Characters in a novel "are perceived more confidently ... than we can perceive ourselves."[1] Whereas the question of the nature of individual identity and existence has kept philosophers and psychologists alike in dire need for definitive answers through the ages, and the wish to "find oneself" has moved so many people that it has become almost a cliché, the genre of the novel provides an author, and his readers, with the unique opportunity to establish fictional identities and explore their characters into the most intimate detail, without being hampered by the various biases and doubts that make it so hard to get to the core of the identities of real, flesh-and-blood people. Only the novel grants the author the freedom to portray not only the way a person acts, but also the reasons why, including both conscious and subconscious motives. Spread out openly over the pages of a novel, fictional characters have no means to hide away any aspect of their personalities from the curious eye of the reader, unless the author allows them to.
Consequently, the question of identity and characterisation is generally regarded as being at the core of the genre: "[T]he novel is surely distinguished from the other genres and from previous forms of fiction by the amount of attention it habitually accords to ... the individualisation of its characters."[2] Yet even though the novel provides the author with an artistic freedom to create detailed, realistic characters that is not to be found in other genres, the very same freedom confronts the author with some serious problems. This was all the more so in the period of the "Rise of the Novel," the eighteenth century. In this time, the author's task involved not only the exploration of the limits and opportunities of creating characters in the as yet young and not fully established genre. It also comprised the delicate duty of adjusting his creations to the tightly knit system of Augustan values and ideas. Very often, the author had to balance his work between the demands of realistic characterisation on the one hand and his obligation to Augustan ideals on the other. In this essay, I will examine the extent and the effects of this struggle between realism and responsibility by having a close look at the Augustan beliefs concerning character and identity, and demonstrating how these beliefs are reflected in the main characters of Henry Fielding's first great novel, Joseph Andrews. I will also briefly compare the concepts of static and changeable identity, as well as those of personal identity and social identity.
The Augustan view on personal identity was shaped to a considerable extent by the philosophers John Locke and David Hume. In Locke's opinion, the individual becomes aware of his own existence by perceptions such as pain or doubt, which, of course, cannot exist if it is not for a certain entity actually feeling this pain, or doubting something. Yet Locke's conclusion that "we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence, and an internal infallible perception that we are,"[3] influential though it was, does not convince David Hume. In his opinion, a valid concept of selfhood and identity has to consist of more than a mere assembly of perceptions. After all, a man's perceptions may as well be deceptions, and do not prove anything in a philosophical sense. Still, Hume agrees with Locke in one respect: "A man concerned to prove his own existence could fall back on memory: even Hume granted that, and Locke and [the philosopher Bishop] Berkeley. By memory one possesses his past."[4] In other words, a continuous string of personal memories could be considered as a proof for that individual's existence: "Locke had defined personal identity as an identity of consciousness through duration in time; the individual was in touch with his own continuing identity through memory of his past thoughts and actions. This location of the source of personal identity in the repertoire of its memories was continued by Hume."[5]
To assert memory as the foundation of individual identity was, however, a risky endeavour. Even though neither Locke nor Hume did explore the problem of the fallibility of memory in depth, there was a growing awareness of the manifold ways in which memory is susceptible to the distorting influence of, among others, imagination. David Hartley, for example, rightfully pointed out that men cannot only remember real events, but also fictional events like their own daydreams, reveries, or the adventures of characters in a play or a romance.[6] Consequently, by "altering our imaginations, fiction may alter our lives ... As for the reader, once fictional personages enter his imagination they do exist, their power over him greater than his over them. (He can close the book, but the characters survive.)"[7]
The realisation of the link between imagination and memory cast an immense responsibility on the author. On the one hand, even the early novelists surely wanted to create realistic, credible characters. Yet, at the same time, there were the moral values of the time which limited their artistic freedom considerably. The Augustans perceived the danger of eternally polluting the imaginations and, consequently, the memories of their readers with a cast of flawed characters that might henceforth never leave them again as very real. Of course, they also saw the opportunity of bettering the readers by filling their minds with examples of virtue.
