Creating Sagacious Readers

In Tom Jones, Fielding is not only creating a history of which he is the "founder of [the] new province of writing," but is also attempting to construct his ideal of the perfect reader. In the prefatory chapter to Book III, Fielding is seemingly inviting the reader to participate in the construction of the narrative. By skipping over periods of time,

we prevent him from throwing away his time, in reading without pleasure or emolument, [and] we give him, at all such seasons, an opportunity of employing that wonderful sagacity of which he is master, by filling up these vacant spaces of time with his own conjectures; for which purpose we have taken care to qualify him in the preceding pages. (Fielding 101)

Cerny asserts that Fielding is, in fact, not providing "any spaces at all for readers to exercise their conjectural abilities," but instead is caricaturing "an altogether unwanted reader participation" (Cerny 138). This assertion seems logical as Fielding goes on to give a minute description of Mr. Allworthy