Joseph Andrews Themes

Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews is full of characters who act one way on the surface—but who are often very different on the inside. The novel is a comedy, with most of the humor coming from satire, where the characters’ flaws are exposed for humor and as a commentary on how people act in the real world. Perhaps the most important character for setting the satirical tone is the narrator, who maintains a sarcastic style…

Henry Fielding’s short novel Joseph Andrews is in part a parody of a longer novel called Pamela, published by Samuel Richardson just two years earlier in 1740. The novel’s protagonist, Pamela, faces many hardships and threats to her chastity. Ultimately, however, as the title of the book makes plain, she is rewarded for her virtue, affirming the value of chastity and providing a clear lesson to the book’s audience. Unlike Pamela, however…

Aside from Joseph Andrews himself, the most prominent character in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews is a parson by the name of Abraham Adams. Adams is a complicated character; on one hand, he can seem hypocritically selfish, pretending to act like a charitable man when he’s actually living on the charity of others. Adams eats and drinks a lot but rarely has the money to pay his bills and so must rely on “loans” from…