inhuman stubborness. When Postillion tells the Coachman that someone is groaning within a ditch, he bids the postillion to "Go on, Sirrah, we are confounded late”. Then there is a lady who reacts in a contemptible manner, when  Postillion relates Joseph’s nakedness : "O Jesus, a naked Man! Dear Coachman, drive on and leave him". Thus both the coachman and the lady decide to leave Joseph to his own lot, the coachman because he is behind schedule, and the lady because she cannot tolerate the idea of aiding a naked man. Seeing the gentlemen, Joseph appeals to them and details the circumstances of his situation, upon which an old gentleman cries: "Robbed! Let us make all the haste imaginable, or we shall be robbed too", showing again a similar willingness as the others have displayed to abandon Joseph. In addition, the other gentleman, who studies law, deems that they should not abandon Joseph at all, although for contemptible reasons. Although he agrees with the rest that "he wished they had past by without taking any notice",  his final conclusion is  that they would be held accountable for murder if Joseph died in that situation  and he therefore thought “it adviseable to save the poor creature's life, for their own sakes”. Although Joseph does require clothing to fight against the cold in his enfeebled state, both the lawyer and the older gentlemen do not condescend to vouchsafe any assistance. The coachman also declines, in spite of his  two large coats, because of  fears that  "they should be made bloody" At last, it is the postillion, "a lad who hath been since transported for robbing a hen-roost,  voluntarily strips off a great coat, his only garment" and swore that he would rather remain in a shirt than "suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condition". Here Fielding shows the contrast between the attitude of the rich passengers and that of the poor Postillion. What sets him apart is not his class, but the fact that he alone dismisses his own comfort and he is the only person who considers Joseph a "fellow-creature" worthy of such rescue. Fielding emphatically declares: "High People" are "People of Fashion", but that they are not "higher in their Dimensions" nor in "their Characters" The incident gives ample scope to Fielding for satirizing the pretences and affectations of an essentially inhuman society.

        Fielding also provides some glimpses of the chaotic, greedy, opportunistic and insincere sides of the 18th century society. The chaotic side is exposed by the robbery incident. It is also revealed by the incident in which a villain attempts to rape Fanny. Human greed is exposed by the characters of the surgeons and the clergymen. The surgeon refused to treat Joseph because was unable to pay fees. The clergymen of the time were the most selfish and materialistic. Parson Barnabas and Parson Trulliber are the true embodiments of corrupt clergy. Then there is a squire who is fond of hunting hares, tries to satisfy his lustful desire for Fanny taking advantages of her poor condition. The insincerity of the society is also revealed by the depiction of the justices, who were as dishonest as the clergymen and the squires. Justice Frolick, for instance, goes out of his way to send Joseph and Fanny to prison, without any trial, only to satisfy a whim of Lady Booby.

       In brief, Joseph Andrews is a fine social document that represents an inclusive picture of the 18the century English society. The novel directs its satire not only against particular individuals but also against the follies and vices of the entire society.