Fielding’s Techniques for Humour

INTRODUCTION
The Oxford Dictionary defines humour as that quality of action, speech or writing which excites amusement, oddity and comicality; the faculty of perceiving what is ludicrous or amusing or of expressing it. The essence of humour is contrast. Humour arises from the perception of the incongruities of life, from the writer’s awareness of the discrepancy between what is and what ought to be. Humour arises when anything in thought; word or action falls below the normal level. It may also arise from incongruities of character or incongruities of situation.
Henry Fielding, the father of English novel, is one of the greatest humourists in English Literature. The same comic spirit which permeates his plays is also evident in his novels. As he informs us, the author upon whom he modeled himself was Cervantes; it is not surprising, therefore, that the comedy should be his method. Fielding’s humour is wide in range. It arises from the coarsest farce to the astonishing heights of the subtlest irony. On one side is his zestful description of various fights and, on the other, the grim irony of Jonathan Wild. Higher than both is that ineffable, pleasant, and ironic humour that may be found everywhere in Tom Jones but is at its best in Joseph Andrews where it plays like summer lightning around the figure of Parson Adams—an English cousin of Don Quixote. Joseph Andrews, which appeared on the scene in 1742 as a reaction against Richardson’s Pamela, is a novel rich in humour. It illustrates every shade and variety of humour. The novel is a classical example of a literary work, which started as a parody and ended as an excellent work of art in its own right. In Fielding we see many species of humour. Below is the description of different aspects and techniques of creating humour in the novel.
DEVELOPMENT OF THOUGHT
Humour of character is the highest kind of humour. There is enough of humour of character in the novel. A number of characters are definitely humorous in conception. Parson Adams, Mrs. Slipslop, Parson Trulliber and Beau Didapper are all humorous creations as in their thoughts, words or actions; they are below the normal or the expected level. Parson Adams’ character is fully exploited by Fielding. His very appearance is ridiculous. No body can believe that he is a parson. No body likes to respect him before he tells that he is a parson. Even when people know that he is a parson, they like to make fun of him. He has a ‘comical’ face, with bearded chin and deeply wrinkled cheeks’ a fist ‘rather less than the knuckle of an ox’, with a wrist ‘which Hercules would not have been ashamed of’. His legs are so long that they almost touch the ground when he rides on horseback. He is a very forgetful man. He leaves for London to sell his sermons but forgets the precious manuscripts at home and does not discover the fact till he has accomplished half the journey. At one inn he forgets to settle the account for his horse’s keep and from another he marches away completely forgetting the horse itself. In addition to his absent-mindedness, he has funny mannerisms. When he is excited he begins to dance in the room, begins to groans when he is grieved and shouts ‘Heureka, heureka!’ when a happy idea strikes him. Mrs. Slipslop’s appearance also provokes laughter. She has a large nose but small eyes. She is very short and her one leg is shorter than the other as Fielding explains:
She was not at this time remarkably handsome; being very short, and rather too corpulent in body, and somewhat red, with the addition of pimples in her face. Her nose was likewise too large, and her eyes too little; nor did she resemble a cow so much in her breath as in two brown globes which she carried before her; one of her legs was also a little shorter than the other, which associated her to limp as she walked.
In spite of all that she considers herself a lovable and rebukes Joseph when he does not reciprocate her love. Parson Trulliber is also described in similar terms:
He was indeed one of the largest men you should see, and could have acted the part of Sir John Falstaff without stuffing. Add to this, that the rotundity of his belly was considerably increased by the shortness of his stature, his shadow ascending very near as far in height when he lay on his back, as when he stood on his legs. His voice was loud and hoarse, and his accents extremely broad; to complete the whole, he had a stateliness in his gait, when he walked, not unlike that of a goose, only he stalked slower.
Then there is Beau Didapper, with his narrow shoulders and spindle shanks, who when Horace is quoted, observes that ‘he did not understand Welsh’.
Farce is humour arising from situation, and it is marked by exaggeration. It arises loud laughter, and does not require intelligence of any high order to be appreciated. The keynote of a farce is exaggeration to arouse broad horse laughter. Shaw’s plots are full of sudden inversions, exaggerations and comic situations. Joseph Andrews is a string of farcical situations. Several situations are farcical and boisterous. There is, for example, the fight scene at the inn where the passengers stop, interrupting the story of Leonora. Joseph falls from his horse and gets injured. He sits by the fireplace in the kitchen and the innkeeper’s wife is rubs his knee. This makes the innkeeper angry because he thinks that his wife is neglecting other guests. He is a little rude to Joseph as well and Parson Adams rebukes him for this. Here the fight starts in which every one is punching everyone. Finally the innkeeper’s wife throws hog’s blood on Parson Adams. At this stage, Mrs. Slipslop enters the battle and makes it more comic as Fielding says:
This good gentlewoman, not being of a temper so extremely cool and patient as perhaps was required to ask many questions on this occasion, flew with impetuosity at the hostess’s cap, which, together some of her hair, she plucked from her head in a moment, giving her, at the same time, several hearty cuffs in the face; which by frequent practice on the inferior servants, she had learned an excellent knack of delivering with good grace.
