Tom Jones—full title, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling—was published in 1749. The cover note on my Wordsworth Classics edition states “Tom Jones is widely regarded as one of the first and most influential English novels. It is certainly the funniest.”
The first part of that (the claim that Tom Jones is, or at least is “widely regarded” as being, one of the first and most influential English novels) is true, based on the little bit of background reading I did on it. There’s some ambiguity about where to draw the line as far as what does and does not count as a novel—Fielding himself wrote dozens of previous works, at least two of which likely should count as novels—but as long as the claim describes Tom Jones as “one of the first” rather than “the first,” I don’t think it’s wrong.
However, the second part (the claim that Tom Jones is “certainly the funniest” English novel ever) is insanely exaggerated or overconfident. Even for book jacket puffery, that has to be some kind of record. To say that it’s the funniest would be bad enough, but to say it’s “certainly the funniest,” as if it is funniest by such a wide margin that its position at the top is indisputable, is, like I say, bizarre even by the standards of book blurb hyperbole. Of the millions or however many English novels that have ever been written, including a huge number of extremely popular and successful comic novels, given how subjective “funny” is in the first place, you really think you can single out one of them as “clearly the funniest”? Seriously?
Far from anticipating that this would be the funniest novel I’d ever read, I actually had some concern over whether I could get into it much at all. I mean, I know it’s a “classic,” but it’s also really, really old. If writing techniques have improved significantly over the years in making novels more effective and enjoyable, then one’s expectations for a novel from this long ago would have to be quite low.
Further, think about how much language changes. This is almost as old as Shakespeare. Would I find the language similarly obscure, where it’s a real chore for me to decipher it well enough even to get the gist of what’s going on?
Not to mention, humor routinely doesn’t travel well across time and space. Something that most people in China in 1900 would have found side-splittingly funny might well mean nothing to me. Different culture, different time, different level of knowledge about the context, etc. Can you imagine someone in 1749 in England “getting” the humor of Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer?
But Tom Jones turned out to be truly a pleasant surprise. It’s not the best novel I’ve ever read, it’s not “certainly the funniest” novel I’ve ever read, but I’d probably put it somewhere in the top 25%, which was far, far above my expectations. Even at over 700 pages, it had me reasonably engaged the whole way.
What stands out to me as perhaps the most surprising thing is how modern it seems. It reminds me of some of the funniest stuff from writers like Dickens or Twain, but in technique it feels even more recent.
There’s a postmodern playfulness to its structure. Fielding, or at least the narrator who is external to the action, routinely addresses the reader directly. At times he tells the story as if it’s a work of nonfiction, claiming, for instance, that he does not have certain information that would be useful to be able to relate, when obviously Fielding is making it all up and could easily make up this supposedly unavailable information. Whereas at other times he discusses the trials and tribulations of writing fiction, for instance the difficulty of getting his hero out of a scrape in such a way that’s not completely implausible yet also doesn’t rely on the intervention of God or some such supernatural deus ex machina. There’s a lot of meta-level discussion and paradox, conveyed with a self-conscious dry wit. I never expected that kind of stuff from a 1749 book.
The protagonist of Tom Jones is indeed Tom Jones, and he is, as the full title indicates, a foundling. He is abandoned on the estate of Squire Allworthy, a kindly old gent who lives with his sister Bridget. No one knows whose baby this is, but inquiries generate various theories and rumors until the most likely culprit—an unmarried servant named Jenny—confesses under pressure that she is the mother.
Allworthy graciously sets her up with a position far away where no one knows her and no one will have any way of knowing she had a baby (i.e., had sex), thus sparing her the kind of damaged reputation that could then have ruined a woman’s life. She arguably ends up ahead on the deal, raising some question about whether her confession was sincere or more of a strategic move to put herself in a position to receive just such a benefit. The father of the child is even more of a mystery; Jenny refuses to reveal his identity (assuming she is even the mother and would know who the father is).
