How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
In recording some instances of these, we shall, if rightly understood, afford a very useful lesson to those well-disposed youths who shall hereafter be our readers; for they may here find, that goodness of heart, and openness of temper, though these may give them great comfort within, and administer to an honest pride in their own minds, will by no means, alas! do their business in the world. Prudence and circumspection are necessary even to the best of men. They are indeed, as it were, a guard to Virtue, without which she can never be safe. It is not enough that your designs, nay, that your actions, are intrinsically good; you must take care they shall appear so. If your inside be never so beautiful, you must preserve a fair outside also. This must be constantly looked to, or malice and envy will take care to blacken it so, that the sagacity and goodness of an Allworthy will not be able to see through it, and to discern the beauties within. Let this, my young readers, be your constant maxim, that no man can be good enough to enable him to neglect the rules of prudence; nor will Virtue herself look beautiful, unless she be bedecked with the outward ornaments of decency and decorum. (3.7.6)
The author steps up to offer a lesson directly to the reader: you can't just be good-hearted or decent on the inside. If you want to avoid evil gossip from other people, you have to look honorable and decent on the outside. In other words, Fielding is saying that the only way to avoid a bad reputation is to fit into social ideals of what "good" people behave like. This is a really cynical thing to say: that it's not enough to be good, but you also have to look good for it to count. What do you guys think—is this bleak account of human society true?
Quote #2
"You'd better have minded what the parson says," cries the eldest [of the Seagrim family], "and not a harkened after men voke."—"Indeed, child, and so she had," says the mother, sobbing: "she hath brought a disgrace upon us all. She's the vurst of the vamily that ever was a whore." "You need not upbraid me with that, mother," cries Molly; "you yourself was brought-to-bed of sister there, within a week after you was married." "Yes, hussy," answered the enraged mother, "so I was, and what was the mighty matter of that? I was made an honest woman then; and if you was to be made an honest woman, I should not be angry; but you must have to doing with a gentleman, you nasty slut; you will have a bastard, hussy, you will; and that I defy any one to say of me." (4.9.1)
There are a lot of really interesting issues underlying this argument between Mrs. Seagrim, Molly, and her older sister. Mrs. Seagrim calls Molly a "whore" for getting pregnant outside of marriage. But then, Molly yells back that her mom was pregnant when she got married—in fact, the baby was born only a week after the wedding. So Mrs. Seagrim must have been just as guilty of sex outside of marriage as Molly is now. But—here's the interesting part—Molly has gotten pregnant by a gentleman. Since marriage across class lines is apparently impossible for Mrs. Seagrim to imagine, she assumes Molly's baby will be left a bastard. So for Mrs. Seagrim, marriage is all about preserving appearances. Molly won't be able to preserve appearances (since there's no way she can marry Tom), so Molly must be "a whore."
Quote #3
In short, Sophia so greatly overacted her part, that her aunt was at first staggered, and began to suspect some affectation in her niece; but as she was herself a woman of great art, so she soon attributed this to extreme art in Sophia. She remembered the many hints she had given her niece concerning her being in love, and imagined the young lady had taken this way to rally her out of her opinion, by an overacted civility: a notion that was greatly corroborated by the excessive gaiety with which the whole was accompanied. (6.3.6)
Tom Jones is a book where appearances matter a lot: it's by noticing Tom's intense glances in her direction that Sophia realizes how much he loves her. And it's by observing Sophia's unusual seriousness of expression that Mrs. Western figures out that Sophia is in love (even though she gets the object of those affections wrong). But the problem with spending so much time trying to read other people's faces is that sometimes you misread, and there's no way to double-check your assumptions. Here, Mrs. Western assumes that Sophia is being excessively nice to Mr. Blifil not because Sophia wants to distract from her feelings for Tom (the real reason), but because Sophia wants to throw Mrs. Western off the scent of her supposed "real" feelings for Mr. Blifil. (Mrs. Western's logic is reallyconfusing, we have to say.)