“Tom Jones as a Comic Epic in Prose”

‘Tom Jones’ Fielding’s masterpiece and in all

probability the greatest novel of the eighteenth century, was
written between 1746 and 1749. S.Diana Neill describes it as “a
greatnovel in itself and a microcosm of the next hundred years
in prose fiction.” Modern criticism rational and liberated, acclaims
its greatness in most unequivocal terms. But Fielding’s
contemporary society was sharply divided in their appreciatation
of its merits. While a number of readers admired it for the
masculine vigour and the healthy morality of its author. Most of
them devoted to Richardson’s sensibility cult, could not rise above
their own morbid sensibility and failed to appreciate it.
 Outline of the plot
‘Tom Jones’ has such a complicated plot that it
is just not easy to sum it up in a few lines. The wealthy,
benevolent Squire Allworthy, living in somerset with his unmarried
sister Bridget, returns one night from a three months’ absence to
find a baby Iying in his bed. The child is adopted by Allworthy
given his own Christian name of Thomas and the surname of the
presumed mother, one Jenny Jones. Her former employer, the
schoolmaster partridge denies the accusation of paternity, but his
hysterically jealous wife gives evidence against him and he is
dismissed from his post.
Soon after the discovery of Tom, Bridget marries
the unpleasant and grasping Captain Blifil; the Captain dies
two years later, leaving behind him a son, who is to become
Tom’s antagonist. Tom and Master Blifil grow up together under
the tuition of the Clergyman Thwackum and the philosopher
Squars. Nearly lives the fox- hunting squire Western, his worldly
and politic sister, and his beautiful daughter Sophia, with whom
Tom falls in love. Western however is ambitious to secure the
marriage of Sophia with Blifil, so that the estates can be joined.
Tom’s high-spirited escapades are eventually used by Blifil to
 achieve the deception of Allworthy an Tom’s expulsion from the
household.
At the same time Sophia, to escape a forced
marriage with a man she loathes, runs away; and the middle part
of the novel is taken up with various adventures on the road-first
as Sophia follow Tom’s trail, and after the climactic event in the
inn at Upton-on-severn, as Tom pursues Sophia.
Meanwhile Tom has, quite by chance, met Partridge,
now set up as a barber-surgeon, and they go along together. He
rescues a Mrs. Waters from attempted murder, and accompanies
her to Upton where he succumbs to her charms. It is only towards
the end of the novel that Partridge identifies Mrs.Waters as Jenny
Jones, and the horror of presumed incest is added to Tom’s many
other misfortunes.
Finally all the main characters end up in London. To
gets involved with the middleaged nymphomaniac Lady Bellaston,
whose crony Lord Fellaman attempts to gain Sophia by force.
Fellaman also employs a press-gang to remove Tom, but their aid
is made unnecessary by Tom’s encounter with Fitzpatrick, a hot-
headed Irishman whom he had met at Upton and who now
attacks him in mistaken jealousy. Tom wounds him-fatally, it is
thought and is arrested. With the press-gangprepared to give
false witness against him, things look bleak for Tom; but at last
the wheel of Fortuns and brings him to the top.
 What, then is a Comic Epic in Prose?
Thus a comic epic in prose chiefly promises a variety of
characters involved in a very comprehensive action. The
novelist’s tone is light, even frivolous, and he gives mildly satirical,
ironical exposition of the ridiculous. It is epical in scale and it is
concerns the ridiculous in human life. It is not romance since it is
highly, down-to earth realistic. It is not history for it is not a
superficial study of events, nor is it not history for it is not a
superficial study of events, nor is it a burlesque, for a burlesque
distorts while it does not. Behind the frivolous tone of the novelist,
 there is a strict moral responsibility which he shares with the
writers of the serious epics. What Fielding was attempting was an
entirely new species of literature in his language. And he was
right to claim;
“This kind of writing I do not remember to have seen
hither to attempted in our language.”