Already some of the themes of the book are emerging. One is that there is a considerable amount of illicit—premarital or extramarital—sex. Another is that most of the poor people in the book are far from noble poor, but tend to be morally damaged people motivated egoistically in most matters (which is realistic to a degree, as the poor are generally under a greater Darwinian pressure to prioritize immediate survival over abstract moral principles). Both of these elements—the sex and the flawed poor folks—are typically presented with a slight comic twist, or in some instances as full-fledged farce.
Allworthy decides to accept the baby into his own household, naming it Tom Jones and delegating primary child raising duties to Bridget.
As it happens, at about this same time Bridget finally gets married, to an unpleasant golddigger dude named Captain Blifil. They soon have a son, whom I don’t think is ever named in the novel, simply being referred to as Master Blifil. The Captain is determined to manipulate things such that when Allworthy dies he’ll be in a position to inherit his wealth, or barring that, at least his son will. Soon enough the latter is the only one of the two that remains a possibility, as the Captain dies young.
So Bridget now in effect has two children to raise as a single parent, though with a houseful of servants and such to do the bulk of what needs to be done. Allworthy also brings in two fellows to function as live-in tutors of a sort I guess. They are very much of opposite types, and are apt to debate and try to one-up each other in a sometimes friendly and sometimes not-so-friendly rivalry.
Square is a “philosopher” (whatever exactly that term conveyed at that time and place in history), and Thwackum is a clergyman.
Square is an egotist and is primarily concerned with abstractions, especially if he can win arguments about them. He’s pretty close to useless as a tutor. He’s not particularly evil, though, which I would say Thwackum is.
Thwackum is puritanical in the worst sense, self-righteous, bloodless, and frankly sadistic. He’s all about making people suffer as much as possible insofar as they don’t abide by his particular version of religious morality. He reminds me a bit of Edward Murdstone in David Copperfield. Given the different tones of the books, though, whereas Murdstone is ninety percent creepy and ten percent comical, Thwackum is more like 50-50. If Square is kind of neutral or a zero as a tutor, Thwackum is more actively harmful to anyone unfortunate enough to be influenced by him.
You sense that Fielding likes Allworthy (allegedly he was based on a friend and benefactor of Fielding), but the character certainly has his limitations. To me he represents the kind of member of a privileged class who has a basic human decency to him and kind natural instincts, but who is also clueless in important ways. That is, he’s not a complete fool by any means, but he’s not someone who is capable of thinking outside the box, of analyzing social reality, of understanding systemic evils. He doesn’t question social norms and common values.
So, for instance, if he is face to face with some suffering person—some peasant or member of the working class whose family is starving, say—he’ll be more generous than the average person of his class. But it would never occur to him that maybe there’s something wrong with the overall social, economic, or political system that results in such avoidable human suffering, and that something like that needs to be reformed or overthrown. His attitude would be more that people’s suffering is either attributable to bad luck, in which case the decent thing to do is to bestow some charity upon them, or to their own fault, in which case perhaps a little mercy can be bestowed but not too much (though because he’s an old softy, his actions in such cases will typically exceed what he thinks is appropriate in the abstract).
Or like with Square and Thwackum, it’s not that Allworthy has done some sort of extensive background check of them, or has studied their philosophies in great detail and concluded that they are of merit; because they are mainstream, reputable folks with credentials, he takes it for granted that they must be the sort of people who are suitable for teaching and influencing children. He pretty much goes along with whatever they recommend, perhaps softening it a little here and there if it’s harsher than he’s comfortable with.
You see it as well in his relationship with Tom, of whom he is clearly very fond. Due to a combination of Tom’s legitimate screw-ups, the lies and schemes others direct against Tom (most notably, Master Blifil’s machinations), and simple bad luck and misunderstandings, there are multiple occasions when Tom appears to Allworthy to be guilty of some kind of significant corruption or betrayal. Allworthy allows his heart to override his judgment—excusing Tom, or at least limiting the consequences he must suffer—for as long as he can. When it finally reaches the point where he feels compelled to dismiss Tom from his life, he does so with the greatest sadness. Instinctively, he wants to remain on Tom’s side, but ultimately he feels he must go with conventional morality and the standards of behavior of his class.
