Joseph Andrews and Shamela

Shamela is a short, funny novella with a literal parody of Richardson's Pamela while Joseph Andrews uses that book's theme - virtuous servant resisting aggressive employer - and builds a Tom Jones-esque road trip. Shamela purports to be the 'real' story of Pamela and Mr. B. Even her name reveals her deception. As told by Fielding, Shamela is the loose daughter or a rather vulgar mother. She and the equally amoral Mrs. Jarvis plot ways to trick Mr. B into a relationship with Shamela. She's definitely meant to be a golddigger, but this really only evens them out as Mr. B's behavior was abominable. Shamela fakes indignation and virtue, then reveals her greed after they're married. All around hilarity, if you've read Pamela. Fielding was show more addressing the Pamela backlash after the often exaggerated praise given to that novel.

Joseph Andrews also takes its cue from Richardson - he is Pamela's brother and also a servant for the Booby family (the B's are given a name). Like Pamela, he's a valued employee and a good Christian, thanks to the teachings of Parson Abraham Adams. When Lady Booby is left a widow, she attempts to hit on Joseph and is rejected. Joseph gets fired and has to make his way back to the country alone. His refusal was meant to be comic, but I didn't think so. He was just trying to be a good Christian, a refreshing change from all the male characters who subscribe to the religion - just not that part.

After Joseph leaves, the novel resembles part of Tom Jones where they were all traveling. He encounters Mr. Adams and his love, Fanny, then adventures ensue. Fanny is constantly sexually harassed and they meet assorted hypocrites, a rich man who makes extravagant promises then vanishes, a reformed rake living happily with his family and a crude squire with his train of freaks and cronies who also harass Fanny. When the trio finally returns home, more romantic and familial problems arise.

The plot is entertaining, and Fielding's prose great as usual. A lot similar to the more complex Tom Jones, and also hints of Don Quixote, what with the multiple road discussions and meeting people who all tell their stories. Fielding is hard on people with excesses, hypocrites and those who are extremely affected. Not even Joseph and Adams are immune to doses of imperfections. Though Joseph tries to be a good Christian he always ends up in fights. Adams, for a parson, is extremely violent. He fights innkeepers, gets pig's blood poured on him, fights a hunter's dogs, beats up a rapist, and brawls with the squire's men. One scene displays his massive hypocrisy comically. Lecturing Fanny and Joseph on not loving too much - using the analogy of Abraham sacrificing Isaac - Adams suddenly believes his son is dead. His grief is extreme, crying, swearing, stomping and nothing Joseph says can comfort him. When he realizes his son is alive, his joy is also - as he would put it - immoderate. Even Fielding's best characters can have massive flaws. Overall - good parody and writing. show less

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews:

This got a proper laugh out of me. There's no point reading it unless you've read Pamela - which I urge you to do as you're in for a treat. It's also worth reading the introduction to the 2nd edition as you'll get more of the jokes.
The humour here depends on the idea that Pamela is not as she presents herself in her letters but is in fact the saucy slut Mr B accuses her of being - an idea that I must admit I suspected when I first began reading the novel.

The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams:

This novel can be read on it's own but you'll get more out of it if you've read Pamela. If you intend to read Pamela then you should definitely read that show more first as this gives away an important plot point.

It has many parallels with it's progenitor as everything in it has a counterpart or opposite: high vs low class, innocence & guilt, appearance vs reality, hypocrisy and truth.

And let's not forget that it's just tremendous fun!

I read Tom Jones last year and wish now that I'd read this first. It shares so much with the later novel: a journey, a handsome hero with a love interest, comic sidekick and money worries; secret family histories; guilt & innocence; hypocrisy. It's like a dry run for the later novel. Perhaps he thought no-one had read this so could recycle much of it. Not that I'm complaining. I enjoyed the relative tightness of this novel even if the rambling scope of Tom Jones is technically, well, more classic.

Oh, and if you don't like his portrayal of Gypsies, Tom Jones has a more balanced view. show less

A picaresque novel and as such, eminently forgettable and largely tedious. I can understand the importance of the book for the time it was written in, but unless you really enjoy “adventures” and plot elements that inevitably contrive to farce, then this isn’t for you.

It wasn’t for me.

So, why are we bothering with it at all? Well, the novel at the time Fielding wrote Joseph (1742) was a fairly predictable affair. Rules that heavily defined British society had constrained the novel within it’s own particular literary rules. Fielding was particularly upset about this and the popularity of such constrained novels by Samuel Richardson in particular.

Fielding intended to break some of the barriers of contemporary fiction and if show more Wikipedia is any authority to go by, he seems to have succeeded. But, never lacking historical irony, the success of trail-blazing mould-breakers only inspires others to form new moulds of their own.

In particular, Fielding inspired Smollet and Peregrine Pickle is, to my mind, a much more engaging piece of work than Joseph Andrews. If you were looking for an 18th century picaresque novel to while away some time, I’d recommend you bypass Joseph’s outstretched hand of friendship and hit the open road with Peregrine. show less

i'm sure there is more value to this than i am finding, but man this was a slog. certainly there were parts that were much more readable than the majority, and thematically i can't say i mind what he's doing (mostly around hypocrisy). probably i'd have appreciated it much more if i had read pamela, which apparently this is in response to.

but as it was, it was repetitive and over the top farcical, when it was actually understandable. mostly i couldn't care less what was happening or to whom. the troubles they all got into (especially parsons) was just too much. i know it wasn't supposed to be a believable story, but it went too far and i just found it annoying. i did more skimming than reading by the end.

This is a good parody of Richardson's 'Pamela', and Shamela looks more like a gold-digging temptress than her previous, angelic, Pamela. The comic events are funny, but the style of writing became a bit tedious after a while, so, while I read the original novel without any problem, 'Shamela' did not much to appeal to me, because I probably had grown bored of the book. Comedy is best served short, in this case!

Shamela gets a solid 3.5 stars: It is quite funny--though only if you have read Pamela! Otherwise many of the jokes will not work. Unfortunately, Shamela is only about 50 pages.

Joseph Andrews gets 2 stars: It certainly has its moments. I found parts 1, 3, and 4, to be the strongest. Part 2, though, I found to be long and tiring�óîand I did not like the character of Parson Adams, even if he was meant to represent someone or a certain sort of Parson. Again, it help to have read Pamela (as Joseph Andrews is meant to be her brother), though a recent reading of Don Quixote would also help (I read it decades ago).

As with many of these 18th century novels, footnotes are needed to understand the many references to events, laws, and people show more that are referenced or represented. It makes the story a bit hard to follow and hard to fully comprehendäóîeven though it might have been quite funny to those reading it when it was written. show less

I quite enjoyed these, Fielding is good at parody and is much the best of the 18thC novelists.