 The Comic tone in “Tom Jones”

The comic tone of the novel is establisbed from the very
beginning when Mrs. Wilkins unexpectedly summoned by her
master, confronts him in what she thinks to be a grossly indecent
dress for a gentleman an ironic comment on the prudence
of decency in dress and gives a loud shriek Squire
Allworthy’s confidence in the rightness of his judgment his
insistence on meeting out justice and his expulsion both of Tom
Jones AND Partridge ironically revealing an utter lack of insight
into human nature ane treated quite lightly.
In Book 2, We have a highly comic description of the
battle between Partridge and his wife which is sparked off by Mrs.
Partridge’s suspicion that her husband is the foundling’s father.
She attacks the poor schoolmaster ‘with tongue, teeth and hands’
reducing him to a bloody wreck, but feeling tired of his exercise
falls into a fit of weeping and succeeds in winning the sympathy of
neighbors. The same Book gives a graphic description of Captain
Blifil’s ecstatic pleasures that he early death of Squire Allworthy. It
is amusing to note that it is the Captain himself who dies and not
the Squire. The description of the bitter, rift-ridden wedded life of
theBlifils ends with a description of the warm and moving tribute
engraved on the Captain’s tombstone by “his inconsolable wife”.
This is a very quiet but very effective comic touch. In his preface
to Joseph Andrews, Fialding says that the only source of the true
ridiculous is affectation and affectation proceeds from either
vanity or hypocrisy. Captain Blifil’s conjured-up pleasures betray
this vanity while the epitaph is sheer hypocrisy and Fielding uses
both of them to produce good comedy.
In Book V, Tom’s Bacchus celebration of his paron’s
recovery and his indiscreet sexual revelry with Molly that results in
a quarrel with Bilfil Squire and Thwackum producesinteresting
comedy. The unexpected arrival of Squire Western and the
miscalculated cause of Sophia’s fainting in the light of
the amorous encounter that had already taken place between tom
and Sophia appears quite amusing.
Book VI, poens with violent outbursts of Squire Western
as he getsthe news of Sophia’s being in love:
“How! in love! In love without
Acquainting me! I’ll disinherit her;
I’ll turn her out of doors stark
Naked without a farthing.”
This violent display of temper is as ridiculous as his later
approbatory outburst when sophia’s aunt interrupts his to remark
that she might have fallen in love with a youth of his choice.
Squire Western immediately says;
“If she marries the man I would ha’her she may
Love whom pleases. I shan’t trouble my head about that.”
The meeting between Blifil and Sophia in the same Book
is also dealt with in a comic spirit. Nobody speaks for the first
quarter of an hour: then Bilfil suddenly breaks forth into a torrent
of far-fetched verbosity answered by Sophia with monosyllables.
This meeting has a parallel later in the encounter between Sophia
and Lord Fellaman which produces comedy in a mock-tragic
frame. The stereotyped extravagance of Lord Fellaman’s
declaration and the fortuitous rescue of Sophia cannot be
mistaken for tragedy. A central position in the structure of ‘ tom
Jones’. It also produces the height of comedy. Tom and his
companion, the disheveled Mrs. Waters enter the Upton Inn and
the landlady, apprehending a gross violation of the sanctity of the
premises abruptly pounces upon them. The ensuing battle
involves soldiers of both the sexes; the weapons include the
tongue, the broomstick the cudgel and the first. This fight over,
another of amorous nature follows. As Tom gets busy with the
beef and the ale, his fair companion starts playing her ‘artillery’ to
subdue him. Fielding employs mock-heroic style and diction to
describe this battle of wits. He even invokes the graces before he
begins this description. Finally Mrs. Waters wins and enioys the
fruit of her victory. This is followed by Mr. Fitzpatrick’s efforts to
claim kindred with squire Western and his negligence of all pleas
are also comic in tone.
Whenever the situation is in danger of getting a tragic
coloring and whenever the chief protagonists find themselves in
some precarious predicament Fielding provides a comic turn or
offers a timely resolution. Torn between his love for Sophia and
moral responsibility for Molly, Tom finds himself in a state of
actual mental conflict. This conflict is resolved by the discovery of
the philosopher square behind the curtain in Molly’s bedroom.