The early chapters of Tom Jones cover Tom’s childhood, and there is a brief summary of his later adult life at the end, but the book primarily takes place during Tom’s youth and early adulthood—what we would think of today as high school and college age.
Tom and Master Blifil develop in opposite directions, to put it mildly.
To take Blifil first, he’s basically a slimy little rat from day one. He instinctively knows just how to suck up to authority figures to get what he wants out of them. Imagine an Eddie Haskell with far, far more malice than Eddie ever had. He has an ill-concealed contempt for his pseudo-brother Tom, and is envious of any good fortune that might come Tom’s way, or of any love or approval Tom might receive.
As blatantly nasty a son of a bitch as he is, no one seems to see through him. At least not until Tom’s eventual love interest Sophia Western, who feels a strong, utterly appropriate, aversion to the crumb. Other than that, though, mostly people buy his act.
Much of the humor of Eddie Haskell was that everyone could immediately see through him; Blifil is the much more dangerous type of villain who actually gets away with his bullshit.
Especially for a comic novel, Tom is actually a surprisingly realistic character. He’s good-hearted, but not saintly. He’s naïve, but really only to about the degree you’d expect of someone his age. He’s hornier than you’d expect of a teenager in a “classic” old novel, but not more than real teenagers. He easily convinces himself he’s in love when he’s infatuated by a pretty face.
OK, maybe he is a bit more to the saintly side than would be fully realistic, as there’s little if any malice or pettiness to him. But at least as far as conventional “vices” that don’t involve malice, he’s far from pure. A lot of that stuff I’d regard as neutral if not positive, though. I mean, Thwackum confidently condemns Tom as a rotten kid (just as Murdstone does David), but I’d say that’s to his credit.
So he’s kind of like a Huck Finn, I suppose: Basically a good dude, but not one who will always be recognized as such by conventional society and authority figures.
As I mentioned above, poor people in Tom Jones are routinely presented as rascals, but it’s done in a way that makes their flaws understandable if not excusable, not to mention comic.
Take the Black George family, for instance. Black George is a servant who sometimes gets himself in trouble, which can result in his losing his position, income, and ability to support his family. More than once when George and his people are at rock bottom, kind-hearted Tom finds a way to slip them a little something to keep them above water, even when, according to prevailing authority, he’s not supposed to.
George repays Tom’s largess by blatantly stealing from him at the first opportunity. (The narrator hastens to point out that George was in fact a man of great character and loyalty, except when it came to any opportunity to line his pockets.)
Meanwhile, Tom becomes smitten with George’s daughter Molly, has sex with her, and gets her pregnant. Being the kind of guy he is, he can’t imagine not doing the responsible thing and marrying her and supporting her for life, even though by the time he learns of her pregnancy he has already developed quite a thing for the aforementioned Sophia.
Or at least that’s his intention until he finds out that Molly has basically been fucking everybody, sometimes for money, and sometimes with the cooperation of her mother, with whom she shares the proceeds. So it’s anyone’s guess who the father of her forthcoming baby is. Indeed, Tom even walks in on her and a very embarrassed Square in flagrante delicto (which, to me, if anything humanizes Square and makes him more likable than his rival Thwackum to an even greater degree).
What’s interesting is that Tom doesn’t react to learning things like this with any outrage or anger, or even more than a little surprise. It’s more like, “Hmm, that’s interesting.” For instance, when he finds Square and Molly together, he’s more amused than anything, and happy that this relieves him of any obligations toward her. It’s not like he’s mad at anybody, or judgmental.
