I’ve already covered Pamela which is a novel to which Joseph Andrews has an intimate relationship. It’s a bit like the Bored of the Rings or Barry Trotter. Pamela was this enormous publishing phenomenon. There was all sorts of Pamela merchandising. Bells were rung when she married Mr B. Here’s an interesting article linking it to Fifty Shades of Grey.
Anyway Pamela was ripe for parody. Partly because it was very silly and partly because the kind of people who liked it were the new readers, women, the lower middle classes, people everyone is happy to mock for their poor literary taste. I mean Pamela was a servant who made it. So there were plenty of parodies. In fact Fielding wrote two. Shamela and Joseph Andrews. Shamela is pretty much what it sounds like, Pamela’s a sham. She’s a gold digger with a bunch of lovers.
Joseph Andrews is a gender switch. I quite like the fact that it’s about the absurdity of a virtuous young man. It does point up the hypocrisy and silliness of equating female virginity and virtue to entirely. Like in Pamela virtue is a euphemism for virginity.
Having a hero rather than a heroine makes for a very different sort of novel. Far more expansive. Pamela is always shut up, there’s the odd attempt to escape but she spends all her time in the house. It’s quite a claustrophobic novel. Joseph Andrews gets to get out and have adventures. Normally very silly ones. Rather than being reported through a diary in a close first person narrative it takes an objective third person tone which also makes it feel far more expansive and less personal. In short it is pointedly masculine where Pamela was unapologetically feminine.
I feel like Joseph Andrew’s real failing is in not being as funny as Pamela. I mean Pamela is pretty much beyond parody because it is so very silly and so very funny. But Joseph Andrew’s has probably had a greater influence on the history of the novel. Certainly a greater impact on the sort of serious history people think of when they talk about the history of the novel.
1000 Little Pieces 