Natural Lust and the Contrasting Force of Religous Morality In Joseph Andrews

By Justus Poehls and Tonia Kurowski

Joseph Andrews is represented early in the narrative of Joseph Andrews as the epitome of the virtuous male figure physically, intellectually, and morally. He battles the antagonistic female character’s sexual advances as they endanger his chaste aspect.  He is confronted with a variety of feminine types; the three to be concentrated on in this paper are: a wealthy yet morally hollow aristocratic widower, a young and good-hearted servant woman, and the opposing figure of chastity and purity, his true love Fanny. Joseph’s early portrayal as an idyllic young man in physique and mental acuity, his many victories over the sexually provocative advances of woman on his chaste-journey toward marriage, and his final union with the heroine of chastity and feminine virtue in the novel, Fanny Goodwill, render him in the light of a Hero. Joseph’s character, in physical form and manner, represents a highly sexually enticing person; he is a person that stimulates the most fundamental and instinctual attractions in the opposite sex, and it is by establishing Joseph’s heroic quality as the protagonistic force that Fielding makes his claim for the necessity of sexual forbearance prior to marriage and utilizing these same scenes challenges class notions of morality and character.    

Contrasted throughout the narrative is the idea of Christian sexual responsibility and the naturalistic or instinctual desire for humans to copulate. This topic, as perceived by conservative Christians at this time, is clearly stated in 1 Thessalonians of The Bible “that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen[s], who do not know God.”(BibleGetAway). It is interesting to note that “Mr Joseph Andrews, the Hero” (63), the exemplar of Christian virtue, is shown to contain all of the apparent characteristics to most readily arouse the feminine sex-drive. It is also interesting to examine the implication of his gigantic penis. His first mode of employment as a boy “was to perform the Part the Antients assigned to the God Priapus” (64) who “In Greek mythology…was the god of fertility and the guardian deity of gardens” characterized by an “Enormous penis,” placed “probably to encourage fruitfulness” (348). The narrator recognizes Joseph’s employment as similar to that of the Grecian and Roman mythological figure Priapus, thus the reader more easily recognizes the significance of Joseph’s sexual appeal. The idea of Joseph’s god-like sexual organ along with the associations the narrator makes between Joseph and nature: as an employee of a garden; as well as his symbiotic interactions with wildlife, are essential in understanding that Joseph’s appeal to woman is inherently natural and reaches to the depths of their most primitive sexual desires. It is with Joseph’s first rejection of the stereotypes that Lady Booby manipulates, that the poor man is willing to sacrifice his morals for momentary pleasure, that the duality is formed between Christian morality and the instinctual and natural sexual drive. This is seen more clearly in Joseph’s response to Lady Booby’s sexual advances and sinful reasoning when he says “why, because I am a Man, or because I am poor, my virtue must be subservient to her pleasures” (80). The way in which Fielding intertwines social stereotypes into his sexual theorizing is interesting to view when analyzing Joseph’s main sexual antagonists.

The first sexual advance, on Joseph, related in the narrative is from his governing ladyship, Lady Booby, a woman whose name even connotes suppleness and sexuality. Lady Booby is a member of the country gentry, a group of people who prided themselves on their refinement and moral superiority over the lower classes; Fielding challenges these notions by representing Booby as superfluous in manner, dress, and religion and also by supplying her character with an abundance vanity, pride, and moral hollowness.  Her interest in Joseph, ironically, is detailed as following Joseph’s Priapic employment and his virtuous refusal of “considerable bribes” (64) after which she takes him into her direct service. During this time he develops his role as a witty and handsome figure “smarter and genteeler, than any of the Beaus in Town” (71). Fielding reverses elitist class notions by developing Booby’s sexual advances on the young servant as scheming, controversial, and immoral as she tries to tempt him into bed. Joseph relates in a letter to his sister that “she ordered me to sit down by her Bed-side, when she was naked in bed; and held my hand, and talked exactly as a Lady does to her sweatheart in a stage-play” (72). Joseph immerges heroically denouncing her lascivious attempts and brings forth Booby’s wounded vanity and pride in her social disgrace. Booby is wounded for the rest of the novel and later delays Joseph and Fanny’s wedding plans, furthering notions of her hollow nobility seen by her jealousy and grudgery as seen for example towards the end of the novel “To sacrifice my Reputation, my Character, my Rank in Life, to the Indulgence of a mean and a vile Appetite. – How I detest the Thought!”(319). This characterization as superfluous and morally hollow is in opposition to Christian values. She is represented as ostensibly religious yet displays no moral depth, thus Fielding is providing an example of a social elitist who is slighted lacking the Christian applications of faith and morality during moments of heightened sexual temptation.