Samuel Johnson, widely perceived by his contemporaries as "one of the best moral writers which England has produced,"[8] addresses the danger of an overabundance of personal flaws or even vices in the personae populating a novel in one of his Rambler essays. The reader, as Johnson puts it, is in danger of losing "the abhorrence of [the characters'] faults, because they do not hinder our pleasure, or, perhaps, regard them with some kindness for being united with so much merit."[9] In response to voices like these, Henry Fielding feels the need to clarify his attitude towards the vices found in some of his characters so urgently that he devotes a substantial portion of this preface to Joseph Andrews to this topic:
But perhaps it may be objected to me, that I have against my own rules introduced vices, and of a very black kind into this work. To which I shall answer: First, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions and keep clear from them. Secondly, that the vices to be found here, are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty, or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. Thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule but detestation. Fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene; and lastly, they never produce the intended evil.[10]
This declaration of the artist's best intentions to abstain from portraying vice as far as possible is not meant ironic - even though the novel is, in part, a parody on a book which heralded virtue as strongly as scarcely a work before: "Richardson's story of the virtuous servant girl [Pamela] who first reforms then marries her master introduces a completely new dimension of psychological realism and moral seriousness into fiction, but at the same time it is shot through with sanctimonious prudery and sentimentality."[11] Although Fielding does satirise these apparent weaknesses of Richardson's work, he does not replace Richardson's idea of morality with a radically new, subversive model of anti-virtue and anti-morality, but rather by Fielding's own, slightly customised idea of morality: an intelligent, knowing take on human flaws and qualities, significantly less prudish and significantly more ironic and sympathetic than Richardson's, but still true to the fundamental Augustan beliefs on moral and virtue.
Most of Fielding's characters are far from perfect. Only his hero, the servant Joseph Andrews (the fictional brother of Richardson's heroine, who lives and works for the aunt of Pamela's master/husband), his friend and mentor, the Parson Abraham Adams, and Andrew's quasi-fiancée Fanny, are (in Adam's case, nearly) free from character flaws. This is, of course, done on purpose. Especially Joseph and Adams are designed to be examples for the reader: "Joseph and Parson Adams embody the two virtues of chastity and charity, self-control and active benevolence, and the events in the story are deliberately designed to show these two virtues in action."[12]
On closer inspection, Joseph Andrew's main characteristic is already revealed by Fielding's choice of his first name: In the Old Testament (Genesis XXXIX, 7-20), Joseph (not to be mistaken for Jesus' father) preserves his chastity against the advances of Potiphar's wife, just as Fielding's Joseph does - to great comic effect - with his employer, Lady Booby's.[13] After the death of her husband, the lady's sexual desire finds a new centre of attraction in her handsome footman, Joseph (then called Joey). This manifests in Lady Booby repeatedly asking him into her room for no apparent reason, then hinting at her willingness to, for the moment, forget about social boundaries for the sake of sensual pleasure. Although she does not express her desire overtly (this her status forbids), even the rather naive Joseph cannot, after a while, maintain the slightest doubt about her intentions anymore. Yet Joseph resists stoically:
'Would you be contended with a kiss? [asked Lady Booby] Would not your inclinations be all on fire rather by such favour?' 'Madam,' said Joseph, 'if they were, I hope I should be able to controll them, without suffering them to get the better of my virtue.'[14]
After hesitating for a while, the disappointed Lady (who is hurt in her pride: how, she asks herself, can a simple servant bluntly resist an opportunity like that? How can Joseph keep up his shield of virtue, where I cannot?) finally dismisses Joseph from her services. This is the start of Joseph's journey through parts of England, during which he is robbed, meets Parson Adams and Fanny, loses her again, meets a large variety of different people, many of which are guilty of vanity and hypocrisy, and finally, after several further adventures, returns to the starting point of his journey, Booby-Hall, where, after some confusion, he finally marries his Fanny.
