Henry Fielding

Life and Works

Fielding was born into an aristocratic family and educated at Eton
Public School. In his first comedies Fielding mocks (deride) the
politicians of his time but after the Licensing Act of 1737 censored
his plays. He left the theatre and became a magistrate and
devoted himself to the social reforms. In his journal “The
Champion” he started publishing his satirical articles and later he
wrote his best novel “Shamela Andrews”, a parody of
Richardson’s Pamela. Other novels are Amelia, Tom Jones and
Life and Death of Jonathan Wild the Great.
The Comic Epic Novel
While Defoe tried to hide the fictional nature of his work through
“memories” or “letters”, fielding created the “comic epic novel” in
which the characters belong to different social classes and have
got psychological qualities similar to those of epic heroes who
travel through London and not to mysterious Mediterranean
islands.
Moreover their ridiculous actions and manners, and no longer
their feelings and emotions, reveal the real nature of the
characters. he addressed his novels to a larger public including
the upper classes and not only the middle classes.
Characters
Fielding’s characters belong to all social classes and their
thoughts and anxieties are not the main interest of the writer. In
fact they reflect the social panorama of the 18th century society.
Moral Aim
Fielding rejects hypocrisy and rebels against the Puritan code of
his time which considered respectability synonymous of virtue.
For Fielding virtue and reputation are a matter of innate
disposition and intention and not a matter of a public
demonstration. He believes that there are not wholly bad or
wholly good characters because man is naturally inclined to
goodness.
Narrative Technique
In his novels Fielding did not choose the autobiographical form
(the first-person narrator) but he prefers the third narrator; the
narrator is obtrusive because he intervenes in the narration with
ironic comments, and warnings (avvertimenti) and moral
reflections about what happens. His use of irony and humor save
his novels from an excessive sentimentality.
Life and Death of Jonathan Wilde the Great
Plot
The novel is a mock-heroic biography of the criminal Jonathan
Wilde who spent most of his life in Newgate Prison. He was a
theft and acted the procedure for obtaining the return of stolen
goods in exchange for money. In a few words when people were
robbed of their stolen goods Wilde went to them saying he had
identified where the stolen goods was and through a sum of
money he returned it. He became so popular that the
government passed an act in 1717 which made this procedure
illegal for anyone to take a reward for giving back stolen goods.
But Wilde assured the sum of money by leaving it in a certain
place bypassing law. Later he was arrested and hanged.
The ambiguous nature of “greatness”
The story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Wilde’s
“greatness” equates his “villainy” because ambition, hypocrisy
and cruelty are all included in it. Fielding wants to reveal that
“goodness” is of no consequence of “greatness” by the rules of
society. The novel was read by his contemporaries as a political
allegory of the Prime Minister Robert Walpole who used public
money for his personal aims.