While Lady Booby, of the social elite, is portrayed as villainous, scheming, vain and given to indulging in her scandalous immoral whims, Betty, a young chambermaid at an inn, is portrayed as containing “[a] Good-nature, Generosity and Compassion”, yet lacking the resolute will-power to repel the sexual advances of sex-hungry travelers, who “Conquest over her” (116), and dominate her weak constitution. Her constitution is one that “the Purity of Courts or Nunneries might have happily controuled”, but “were by no means able to endure the ticklish Situation of a Chamber-maid” (115). She represents most clearly the idea of the impulsiveness and the naturalness of the sexual drive and the possibility of its miss-use and molestation with the restraint and control strict Christian measures. Betty’s “passion…so perfectly mastered both her modesty and her reason” (116-117) that she is unable to control her lust for Joseph, being “the handsomest creature she had ever seen.” Again Fielding presents Joseph’s handsomeness as an intensely stimulating aphrodisiac appealing to the primitive sex drive and again Joseph repels the sexual advances of a female character as he is “sorry to see a young woman cast off all Regard to Modesty” (117).  Betty’s characterization as poor, Good-hearted, yet constitutionally weak given to her natural impulses, in combination with notion of her might have been constitutional mastery within a monastery, might suggest the greater need of religious intervention and influence within the lower classes to promote concrete Christian temperance and restraint.

Fanny Goodwill is represented in the novel as the female equivalent of Joseph; “she had a natural Gentility, superior to the Acquisition of Art, and which surprised all who beheld her” (173).  Fanny’s beauty is represented, in the terms of an English society dependently hierarchal, as superior in “gentility” or refinement to one of the highest pursuits of the aristocratic classes. Fanny is portrayed in her features and her manners to be as equally idyllic as Joseph and represents the most appropriate counterpart. There are several advances made also upon the chastity of Fanny in the novel. These are seemingly instinctual and are represented as more physical as they are masculine. In the last book: chapter 7, Fanny herself overpowers the grasp and attempted kisses of “a young gentleman attended by many servants” (298) who then leaves one of his servants to watch her. The servant attempts to woo her and after failing takes to rude physical advances which are interrupted by the hero, Joseph. These two advances are developed as originating in the men’s sexual desire for Fanny, whose “charms were the Gifts of Nature” (333), and display how noble and servantile men are subject to the same desirous whims as females when presented with the idyllic portrayal of natural beauty. In every situation Fanny is able to remain chaste and virtuous, so in the end she is able to marry Joseph in her own fashion, with “extraordinary and unaffected Modesty” (332).

            In these few examples noted above there are seen traces of one of Fielding’s most apparent thematic developments, the importance of sexual responsibility. In one of the interlocutor chapters the narrator paraphrases an “Antient Sage” and says “Passions operate differently on the human Mind, as diseases on the Body, in proportion to the Strength or Weakness, or Soundness or Rottenness of the one and the other” (74). The idea here is that it is strength-of-mind that is essential in controlling the powerful passionate whims that humans are subject to, in this Fielding is showing the necessity of religion as a constitutionally strengthening practice in order to conquer the passions.

Works Cited

Biblegateway. 2006. Gospel Communication International. 5 May 2006.

www.biblegateway.com/.

Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews and Shamela. Penguin Books: London. 1999.