Question: What does it mean for a character like Tom to reform over the course of the novel?

“The History of Tom Jones, a founding” often known simply as Tom Jones is a comic novel by the English
playwright and novelist Henry fielding. The novel is both a picaresque and a bildungsroman. I imagine that
you are already familiar with the picaresque genre, of which the main representative is Cervantes, from
who fielding itself draws inspiration. Instead, in order to introduce my interrogation, I would like to spend a
few words talking about the Bildungsroman, a German word for “novel of education” or of formation”,
which is essentially a story about a character’s psychological and moral maturing process, especially from
youth to adulthood. in fact, it is also often called a “coming-of-age” story.

Does Sophia acts out of character at the novel’s conclusion when she chooses to accept Tom’s hand in
marriage? / Does Sophia’s decision to accept tom’s hand in marriage endorses and promote

Answer: Tom's maturation into a virtuous adult and model citizen is allegorically represented by his union
with Sophia

Step back: Sophia is the charming and beautiful daughter of Squire Western and she is madly in love with
the hero Tom. She has her head about her shoulders and is firm in her convictions. She does not approve of
infidelities.

So one might question how she accepts Tom in spite of his many infidelities and affairs.

Unlike most heroines of eighteenth-century fiction, as Pamela for example, throughout the course of the
book, Sophia is seen in public settings including carriages, country lodgings, the rural hunt, and London
society. Although She is delicate, very considerate of people’s feeling, virtuous VS naïve virtue, Sophia has
the unprecedented ability to read her own society intrigues, comprehend its workings, and take advantage
of them as she pleases thanks to this circulation.

Her choice of Tom not only seems in contrast to her character/personality but also endorses and promotes
the risky idea that a reformed rake makes the best husband.

In fact by choosing to view Tom's past as cathartic, purifying, rather than constitutive, Sophia rejects the
opposing paradigm, according to which past experience is a sufficient, if not essential, guidance for future
action. And She does this by filtering through and letting go of those traits that depend on his life
experiences, and her acceptance of him removes those dependencies. Tom's character is only restored
through Sophia's acceptance of Tom's new identity—her validation of his new identity.

she accepts Tom in spite of his many infidelities and affairs

Tom and Sophia enter a marriage that produces their characters by effectively eliminating Tom’s past
experiences and affirming Sophia’s sentimental trust in the Tom who remains. Separation of character from
experience.

Sophia rejects the opposing paradigm, according to which past experience is a sufficient, if not essential,
guidance for future action  novel does not in fact operate on the model of Bildung, in which a character’s
maturation is gradually produced by experience.
Recognize that Richardson's Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, the book Fielding so famously mocked, served as
the major inspiration for this narrative.

Her choice of Tom not only but also endorses and promotes the risky idea that a reformed rake makes the
best husband.

Encouraged credulity in its readers, particularly regarding the risky notion that the reformed rake makes
the best husband.

This cliche presupposed that young men had to go through particular experiences in order to get them out
of their systems. According to this school of thinking, experiences were cathartic and purgative; hence,
rakishness wasn't a necessary component of identity or even a trait of a particular kind of person, but
rather a stage that men were expected to pass through.

It follows that the difficult challenge for young women was to either judge whether a man was ready to put
those days behind him or, more frequently, to persuade him that he was.

Like Pamela, Sophia reforms a rake; like Mr. B, Tom uses Sophia as a justification for a new life of virtue.