A Study of Moral Scheme in Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Abstract

The article discusses the moral scheme of Henry Fielding’s novel Tome Jones that has been labeled as corrupt and immoral by most of its contemporary critics. It analyses the reasons for being treated as such. The eponymous character of Tom whose adventures play a prominent role in tarnishing book’s image is investigated threadbare. Seemingly immoral character Tom’s admirable qualities are highlighted and what forces him to behave vilely is also studied. Instead finding him unrighteous, the author argues that he is normal human with its equal share of goodness and weakness that makes Tom’s character a lifelike, a welcome change from divinely pure, pious and one-dimensional characters as portrayed by Fielding’s contemporary novelists. The defense put forward by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Edward Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873) to support Henry Fielding’s (1707-1754) moral scheme in Tom Jones (1749)that is shocking to contemporary neo classicists, reminds of Mahesh Bhatt, a Bollywood film director answering the attack on his production house’s film, the first installment of erotic thriller Murder (2004), that made Mallika Sherawat and Emraan Hashmi instant hit among the Indian youth. His defense was like, ‘who says my film is immoral? It does edify that extramarital affair always leads to destruction.’ In the movie one of the characters involved in the love triangle dies. Despite its successful run at the box-office, where Anurag Basu, the director of the movie fails is, once audience leaves the theatre, their minds are occupied with the pleasure, Mallika and Hashmi gets out of their illicit relationship instead of its fatal result. Is it because the director’s fault that the vice win over virtue?