Tom jones

TOM JONES

The plot

Tom Jones is made up of three parts each consisting of six books divided into numerous chapters. The full title of the book is The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. The first part begins with the discovery of a baby boy in the bed of Mr Allworthy, a rich and benevolent gentleman, who decides to adopt him, giving it the name Tom Jones.  Tom is a generous creature, full of vital energy and impulses and he grows up with Blifil, son of Mr Allworthy' s sister, Mrs Bridget who dies very young. Blifil, on the contrary, is a mean, odious hypocrite, and constantly seeks to harm Tom.

When nearly twenty, Tom falls in love with his neighbour' s daughter, the lovely Sophia Western, and she with him, but their relationship is opposed by her father who  rejects the idea of marrying his daughter to a foundling. Blifil, who wants to marry Sophia, spreads lies about Tom who is then compelled to leave Mr Allworthy' s house.

The second part deals with the adventures Tom has to face on the road to London, and a host of new characters encountered. It also describes Sophia's perilous journey to the capital in search of Tom, after escaping from her house for fear of marrying Blifil.

The third part is set in London, where the major characters meet and where Tom's true identity is discovered.  Tom is the illegitimate son of Mrs Bridget and can happily marry Sophia. Blifil, who hid the truth about Tom's birth from Mr Allworthy, is thrown out of the estate.

Characters

The characters are grouped and contrast. Tom is contrasted with Blifil; Tom, the unheroic hero because he is an ordinary man, is a kind-hearted, generous, honest and has common sense; Blifil, on the contrary, is a hypocrite. Major and minor characters offer a rich gallery of social types. Men of all profession are shown as impostors and ignorant, but the most negative portraits concern women, since money is their only real interest.

Style

In Tom Jones each of the eighteen books begins with a short chapter in which the narrator comments on his own novel and on general aspect of aesthetics and the craft of fiction. These digression are an integral part of the novel.

FIELDING POETICS

Unlike Richardson, Henry Fielding admired qualities like frankness, generosity, courage and openness of spirit, and rebelled against the tendency to equate morality with sexual control, so typical of the Puritan standards of the middle class. Fielding valued people on their heart more than on their actions.

Fielding created the "comic epic novel": the novel becomes "epic", even if a mocking one: the characters, who belong to different social classes, have psychological qualities similar to those of epic heroes, but they are travelling to London and not to a mysterious  Mediterranean island; moreover their actions are only frivolous and ridiculous. He owes much to Cervantes' comic romance Don Quixote.

His stories are told by a third-person omniscient narrator, who is also intrusive because he often intervenes to comment on the characters and the events. The tone used is conversational and ironic and this save his work from excessive sentimentality.

Fielding also follows the picaresque tradition. The picaresque novel deals with a series of separate adventures happening to the hero, who is usually a rogue or a vagabond. The word "picaresque" seems to come from the Spanish "picaro" (rogue), and the first example goes back to 1554. The adventure story developed from the picaresque line. 

Generally I don't like the adventure novels, but I prefer the love stories or the thrillers. This novel I am liked a lot, because besides the picaresque part, there is the loving history between Tom and Sophia and also the mystery about Tom's true identity.