Cοurse paper Theme: Henry Fielding parodies on Samuel Richardson's novels

CONCLUSION

As a barrister, Fielding, who rode the Western Circuit (a judicial subdivision of England) twice a year, had little success. In 1740, however, Samuel Richardson published his novel Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded, which tells how a servant girl so impressed her master by resistance to his every effort at seduction that in the end “he thought fit to make her his wife.” Something new in literature, its success was unparalleled. A crop of imitations followed. In April 1741 there appeared a parody entitled An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, satirizing Richardson’s sentimentality and prudish morality. It was published anonymously and, though Fielding never claimed it, Shamela was generally accepted as his work in his lifetime, and stylistic evidence supports the attribution.Fielding’s Joseph Andrews was published anonymously in 1742. Described on the title page as “Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote,” it begins as a burlesque of Pamela, with Joseph, Pamela’s virtuous footman brother, resisting the attempts of a highborn lady to seduce him. The parodic intention soon becomes secondary, and the novel develops into a masterpiece of sustained irony and social criticism, with, at its centre, Parson Adams, one of the great comic figures of literature and a striking confirmation of the contention of the 19th-century Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky that the positively good man can be made convincing in fiction only if rendered to some extent ridiculous. Fielding explains in his preface that he is writing “a comic Epic-Poem in Prose.” He was certainly inaugurating a new genre in fiction.Pamela Andrews is a 15-year-old maidservant in Bedfordshire, England. The novel is narrated principally through the letters she writes to her mother and father and a journal she keeps. Pamela has been employed by using the kind Lady B, an elderly lady who dies at the start of the novel. After the demise of Lady B, her son Mr. B takes over the family and indicates a keen pastime in Pamela. While Pamela at first believes that Mr. B would by no means pursue a servant, he quickly makes sexual advances in the direction of her, which she rejects. Pamela is determined to remain chaste and virtuous, even when Mr. B repeatedly tries to seduce her and presents her cash in trade for turning into his mistress. One night, Mr. B attacks Pamela; she faints in terror, which saves her from being raped. Pamela is now decided to go home to her parents; however, Mr. B arranges a plan to have Pamela taken to his estate in Lincolnshire barring her knowledge or consent. In Lincolnshire, Pamela is isolated and at the mercy of Mrs. Jewkes, the housekeeper, who is cruel and unsympathetic to Pamela. A kindly clergyman named Mr. Williams tries in vain to assist Pamela. As Pamela grows an increasing number of desperate, she tries unsuccessfully to escape, injuring herself in the process.