In another scene Parson Adams exhibits a new instance of his absent-mindedness. He forgets that he was riding a horse.
Mrs. Slipslop desired the coachman to overtake him, which he attempted, but in vain; for the faster he drove the faster ran the parson, often crying out, ‘Aye, aye, catch me if you can’; till at length the coachman swore he would as soon attempt to drive after a greyhound, and, giving the parson two or three hearty curses, he cry’d, ‘softly, softly, boys,’ to his horses, which the civil beasts immediately obeyed.
So parson Adams takes it as a competition and runs fast without looking behind and loses his way. In another scene he goes to meet Parson Trulliber, who by mistake considers him a hog dealer and sends him into the hogs’ shed where he is thrashed by the hogs. The situation where the hounds of the squire tear at Parson Adams’ cassock is again farcical. In another place Beau Didapper, in an attempt to rape Fanny, mistakenly jumps into Mrs. Slipslop’s bed. She being virtuous finds an opportunity to prove her chastity to her mistress and begins to cry. In the mean time Parson Adams, sleeping in the next room comes there, wearing only a nightshirt. He considers Beau Didapper a woman because of his delicate skin and of Mrs. Slipslop’s beard and starts punching the latter severely. At the end of this fight every body goes back, Adams takes the wrong turn and ends up in Fanny’s room, where he climbs into bed with Fanny. He sleeps with her all the night but fails to realize that she is a woman.
As the cat or lap-dog of some lovely nymph, for whom ten thousand lovers languish, lies quietly by the side of the charming maid, and, ignorant of the sense of delight on which they repose, meditates the future capture of a mouse, or surprisal of a plate of bread and butter, so Adams lay by the side of Fanny, ignorant of the paradise to which he was so near.
Fielding’s ability at writing comic scene is fully evident here. But here farce assumes slightly moralistic overtones.
Fielding also uses exaggeration in the description of different characters. Exaggeration means “The act of making something more noticeable than usual” or “Making to seem more important than it really is”. For example, Parson Adams is introduced to us in such a way:
Mr. Abraham Adams was an excellent scholar. He was a perfect master of Greek and Latin languages; to which he added a great share of knowledge in the Oriental tongues; and could read and translate French, Italian, and Spanish. He had applied many years to the most severe study, and had treasured up a fund of learning rarely to be met with in a university.
But the matter of fact is that he has only one manuscript of Æschylus, which is his favourite book and keeps with him wherever he goes. Steeped in classical authors, he shows a stubborn lack of interest in modern writings. He is unacquainted with the history of the last thousand years. Ignorant of what Shakespeare or Pope had to offer, he meets Joseph’s quotation from Macbeth with the remark that nothing but the heathenism was to be had from plays. Numerous examples of exaggeration can be cited from the novel.
Humour grows satiric when there is moral indignation and a desire to reform and correct. Satirical humour, however, pervades all the writings of fielding. Dudden remarks, “It was, indeed, his favourite method of criticizing lighter vices and follies. As to his employment of this instrument, he very seldom used it to expose or ridicule individuals. Derisive attacks on individual persons seemed to him indecorous. His humorous satire was therefore directed, first, against various classes or groups (parsons and doctors, beaus and booby-squires, waiting-maids and fine ladies; Methodists and Jacobites); secondly, against contemporary society in general; and thirdly, against humanity as a whole”………. “This humorous satire is instructive and corrective. Its object, as Fielding put it, is ‘to hold the glass to thousands in their closets, that they may contemplate their deformity, and endeavor to reduce it’.” If men can once be made to realize how foolish or wrong they are, there is some hope that, for very shame, they will attempt amendment. Some examples can be quoted in this regard. In a scene the stage-coach passengers confront the naked and wounded Joseph. The postilion heard the groans of Joseph and stopped the coach. The coachman, however, urged him to go on, as they were late. A lady passenger intervenes and asks the coachman to stop and investigate. The postilion got down and soon came back to say that it was a naked man lying wounded in the ditch. “O J-sus! cried the lady, A naked man! Dear coachman, drive on and leave him.” What a spurious sense of modesty or virtue this is. Here every passenger is striped of spiritually naked in his confrontation with the naked human being symbilised by Joseph. The satire is obvious in each passenger’s reaction. The lady’s false delicacy, the old gentleman’s cowardly selfishness, and the equally selfish lawyer’s cautiousness, are all exposed. Again when postilion helps Joseph with his shirt and condemns the passengers for not helping Joseph in this situation, he is rebuked by the passengers. The society of the day comes in for plenty of ridicule by Fielding. The corrupt and hypocritical clergy, magistrate, lawyers, doctors, similarly come in for attack. But through particular examples, through the individuals like Lady Booby, Mrs. Slipslop, Parson Trulliber, Parson Barnabas, the Squire of Fools and the Squire of False Promises, general human follies are satirized. What is note worthy, is that Fielding is never bitter in the description of persons and the incidents. Most of the time he keeps laughing and goes on making us laugh. He tries to make the wicked and the corrupt laugh at themselves so that they may realize their follies he tries to teach his lessons by the method of amusement.
