Constantin Anca Andreea

Professor Manea Drago

18th Century British Literature

20 May 2015
Tom Jones as an epic poem

Tom Jones is an eighteenth century novel written by Henry Fielding, who is according to

Anthony Burgess, one of the greatest and the most known novelist, philosopher and moralist. He

is also one of the writers whom the rise of the novel had been attributed to, among the others

two, Defoe and Richardson.

The novel was written in the Age of Enlightenment or simply, Enlightenment, a

movement in which belief in mans perfectibility(adopted by romantics in romantic fallacy) and

the moral philosophy asserting mans natural goodness, unhindered human progress, if guided by

reason and common sense(Mihai A. Stroe, 5), are the main ideas. Therefore, we can say that in

this period of time, the focus is not on man, but on the man as a human kind, feelings, senses and

moral qualities. The last one is determined by the moral philosophy, which was based on

mechanical determinism. The mechanical determinism asserted the existence of a rational ,

benevolent, purposive order of the universe, plus the reliability of human knowledge. (Mihai A.

Stroe, 5)

Fieldings masterpiece Tom Jones, is at the same time a bildungsroman (novel of formation,

of education) a literary genre in which the psychological and moral formation of the protagonist

from his childhood, then youth, to adulthood is emphasized; and a picaresque novel, a genre of

prose, the focus being on the adventures of a hero from a low class in society, which combines

elements of comedy and satire, in a realistic way. (Wikipedia) Because it is written in this style,
Fielding allows us to think and imagine about the life of England in that time, and he gives us

information about the life of society and its characters : Tom Jones, like Joseph Andrews,

provides panoramic views of English life and society, depicting characters across the social

spectrum. His novels feature a controlling narrator who guides readers through a complicated

plot and comments satirically on the characters as he arranges comic scenes and draws out social

and moral lessons. (Mihai A. Stroe, 15)

Also, Eustace Taiwo Palmer, in his study The Modern Language Review, said that : In this

work, Fielding demonstrates astonishing technical virtuosity in the deployment of the mock-epic,

burlesque, hyperbolic rhetoric, irony, and other devices, not for the own sakes, but to the end of

elucidating his morality and his message. [] Tom Jones examines various views of life, religion

and morality, and subjects the behaviors of all sorts of people to scrutiny and criticism .

The plot is indeed complicated, because it is not easy to sum it up just in a few lines, and

having a great impact on us, readers, is what makes it hard to resume the action, without

eliminating the important scenes. The novel is structured in 4 volumes, divided in 18 books, each

having an unequally number of chapters ( Part I books 1 to 6, the action takes place in Paradise

Hall; Part II books 7 to 12, the action takes place on the road; Part III books 13 to 18, the

action takes place in London). In the first chapter of the first book, are introduced Mr. Squire

Allworthy ( a kind and wealthy man ) and his unmarried sister, Ms. Bridget Allworthy in their

estate in Somerset. After an absence of three months, because he was on a business trip in

London, he returns and finds a baby sleeping peacefully in his bed. Allworthy adopts the baby,

summoning his maid, Deborah Wilkins to take care of him. Alworthy gives the baby a Christian

name, Thomas, and the surname Jones from the woman who was supposed to be his mother,

Jenny Jones. After the baby was discovered, Bridget Allworthy marries Captain Blifil, who dies
after two years and leaves Bridget with a son, named Blifil, who will be the opposite of Tom.

The two of them grow up together under the tuition and the teaching of the clergyman

Thwackum and the philosopher Squares. Nearly the Allworthy estate, lives Mr Western ( who is

the opposite of Allworthy), his sister and his beautiful daughter Sofia, with whom Tom will fall

madly in love, but after the separation of him and Molly, a poor girl who seduced Tom. Sofia

also loves Tom, but her father wont acknowledge her feelings for him, and he forces her to

marry Blifil. Because she has to marry a man she hates, she leaves home and Tom starts to search

for her, but in the meantime he is seduced by Ms. Waters with whom he will have a relationship.

Jones and Sofia meet each other at an inn, where Sofia finds out about their relationship and after

that she goes in England with her cousin, and Jones looks for her again. When Tom arrives in

England he finds Sofias cousin and asks her about Sofia but she does not want to tell him where

she lives. Then Jones requires the help of Sofias aunt, but she will not help him, instead she falls

in love with him and she tries to interfere between them, and the only way to escape from her is

to ask her hand in marriage, and he proposes to her. After that she is scared and because of that

she refuses him, but Sofia finds out about the proposal and she is disappointed again of Tom.

