How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The captain could not so easily bring himself to bear what he condemned as a fault in Mr Allworthy. He gave him frequent hints, that to adopt the fruits of sin, was to give countenance to it. He quoted several texts (for he was well read in Scripture), such as, He visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; and the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge,&c. Whence he argued the legality of punishing the crime of the parent on the bastard. He said, "Though the law did not positively allow the destroying such base-born children, yet it held them to be the children of nobody; that the Church considered them as the children of nobody; and that at the best, they ought to be brought up to the lowest and vilest offices of the commonwealth." (2.2.4)
Back in the day, life for a kid born outside of a traditional marriage in old-fashioned, strict societies could be really rough. But why, really? Why should it somehow be the kid's fault that his mother and father got it on in a way that people around them consider sinful? Whatever you may think of sex before marriage, it seems totally unfair to hold the child responsible for the parents' mistakes.
And yet, that is precisely what Tom Jones has to struggle against throughout this book: he is a bastard, and that puts him at the edges of polite and stable society from the moment that he is born. This absolute jerk Captain Blifil quotes the Bible to show that babies actively should be punished for their parents' wrongdoing. If it's illegal to kill such babies (!!!!), then at least they should be treated like nobodies and left to the worst jobs and lives that are available to them. Captain Blifil is using the Bible supposedlyas evidence for the worst kind of unfair treatment of a whole class of people, those who are born outside of traditional marriages.
How do you think views of the morality of marriage and family life have changed in the last two hundred and fifty-odd years? Do you see any overlap between the moral concerns of today and the moral concerns that Fielding portrays in Tom Jones?
Quote #2
Mr Jones had somewhat about him, which, though I think writers are not thoroughly agreed in its name, doth certainly inhabit some human breasts; whose use is not so properly to distinguish right from wrong, as to prompt and incite them to the former, and to restrain and withhold them from the latter. (4.6.3)
For a really smart guy, Henry Fielding seems to have surprising Issues with Too Much Thinking. Obviously he's not a fan of Misters Thwackum and Square and their constant, abstract debating about morality. And he is also pretty sarcastic about Master Blifil, whose rigid ideas about morality somehow all wind up benefiting Master Blifil himself. What Fielding seems to like more than these intellectual discussions of ethics is Tom's natural instincts towards doing good. Tom may not "distinguish right from wrong" using his brain, but his heart somehow leads him in the right direction anyway. It seems like Fielding is saying that it's not enough to do the right thing because you know it's the right thing to do. You also have to feel and intend to do right.
Quote #3
Black George was, in the main, a peaceable kind of fellow, and nothing choleric nor rash; yet did he bear about him something of what the antients called the irascible, and which his wife, if she had been endowed with much wisdom, would have feared. He had long experienced, that when the storm grew very high, arguments were but wind, which served rather to increase, than to abate it. He was therefore seldom unprovided with a small switch, a remedy of wonderful force, as he had often essayed, and which the word villain served as a hint for his applying.
No sooner, therefore, had this symptom appeared, than he had immediate recourse to the said remedy, which though, as it is usual in all very efficacious medicines, it at first seemed to heighten and inflame the disease, soon produced a total calm, and restored the patient to perfect ease and tranquillity.
This is, however, a kind of horse-medicine, which requires a very robust constitution to digest, and is therefore proper only for the vulgar, unless in one single instance, viz., where superiority of birth breaks out; in which case, we should not think it very improperly applied by any husband whatever, if the application was not in itself so base, that, like certain applications of the physical kind which need not be mentioned, it so much degrades and contaminates the hand employed in it, that no gentleman should endure the thought of anything so low and detestable. (4.9.7-9)
Reading this passage, we stand back and think, wow—this novel was obviously written in a very different time and place from our own. The narrator talks through the pros and cons of spousal abuse as though this is something he has to argue, because there might be readers out there who believe that hitting your wife is not a crime. Spousal abuse = ungentlemanly, which appears to be the worst thing the narrator can say about it.
But the use of the term "gentleman" introduces strong class-based language into the mix. Does this mean that, among the poor (such as Black George's family), wife-beating is supposed to be less bad? While the narrator clearly thinks that spousal abuse is "low" and wrong, he also seems to have a double standard in place for "gentlemen" and average men.