Of course, Lady Booby and Fanny are not the only women attracted by the handsome looks and gentle manner of Joseph's: "Where Pamela is pursued by her master, Squire Booby (Fielding's expansion of Richardson's discreet 'Mr B---'), Joseph is pursued by the Squire's aunt, Lady Booby. He also has to resist the amorous advances of the tigerish Mrs Slipslop [the Lady's "waiting-gentlewoman"] and Betty, the chambermaid at the Dragon [the inn in which Joseph recovers after having been mugged]."[15] So strict is Joseph's chastity, however, that he cannot even think of anything else when he is lying in his sickbed in an inn, weak and unknowing how many hours might separate him from a possible death. In a desperate soliloquy, Joseph reflects on the events past and comes to the conclusion that he has acted right:
'What riches, or honours, or pleasures can make us amends for the loss of innocence? Doth not that alone afford us more consolation, than all worldly acquisitions? What but innocence and virtue could give any comfort to such a miserable wretch as I am? Yet these can make me prefer this sick and painful bed to all the pleasures I should have found in my lady's.'[16]
In fact, this situation is so absurd that some ironic inclinations of Fielding's may well be suspected to be at work here. Yet even though Fielding does acknowledge, and use, the funny aspects of Joseph's strict clinging to his virtue, he still believes in the desirability of virtuous behaviour. Still, apart from Joseph's near fanatical devotion to chastity, the reader does not learn much about him - the scope of his character is, in fact, amazingly narrow, considering the fact that he is the protagonist of a novel bearing his name. Granted, he is well behaved, handsome, musically gifted (he possesses "one of the most melodious [voices] that ever was heard"[17]), brave, sufficiently strong, and does not hesitate to defend both his beloved Fanny and his friend Adams against any attacks.[18] Yet if it were not for two arguments with Parson Adams in two subsequent chapters (3:5: a discussion on public schools, 3:6: the absence of charity in the world[19]), the reader would hardly realise that the humble footman Andrews also has a few views on topics other than chastity on his mind, and is both intelligent and articulate enough to express and defend them. His identity remains, by and large, limited to the predominant aspect of chastity - his raison's d'etre are merely twofold: entertaining the reader (by the parodical, therefore comic aspects of his chastity) and educating the reader by setting an example of virtue. With the character of Joseph Andrews, Fielding certainly does not provide any new solutions to the problem of how to reflect true, individual, personal identity with all its contradictions and subtleties in the novel. He does, however, clearly attempt to, in effect, alter the identity of his reader by letting the fictional, idealised character of Joseph Andrews alter his imaginations and enter his memory.
In much the same way as most critics agree on Joseph Andrews himself being rather a one-dimensional character, there is generally much more acclaim for the second main character in the novel, the Parson Abraham Adams: "Adams has substance and even complexity - there is an air of reality about him which Joseph lacks."[20] Still, Fielding has not taken the complexity of Adam's character so far as to counteract Augustan moral. Even though he is, in Fielding's own opinion, "the most glaring in the whole" and "not to be found in any book now [at the point Joseph Andrews was first published] extant," he is "designed a character of perfect simplicity." - "I have made him a clergyman; since no other office could have given him so many opportunities of displaying his worthy inclinations."[21] Although he has never visited a university, this clergyman is very well-educated: In fact, as Fielding tells us, "He was a perfect master of the Greek and Latin languages; to which he added a great share of knowledge in the oriental tongues, and could read and translate French, Italian and Spanish." This hints at both a great intelligence and a will strong enough to keep up a strict discipline of solitary learning for a very long time. Like many educated men, however, Adams has the tendency to be a bit forgetful about the so-called "simple" facts of life. He is so scatterbrained that, on his journey, he once even forgets his own horse in the stable of an inn:
Indeed, true it is, the Parson had exhibited a fresh instance of his absence of mind: for he was so pleased with having got Joseph into the coach, that he never once thought of the beast in the stable; and finding his legs as nimble as he desired, he sallied out brandishing a crabstick, and had kept on before the coach, mending and slackening his pace occasionally, ... often crying out, Aye, aye, catch me if you can.[22]
This passage does not only hint at Adams' pardonable flaw of being rather forgetful in parts. It also demonstrates his capability of spontaneous outbursts of childlike joy (not to be mistaken for childishness). This characteristic of his also surfaces in other passages. When, for example, one of the seemingly parodical coincidences that determine the plot of the novel in so many ways that it makes the sudden occurrence of the unexpected one of the reader's foremost expectations and, hence, the surprising unsurprising, reunites Adams and his beloved Fanny in an inn, Adams first shows his ability to show deep compassion for those he loves when he rushes so fast to assist the fainting Fanny that he looses his beloved copy of Aeschylus in the fire. Then, however, after the reason for Fanny's sudden unconsciousness is revealed in her discovering Joseph, and the two lovers are reunited, he is almost overwhelmed with joyous feelings:
If prudes are offended at the lusciousness of this picture, they may take their eyes off from it, and survey Parson Adams dancing about the room in a rapture of joy. Some philosophers may perhaps doubt, whether he was not the happiest of the three; for the goodness of his heart enjoyed the blessings which were exulting in the breasts of both the other two, together with his own.[23]
Although Adams is a fairly well-educated man for a village parson, his personality has remained unspoilt by the harsh cynicism that often accompanies the intellectual. If his education leads to any slight flaw of character, it is only the pride on being not only an extraordinary scholar, but also an excellent teacher:
Indeed, if this good man [Adams] had an enthusiasm, or what the vulgar call a blind-side, it was this: he thought a schoolmaster the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest of all schoolmasters, neither of which points he would have given up to Alexander the Great at the head of his army.[24]
So, even though Fielding's Parson Adams is not as completely free from mistakes as Joseph, the rather small degree of vanity he is guilty of is nothing compared to the vices in many other characters in the novel (Fielding does not even use the words "vanity" or "flaw" to describe this aspect of Adams' character, but rather the euphemistic words "enthusiasm" and "blind-side"). Like Joseph, Adams is designed an example; and even though his character has more facets than Joseph's, he is still far from having a fully-fledged, credible (though fictional) personal identity. The reader learns nothing, for example, about Adams' sexuality, he does not learn anything about any of Adams' hidden wishes and desires, things that can be found in any person. Adams never feels depressed (in fact, he is only sad once, when he is wrongly informed of the death of his youngest son[25]). He never feels self-doubt, and never questions his role in the world. He is, in fact, so self-secure that he seems utterly unaware of the very possibility of being someone else than he is, or doing anything different from what he is doing. Paradoxical enough, his only major weakness is his virtue: His good-nature leads to a naiveté that often makes him ill suited to deal with the harsh realities of the world:
He was ... a man of good sense, good parts, and good nature; but was at the same time as entirely ignorant of the ways of the world, as an infant just entered into it could possibly be. As he had never any intention to deceive, so he never suspected such a design in others.[26]
Consequently, when he is a guest at a rich "Batchelor's" [Fielding's spelling], he is an easy prey for the various "practical jokes" his host and his assembly of friends play on him: "Mr Adams, from whom we had most of this relation, could not recollect all the jests of this kind practised on him, which the inoffensive disposition of his own heart made him slow in discovering."[27] After he finally discovers their evil intentions, he is outraged - but, apart from a short outburst, the incident does not alter his good-natured ways a bit. Just as the virtuous Joseph, Adams remains exactly the same throughout the novel. This curious inability of both Fielding's heroes to change strikes the modern reader as slightly odd: We have come to expect that the central character or characters of a novel experience some significant change to their personalities, and that this change is both determined by the plot and contributes integral parts to it. In Augustan terms, however, this static nature of identity was not only accepted, but even desired: "To remain essentially the same, in many eighteenth-century novels, constitutes the central character's triumph ... For if the optimism of the nineteenth century focuses on the possibility of change, that of the eighteenth depends on the reassurances of stability. Not only is this because ... change often implies decay but more simply, because change is unpredictable."[28]
Interestingly enough, while Fielding denies his heroes any opportunity to alter their personal identity, their social identity, as perceived and created by other characters, is subject to massive variations: "Fielding's protagonists wander through a world rife with hypocrisy, deceit, infidelity, dishonesty, and selfishness, a world in which identity and character fluctuate with the collective account prevailing at the moment."[29] When, for example, Parson Adams, then travelling alone, saves a woman from being raped (as it later turns out, she is no other than Joseph's Fanny), this deed is, of course, totally in line with his good nature, which is by no means accompanied by cowardice. While Adams is anxiously eyeing the then motionless would-be rapist (who pretends to be unconscious after Adams' physical intervention), a party of young people arrives at the scene. The assailant suddenly comes back to life and persuades the onlookers that, rather than a good-natured parson far too virtuous (and naive) to even think of committing a crime, Adams is, in fact, a reckless villain, who, with help of Fanny, lured him into a dark area and robbed him.