Because Jones wounds Mr. Fitzpatrick, he ends up in prison where he finds out that Ms. Waters

is his mother, but she tells the truth to Allworthy, which is that the real mother of Tom Jones is

actually Bridget Allworthy. She told Allworthy that she was paid to lie and hide the secret, and

the only one who knew the truth was Blifil, Jones brother. After that, Alworthy banished Blifil

and told everything to Western, who agreed that Sofie should marry Tom Jones. In the end,

because of his kindness and honor, he earned the right to be worthy of a happy ending, even

though at the first he was part of the low class of society : Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, are
foundlings who are revealed in the end to have upper-class identities that make them worthy of

happy and prosperous endings. (Mihai A. Stroe, 15)

Tom Jones has all the characteristics of a novel, which is a long, fictional narrative,

describing intimate human experiences . (Wikipedia) Even though it fulfils all these conditions,

it is not a novel, but a history, biography, comic epic poem in prose. [] Fielding explains that

he has written a comic epic poem in prose with a light and ridiculous fable instead of a

grave and solemn one, with ludicrous sentiments instead of sublime, and with characters of

inferior instead of superior rank, a history; he describes not men, but manners, not individuals

but species in a comical, satirical way. (Mihai A. Stroe, 31-32)

The most important thing that leads us to believe that Tom Jones is a comic epic poem in

prose, is the irony and the moral purpose, which is to show integral human nature as it is, raised

to a high power of activity, so that the contrast between what is beautiful and what is ugly shall

be clearly perceived . (Mihai A. Stroe, 34)

Jerry C. Beasly, in his review about what professor Anthony J. Hassall said, sustains the

idea that we should perceive Tom Jones more like an epic poem, instead of a novel :

The stated aim of this study is to read Tom Jones more like an epic poem.

Professor Hassall hopes in particular to look closely at the verbal fabric

of the novel and to examine the way it articulates its authors very personal

view of the relationship between art and life, between writer and the reader.

These purposes, Professor Hassall notes, quite naturally require him to

consider issues serially and progressively, as they arise, in the course of the

novels development from beginning to end, in much the same fashion, he

seems to say, as one might approach a work of poetry sequentially, line by line
 or stanza by stanza, so as to describe the totality of its compositional and

thematic effects. This approach, he insists at some length, exactly coincides

with Fieldings own sense of how this novel ought to be read: relatively,

cumulatively, with the kind of attention to multiple ambiguities and ironies that

leads towards moral discovery .

Indeed, what makes Tom Jones to be seen as a comic epic poem in prose is its ironical

way of conveying the message of the author. The significance of the irony is to help us, readers,

to see beneath the surface of what the author really means to imply by what he says. And in order

to do that, we have to reverse the meaning, to find and understand the opposite of what Fielding

says.

According to Eustace Taiwo Palmer, the simplest form of irony is that whereby the

author says the exact opposite of what he means, and the readers task is to reverse the surface

meaning in order to get the authors real intention. What was therefore complimentary becomes

derogatory and vice versa, and for this reason this form of irony can best be described as the

praise/blame inversion. He says that this form of irony is best suited for the portrayal of

characters who are either unquestionably good or bad . Therefore, in Tom Jones we can find it

in different descriptions of the characters, but especially in the description of Blifil:

Young Blifil was greatly enraged at it. He had long hated Black

George in the same proportion as Jones delighted in him; not from any

offence which he had ever received, but from his great love to religion

and virtue; - for Black George had the reputation of loose kind of a

fellow. Blifil therefore represented this as flying in Mr. Allworthys

face; and declared, with great concern, that it was impossible to find
 any other motive for doing good to such a wretch . ( Book 4, Chapter

V, pag. 139 )

Eustace Taiwo Palmer is also the one who talks about an interesting form of irony, which

is associated with the voice tone of the author. He emphasizes that : a much commoner and

more subtle form of irony is what may be called tonal irony , for it is an apparent shift in the

authors tone of voice which indicates the gap between the superficial impression conveyed by

the words on the page and the real meaning . The best example in which we can find the tonal

irony is in the description of Allworthys sister :

He now lived, for the most part, retired in the country, with one sister, for

whom he had a very tender affection. This lady was now somewhat past the

age of thirty, an era at which in the opinion of the malicious, the title of old

maid may with no impropriety be assumed. She was of that species of

women whom you commend rather for good qualities than beauty, and who

are generally called, by their own sex, very good sort of women as good

of woman, madam, as you would wish to know. Indeed, she was so far from

regretting want of beauty, that she never mentioned that perfection, it can be

called one, without contempt; and would often thank God she was not as

handsome as Miss Such-a-one, whom perhaps beauty had led into errors

which she might have otherwise avoided. Miss Bridget Allworthy ( for that

was the name of this lady ) very rightly conceived the charms of person in a

woman to be no better than snares for herself, as well as for others; and yet

so discreet was she in her conduct, that her prudence was as much on the
 guard, as if she had all the snares to apprehend which were ever laid for her

whole sex . ( Book 1, Chapter II, pag. 41-42)

In conclusion, Tom Jones can be much more than a novel, it can also be seen as a comic

epic poem in prose, but in the end, it is nothing but a great novel of the eighteenth century, with

its main characteristics : the adventures in English cities and along the countryside, the

humorous satirization of the affectations of men, the endless variety in human personality and

experience, and the triumph of the pure and virtuous over the corrupt and wicked . (Connie B.

McMillan)
 MLA Works Cited

Beasly, Jerry. The Yearbook of English Studies. Modern Humanities Research

Association, 1982. Web. 20 May 2015 . http://jstor.org

Palmer, Eustace. The Modern Language Review. Modern Humanities Research

Association, 1971. Web, 20 May 2015. http://jstor.org

McMillan, Connie. A comparative study of Henry Fieldings Joseph Andrews. Texas

Technological College, 1967. Web, 21 May 2015. http://researchgate.net

Stroe, Mihai. English Romanticism in the context of the Revolutions; Rise of the British

Novel in the Context of Enlightenment. Course support, 2015.

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picaresque_novel