Fielding also uses ironical humour. Irony in its simplest form, is the deliberate use of words, which literally express a meaning opposite to that which the speaker really desires and intends to convey; as when for the purpose of ridicule, laudatory expressions are employed to indicate condemnation. According to Dudden, we find two kinds of ironical humour in Fielding’s work. “There is a light and sportive irony, flavoring and salting scores of passages in the novels and communicating a sharp but pleasurable sting to the mind of the reader. It criticizes but not condemn. On the other hand, there is a grim species of irony, which is employed when the author is sternly intent on castigating what is false and wrong”. In Joseph Andrews, some examples of such humour can be noted. For example, the patriot boasts of his patriotism and wants to hang the cowards but he himself turns tail when a scoundrel tries to rape Fanny. Parson Adams and a Roman Catholic priest are of the opinion that money is useless but they have no money to pay their bill. They are laughed at. Adams’ learned advice to Joseph on moderation and philosophical acceptance of misfortune is thrown to the winds when his own son is reported to be drowned. There are of course, sharp touches of irony in Mrs. Slipslop’s portraiture and Lady Booby’s excuses. We have been neglecting Mrs. Slipslop, who at long last has had not one but two men in her bed (simultaneously!), but who has been forced by circumstances to reject them both. The sex-starved maiden, with her mountainous breasts and her spur of the moment virtue, has been soundly trounced.
Occasionally Fielding parodies the epic style to produce humour. He conceived Joseph Andrews as a comic epic in prose. The comic epic employs the light and the ludicrous in fable and action. It preserves the ludicrous in sentiment and diction. In the preface, he observes the source of the ridiculous:
The only Source of the true Ridiculous (as it appears to me) is Affectation. But tho' it arises from one Spring only, when we consider the infinite Streams into which this one branches, we shall presently cease to admire at the copious Field it affords to an Observer. Now Affectation proceeds from one of these two Causes, Vanity, or Hypocrisy: for as Vanity puts us on affecting false Characters, in order to purchase Applause; so Hypocrisy sets us on an Endeavour to avoid Censure by concealing our Vices under an Appearance of their opposite Virtues.
Moreover he differentiates comic-epic and serious epic as:
Now a comic Romance is a comic Epic-Poem in Prose; differing from Comedy, as the serious Epic from Tragedy: its Action being more extended and comprehensive; containing a much larger Circle of Incidents, and introducing a greater Variety of Characters. It differs from the serious Romance in its Fable and Action, in this; that as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous: it differs in its Characters, by introducing Persons of inferiour Rank, and consequently of inferiour Manners, whereas the grave Romance, sets the highest before us; lastly in its Sentiments and Diction; by preserving the Ludicrous instead of the Sublime. In the Diction I think, Burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted; of which many Instances will occur in this Work, as in the Descriptions of the Battles, and some other Places, not necessary to be pointed out to the Classical Reader; for whose Entertainment those Parodies or Burlesque Imitations are chiefly calculated.
The funny situation of the bloody fight in which Parson Adams gets doused in hog’s blood is described in Homeric terms. Similarly Joseph’s encounter with the dogs let loose on Parson Adams is also described in epic-style. Here the use of grand style to describe situations which are essentially ridiculous in themselves produces the comic effect.
CONCLUSION
The pith and marrow of above said is that Henry Fielding was a past master of the various forms of humour—farce, satire, irony, humorous characterization, and the parody. At the same time, his humour is of the Shakespearean and Chaucerian genre—benign, tolerant, genial and very much spontaneous. Humour arises naturally; it is never contrived. Coleridge is right when he compares Fielding’s humour with that of Richardson and comments, “There is a cheerful, sunshiny, breezy spirit that prevails everywhere strongly contrasted with the close, hot, day-dreamy continuity of Richardson”. He grips the attention of the readers by his amusing situations and humour. He has been very appropriately called “a laughing philosopher”.