The role reversal for Adams could not be more complete. Adams and Fanny are brought to court and both believed to be and treated like villains - until a witness confirms Adams' true identity. All of a sudden, then, all is changed back again.[30] Other examples for the sudden reversal of social identity are plentiful. "Fielding's fictional world ... is a world where the worth and character of individuals is under constant negotiation, where their treatment and identity hinge not on any permanent virtues they may possess, but on the version of themselves (and others) currently in force in a given environment."[31] Quite obviously, Fielding did recognise that, no matter what the true personal identity of an individual was, it hardly mattered, as long as his environment believed it to be of a different nature.
This raises, of course, the question of the real value of virtue for the real - as opposed to fictional - Augustan individual: in a hypocritical world that judges the individual by appearance, not by inner values, why not simply join in and be a hypocrite, virtuous at most to the outside, yourself? Fielding's answer to this question can be found in one of the interpolated tales in Joseph Andrews "which are stories of identity and the establishment of the self."[32] The narrator of this tale is the character of Wilson, a retired gentleman. Although Wilson now leads a virtuous life, and basically shares the same good-nature of Joseph's and Adams' (he immediately grants them entry into his house, gives them food and shelter at night, without demanding anything from the weary travellers), he confesses to Adams that he has not always been like this. After his seventeenth birthday, he decided to go to London and participate in the "high-life" of the capital, which is rather based on appearances than true inner value: "The character I was ambitious of attaining [says Wilson], was that of a fine gentleman; the first requisites to which, I apprehended, were to be supplied by a taylor, a periwig-maker, and some few more tradesmen, who deal in furnishing out the human body."[33] Soon, Wilson borrows money for all these purchases and his expensive lifestyle of drinking, gambling, and other leisure activities. He also has affairs with several women - and finds himself, after a while, not only unhappy and of bad health, but also financially ruined and of bad personal reputation. Only the acquaintance with his future wife saves him from misery, restores him to his good-natured roots and a virtuous lifestyle, and enables him to leave the unreal "high-life" of the capital, and retire "from a world full of bustle, noise, hatred, envy, and ingratitude, to ease, quiet, and love" in a village.[34] The extraordinary length of the tale (in fact, this chapter is the longest in all the novel[35]) reveals how important Fielding considers the subject. Furthermore, it is certainly significant that the gentleman Wilson in the end not only turns out to be Joseph's father - but that Joseph and Fanny also decide to choose Wilson's and his wife's retired lifestyle as a model for their own:
Joseph remains blest with his Fanny, whom he doats on with the utmost tenderness, which is all returned on her side. The happiness of this couple is a perpetual fountain of pleasure to their fond parents; and what is particularly remarkable, he declares he will imitate them in their retirement; nor will be prevailed on by any booksellers, or their authors, to make his appearance in High-Life.
Only when detached from the perpetual judgement by appearance in society and the negative influences of "high-life", it seems, can men, in Fielding's eyes, gain true happiness. Yet Joseph's and Fanny's and the Wilsons' happiness would surely be incomplete if it wasn't for their core of good-nature and their virtuous character, which they maintained (or, in Wilson's case, lost and regained) by discipline. In presenting the cosy, retired lives of these two couples, Fielding shows his readers both an alternative lifestyle to the "high-life" in the city and the possibility of a reward for virtuous life - not only in heaven, but already on earth. It may be asserted, thus, that Fielding genuinely believed in the worth of a virtuous life not only to conform to certain social norms, but to attain true happiness - a belief which certainly must have made the educational aspects of a novel seem all the more important to him. The lack of realism in his characters is a result of his wilful limitation of their personal identity to the representation of an ideal. It is certainly not due to a lack of talent: In fact, Fielding is a very fine observer of human behaviour with all its irrationalities and comic aspects. This can, to name one of many examples, be marvellously observed in his description of an ever-quarrelling couple in another interpolated tale.[36] Even though Joseph Andrews is, thus, certainly no shining example of the realistic representation of personal identity in the novel, the book certainly demonstrates that "[t]he kind of identity possible for a character in fiction ... depends on the novelist's purpose and function in manipulating his imitation of the real."[37] This, of course, is all the more so when the author is moved by a system of moral values as dense and strict as that of the Augustans.
[Word count without footnotes: 4439]
Brissenden, R.F., "Introduction," in Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews. Edited by R.F. Brissenden (London: Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 7-18.
Fielding, Henry, Joseph Andrews. Edited by R.F. Brissenden (London: Penguin Books, 1977).
