Creating Sagacious Readers, continued

Fielding moves into his second stage of informing us how readers should 'read' in the prefatory chapters to Book X and Book XI. In the introduction to Book X, Fielding sets out three "wholesome admonitions" to the reader so that we will not "grossly misunderstand or misrepresent" him (Fielding 453). First, he cautions us "not too hastily to condemn any scene in the narrative as being impertinent and foreign to [his] main design" if we cannot perceive how the scene connects to the overall structure (Fielding 453). He assures us that the "whole is connected," and for us to "find fault" with any part before coming "to the final catastrophe" will be a "most presumptuous absurdity" (Fielding 453).

Here Fielding may be anticipating negative reactions to the sexual encounter between Tom and Mrs. Waters, which takes place in Book X. This encounter is necessary to the overall plot, because if it had not happened then Mrs. Waters would not have come to visit Tom in prison, Partridge would not have disclosed her true identity of being Jenny Jones, and she would not have been compelled to reveal that Tom was Bridget Bliful's son at that time.

In this admonition, Fielding is "directing our attention, controlling our reactions, imposing the pattern" (Kettle 88). He is 'directing our attention' to the fact that there may be, and most likely are, situations that we are ignorant of and will not discover until the "final catastrophe." He controls our reactions by mocking people who hastily and arbitrarily judge novels based on one or two 'bad' scenes; no one would like to admit being that way. Also Fielding is imposing his pattern of a good reader by describing what qualities bad readers have.

Further, Fielding admonishes readers not to "find out too near a resemblance between certain characters here introduced," and "not to condemn a character as a bad one because it is not perfectly a good one" (Fielding 453-54). The first instruction is to inform readers that even though some characters may possess the same characteristics, such as the landladies that Fielding mentions, they are nonetheless individuals, with varying motivations, desires, thoughts, etc. The second instruction is meant to delineate the fact that people, in reality, are not perfect; we all possess qualities of goodness and badness, in varying degrees.

Fielding justifies his use of characters that are not "models of perfection" due to the fact that he has never "happened to meet with any such person" who possessed nothing but virtuous qualities (Fielding 454). Also he believes that people with "little blemishes" have more "moral use" for instructive purposes, since they occasion "surprise" in the reader and are "more apt to affect and dwell upon our minds than the faults of very vicious and wicked persons" (Fielding 455).

Mark Loveridge contends that "readers are encouraged to revise their mental maps in the light of Fielding