Throughout the book, as Tom gradually comes of age, he experiences each small diminution of naiveté as something more welcome than not, as interesting and educational, not traumatizing or disillusioning in a depressing way.
Really I’m summarizing more of the story and the characters than I had intended, but I do want to say at least a little more about Sophia and her family.
Sophia lives on a neighboring, more modest, estate with her single father Squire Western and his sister Miss Western, two of the funniest characters in the book.
Squire Western is a blustery, temperamental simpleton who endlessly expresses his boundless love for his daughter, except when he’s ruining her life. He gets it into his head that she needs to marry Blifil (an advantageous match in his eyes) in spite of the fact that she is dead set against it and couldn’t find Blifil any more repulsive. She is totally devoted to her father in all matters except this, but for the bulk of the book neither one will budge an inch on this proposed marriage.
Miss Western is convinced she is roughly twenty times as worldly and sophisticated as she in fact is. She is forever pronouncing on matters of politics (domestic and international), history, the ways of London’s high society, etc., and she is always wrong. She is convinced that she is far more qualified to raise Sophia than is her brother, given her supposed extensive knowledge of psychology and human behavior, when in fact she’s just differently clueless. Squire Western is somewhat snowed by her unwarranted confidence. He alternately meekly allows her advice to prevail, and rebels against it in a rage and reasserts his authority over the decision making.
Sophia falls for Tom—that’s partly why she doesn’t want to marry Blifil, but really she’d find him completely odious even if Tom had never existed—but makes herself anything but an easy catch. Tom is always having to prove himself, to prove he has grown up, to prove his love for her. At times she gives him reason for hope and at times she pulls away. Indeed at one point she feels so wronged, so betrayed by him, that she insists that her rejection of him is permanent.
There’s a parallel between Allworthy’s relationship with Tom and Sophia’s relationship with Tom. Both always have a spot in their hearts for Tom, but both reach a point where they feel compelled to reject him though they do so reluctantly and without ill will. After he is banished from Allworthy’s estate, the theme of Tom’s life basically becomes to earn himself back into Allworthy and Sophia’s good graces.
Much of the novel, then, consists of Tom’s adventures—or at least as often misadventures—out on his own in the world: growing up, trying to prove he is not the cad that Allworthy has been led to believe he is, trying to win back Sophia’s love. For most of this time he is accompanied by a man he meets on the road—Partridge—one of the people speculated way back when to possibly be Tom’s father. Partridge becomes kind of a Sancho Panza figure, a servant who assists Tom in his enterprises and looks after him (sometimes comically poorly). Though he’s clearly fond of Tom, he also has something of a mercenary motive for attaching himself to him (he’s working class, so that kind of goes without saying in this book) in that he believes if he can get Tom to return home and if he can facilitate a reconciliation between Tom and Allworthy, then surely Allworthy will be grateful enough to handsomely reward him.
I won’t go into detail about the various pickles Tom and Partridge get themselves into and such, how their paths circle back to intersect with Allworthy, Blifil, and Sophia and her family, and so on, but it’s mostly entertaining stuff. There’s humor, solid social commentary, suspense, plot twists and surprises, etc. Some of it’s really good, some of it kind of dragged for me, but on the whole it’s well done.
Certainly I liked Tom Jones more than I anticipated. It probably held my interest as well as or better than any of the several Dickens books I’ve read except David Copperfield. In terms of its narrative structure, its sometimes raunchy subject matter, and its wit and social criticism about human foibles and class-based behavior, it seems well ahead of its time.
Or maybe not. I mean, I think we tend to be too inclined to think “the past” was like the more repressive, “Church Lady” times of Victorian England or right wing ascendancy in 20th century America, or like the way the musty old “classics” considered safe enough to assign to kids in mainstream schools depict life. Whereas in fact there have always been plenty of writers, plenty of books, that are plenty bawdy, socially radical, stylistically inventive, or whatever.
In any case, Tom Jones is a worthwhile read.
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