Hardy, J.P., "Introduction," in Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. Edited with an Introduction by J.P. Hardy (Oxford: University Press, 1988), pp. IX-XXII.
Karl, Frederick R., A Reader's Guide to the development of the English novel in the eighteenth century (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975).
Meyer Spacks, Patricia, Imagining a Self. Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Harvard University Press, 1976).
Ray, William, Story and History. Narrative Authority and Social Identity in the Eighteenth-Century French and English Novel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel. Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967).
[1] Patricia Meyer Spacks, Imagining a Self. Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 10.
[2] Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel. Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967), p. 18.
[3] John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) (Oxford: Fraser, 1894), book IV, chapter Ix, section 3; II, 305, quoted from Spacks, p. 2.
[4] Spacks, p. 3.
[5] Watt, p. 21.
[6] Spacks, pp. 4-5.
[7] Spacks, p. 11.
[8] G.B. Hill, L.F. Powell (eds.), Boswell's Life of Johnson (1934-50), vol. I, pp. 432-3, quoted from J. P. Hardy, "Introduction," in Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. Edited with an Introduction by J.P. Hardy (Oxford: University Press, 1988), pp. XX-XXI.
[9] Quoted from Spacks, p. 5. As an interesting parallel, the eighteenth century debate on what and what not was proper to include in a novel may be compared to the current debate on sex and violence on television or in the cinema. The reason why the novel of the late 20th century is usually far less under attack by moralistic critics than the "newer" mediums could simply be the focus of the debate having shifted away from the century-long established novel. The Augustans' reasons for deliberately limiting the artistic scope of their novels for the sake of morality and, thus, the virtue or even sanity of their readers might well essentially be the same as the current campaigners' for banning certain scenes from TV and cinema. An important difference between the current debate on censorship and the Augustan struggle to "keep the novel clean," however, lies in the circumstance that, whereas directors like Oliver Stone do their utmost to keep their work from being censored, many Augustan authors totally agreed with their critics on the need to draw some distinct borders of morality which novels should not be allowed to cross.
[10] Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews. Edited by R.F. Brissenden (London: Penguin Books, 1977), Preface, p. 30.
[11] R. F. Brissenden, "Introduction," in Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews. Edited by R.F. Brissenden (London: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 9.
[12] Brissenden, Introduction, p. 11.
[13] "[T]he Old Testament figures of Joseph and Abraham were commonly used in Christian apologetics of the day as exemplars of these two virtues. As with almost everything else in the book there is nothing accidental in Fielding's choice of names for his two heroes." - R. F. Brissenden, "Notes", in Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews. Edited by R.F. Brissenden (London: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 327, no. 21.
[14] Fielding, p. 58 (book. I, chapter 8).
[15] Brissenden, Introduction, p. 10.
[16] Fielding, p. 74 (bk. I, ch. 13).
[17] Fielding, p. 156 (bk. II, ch. 12).
[18] Fielding, p. 227 (bk. III, ch. 6).
[19] Fielding, pp. 220-231 (bk. III, chs. 5-6).
[20] Brissenden, Introduction, p. 12.
[21] Fielding, pp. 30-1 (Preface).
[22] Fielding, p. 135 (bk. II, ch. 7).
[23] Fielding, pp. 156-7 (bk. II, ch. 12).
[24] Fielding, p. 222 (bk. III, ch. 5).
[25] Fielding, pp. 290-92 ( bk. IV, ch. 8).
[26] Fielding, p. 43 (bk. I, ch. 3).
[27] Fielding, p. 233 (bk. III, ch. 7).
[28] Spacks, pp. 8-9.
[29] William Ray, Story and History. Narrative Authority and Social Identity in the Eighteenth-Century French and English Novel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 198.
[30] Fielding, pp. 144-154 (bk. II, chs. 10-11).
[31] Ray, p. 202.
[32] Frederick R. Karl, A Reader's Guide to the development of the English novel in the eighteenth century (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), p. 151.
[33] Fielding, p. 196 (bk. III, ch. 3).
[34] Fielding, p. 215 (bk. III, ch. 3).
[35] Fielding, pp. 196-216 (bk. III, ch. 3).
[36] Fielding, pp. 296-301 (bk. IV, ch. 10).
[37] Spacks, p. 6.