The whole scene ends practically in a farce. This pattern is
repeated in London when lady Bellaston is behind the curtain and
Honour is indulges in scurrilous denouncement and later when
Honour is behind the curtain and Tom Jones’s meeting with Lady
Bellaston is interrupted by the appearance of Nightingale in a
between the two ladies and their subsequent reconciliation offer
hilarious comedy.
The autobiographical account of the Man of the Hill
and Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s story are tragic but the comic tone of the
author saves them from being unrelieved tragedy. In the case of
the man of the Hill, it is partridge’s attitude and his amusing
interruptions of the narrative that extenuate ts tragic effect, while
Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s account being a parody of sentimental romance
contains within itself many comic possibilities.
Fielding’s handling of his characters also has a touch
of the comic. The excessive solemnity of squire Allworthy and its
ironic implications have already been commented upon. Squire
 Western is portrayed purely in the comic vein. His violence is
more amusing than horrifying. It is really interesting to know how
he abandon the furious pursuit of his daughter and joins a party of
fox hunters since it is such a fine day for hunting. The moral
scruples of Tom and the justification he gives for his involvement
with Lady Bellaston have a comic touch:
“ Gallantry to the ladies was among his principles of honor”
Says Fielding:
“and he held it as much incumbent on him to accept
A challenge to love as if it had been a challenge to fight”
Even the hypocrisy and villainy of square Thwackum and
Blifil are unfolded through comedy rather than was too genial to
attempt a satire or a lampoon.
 ‘Tom Jones’ is epical in scale
If ‘Tom Jones’ is comic in spirit, it is epical in scale. It
offers at least forty well-portrayed characters drawn from different
cross section of society. There are lords, justices of peace,
lawyers, servants, highwaymen, parsons, innkeepers, soldiers,
gypsies, country squires and many others.
 The prose in ‘Tom Jones’
‘In prose’ is not merely a tag to fill out the phrase ‘comic
epic in prose’ It was a well-known belief that poetry is appropriate
to the expression of the more elevanted thoughts and the
celebration of great actions. ‘In prose’ plants us firmly once and
for all in the ordinary world with which Fielding was primarily pre-
occupied. As a realist attempting a comic epic he found prose
with a comic turn given to its phrase as a very suitable medium
although when he goes really high in Tom Jones, his prose turns
lyrical and soars high like ‘an archangel brooding over mankind’.
 Epic unities
In ‘Tom Jones ‘, Fielding also shows his concern for the
epic unities. The headings of the various Books indicate the time
taken by the action described in them Book 1 tells us ‘as much of
 the birth of the foundling as in necessary’. Books 2 and 3
summarise events till Tom is arrived at the age of seventeen.
Book lV is described as ‘ containing a year’ material is given in the
first four Books the action is made to come well within a year. The
action in all the important epics ,The Iliad, The odyssey ,The
Aenied, is completed within a year.
The action is comprehensive and well extended in
space. It includes within its folds the countryside, the highways
and the great urban society of London. The rural as well as the
urban society is portrayed almost in entirety. The action is so
distributed that three units consisting of six Books each strictly
observe the unity of place.
But the action of the novel is gives an organic unity which
is far more important than mere bringing the major action within a
certain time limit or observing the unity of place in three different
sections of the novel. Tom Jones is not a chronicle and its action
is constructed according to dramatic principles. Eeverything turns
about a single action-the discovery of a child in squire Allworthy’s
bed and the resolution of the mystery of its parentage. But for two
digression- the story of the Man of the Hill and Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s
account- the novel has a single, whole organically perfect action.
And even the two digressions have a certain thematic relevance
and are strictly in accordance with the epic tradition.
 Conclusion
If we refer to Aristotle’s original triangulation. We find that
non-dramatic equivalent of the comedy is lampoon, of tragedy,
epic. With the new opening before him, Fielding takes cross
bearings on the old land marks and attempts a comic epic. ‘In
prose’ gives him a third bearing and his triangulation is complete.
He leaves an old track, but he does not get lost. W.L. Renwick in’
Essays and Studies’, rightly remarks:
“ In that great phrase ‘comic epic in prose, Fielding evoked
a critical tradition, claimed his authority, asserted right
of the new ……to the craft of the comedy and the dignity of
the epic and assumed moral responsibilities of both along
with the freedom of prose.”