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The Rise of the Novel 2: Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding
The Rise of the Novel 2: Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding
Reminder:
- rising number of printed items, growth of literacy, broadening readership → book market
- journals, periodicals, coffee/tea/chocolate-houses, clubs → public opinion, public debates; literature is part of a
public conversation in the early eighteenth century
- The Glorious Revolution (1688) is a watershed: after the Stuart attempt to create an absolutist state on a French
model we now have a limited/constitutional monarchy, two political parties, regular elections → importance of
public opinion again
Individual and Society
- 2 new ideas: natural goodness of humans and human perfectibility
- background: the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651): egotism → attempts to find alternative
descriptions of the workings of society ~ reflected in the novels
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
merchant, writes: political pamphlets, treatises, satirical poems, newspapers, novels
Whig in politics, dissenter in religion
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
- often seen as the first English novel
- can be understood as an experiment in social psychology: what happens if you remove someone from society
- background: sensational accounts of the adventures of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor, who spent years on an
uninhabited island (lost the ability to speak etc.)
- Crusoe, English, remains English, spreads Englishness wherever he goes → the individual is unthinkable
outside society, has no problems reintegrating into British society when he arrives home
- negative aspects: arrogance ~ colonialism, slavery, racism (Friday)
- the social aspect of the book is coupled with an individual’s spiritual journey: the novel is also a spiritual
autobiography, a soul’s journey in quest of salvation
- question: since most of the book is very materialistic (about Crusoe’s success as a merchant, his skills of survival
etc.), how convincing is the religious theme? ~ maybe a type of religiosity that sees the most humble, most
practical, pragmatic concerns as sacred, and material success as a sign from God
- creates a very down-to-earth style: easy to read
metaphor of the marketplace:
- if society is like a marketplace then the whole question of egotism or benevolence is irrelevant
- rise of capitalism
- we have to sell ourselves on the market
Moll Flanders (1722)
- Full title: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Etc. Who was Born in NEWGATE [a
London prison], and during a life of continu’d Variety for Threescore [60] Years, besides her Childhood, was
Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a
Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d Honest and died a Penitent. Written from her own
MEMORANDUMS.
o scandal chronicle + story of conversion
o Preface: we should be “more pleas’d with the Moral than the Fable”
o questions: is this an educational book or simply an exciting story? do we accept a moral which suggests
that money comes first, the soul (morality, religion) second, and whose morality is this: Moll
Flanders’s or Defoe’s? (“So certainly does Interest banish all manner of Affection, and so naturally do
Men give up Honour and Justice, Humanity, and even Christianity, to secure themselves.” Or “the wise
Man’s Prayer [is] Give me not Poverty lest I Steal.”)
o the convention of the true narration: Defoe pretends that this is not fiction, this was not written by him,
he is just the editor/publisher
- The novel is often celebrated for one of the most powerful female heroines in the whole history of British
literature: Moll Flanders is clever, strong, independent, beautiful, she has her own wishes, desires→ she is just as
inventive as Robinson and thus, even though she is poor, has no family background, and is a woman in a man’s
world, she puts up a very great fight for the genteel life she wants to live – a proto-feminist hero, although
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The Rise of the Novel 2: Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding
according to some readers Defoe tends to forget that she is actually a woman: pregnancy, giving birth (12 times!)
etc. barely discussed.
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1747-48)
While Moll Flanders has an array of opportunities on the marketplace of society and much of the pleasure of reading her
story comes from watching her reinvent herself again and again as the situation changes, the protagonists of Richardson’s
two most famous novels are only allowed to compete on the marriage-market, and the only property they can offer on
this market is their chastity.
→ Richardson’s interest is very narrow, and almost obsessive: will she, or won’t she be trapped into having sex
before marriage? Clarissa is raped, and tragedy ensues (we assume that her “virtue” is “rewarded” in heaven), while Pamela
manages to remain “honest”, and is rewarded by an improbably advantageous marriage to the same man who wanted to
“corrupt” her.
Why is chastity so very important? Marriage was seen – among the wealthy – as a business transaction: a woman
and all her belongings become from the property of one man (typically her father) that of another (her husband), and
taking the virginity sort of sealed that deal (yes, this is as bad as it sounds). But Pamela, who is just a poor chamber maid,
has no property. Her radical and brave conviction is that in this respect the same set of rules and norms apply to her as to
middleclass or aristocratic women. → Morality before money or class.
Form: epistolary novel (a novel composed wholly or largely in the form of letters): like Defoe, Richardson
pretends that this is not fiction; these are supposedly somebody’s private letters. Richardson takes us closer to lived
experience: the heroines are imagined as writing all the time, and the letters have the immediacy of Facebook updates
(sometimes they are almost as clumsy)
o they are based on the illusion that emotions can be directly “poured out” onto the written page
o question: is the heroine a reliable narrator?
→ if she is, then Pamela is a heroic story about a girl who remains “virtuous” at all costs
→ if she isn’t, then this is a handbook on luring stupid rich men into marrying clever poor girls
(Fielding certainly thought so)
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
comedy writer, lawyer, journalist, novelist
parodies of Pamela: An Apology for the life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, In which many notorious Falsehoods and Misrepresentations of a
Book called ‘Pamela’, are exposed and refuted (1741), The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham
Adams (1742)
Tom Jones, A Foundling (1749)
- Fielding does not accept Pamela’s behaviour, because he wants to believe that there is something good in human
nature, so natural impulses, sexual desire included, cannot be morally wrong.
- But Fielding is also a great satirist, and has the good-sense to recognise that natural goodness does not move
the world.
- The book includes an immense amount of knowledge of the contemporary world, very precise, documentary
details, but it also includes the ideal: the good natured, honest man reaching happiness
- So he represents the goodness of his hero as the exception, not the rule, and he makes the happy ending
palatable by constantly reminding us – in opposition to Defoe or Richardson – that this is not reality: this is a
work of art.
- Includes the writer (himself) in the novel (who may be even its hidden protagonist)
- Involves reader in a conversation about the writing of the book (full essays and brief asides on poetical
principles, morality etc.)
- Fielding was a greater artist than Defoe or Richardson as far as the plot, or the language is concerned; he brings
neoclassical refinement to the novel
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Born in Dublin, Ireland, as and English Protestant
poet, pamphleteer, novelist, satirist (A Tale of a Tub (1699), The Battle of Books (1704), A Modest Proposal (1729))
Tory, belongs to Scriblerus Club ~ Alexander Pope, John Gay etc.
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then
a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels
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The Rise of the Novel 2: Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding
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typically seen as the greatest prose satire in the English language
4 voyages:
o I. to Liliput [land of small people]: (seemingly) mostly harmless fun: the “enemy” imagined as tiny
o II. to Brobdingnag [land of giants]: now the joke is on us (we are small and contemptible)
 King’s judgment on humans: “the most pernicious Race of little, odious Vermin that Nature ever
suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth”
III. to Laputa etc.: mostly a satire on contemporary science
IV: to the Country of the Houyhnhnms:
 the darkest satire: has been called cynical, misanthropical, and simply mad
 it laughs to scorn the great ideals of the Enlightenment: natural goodness, perfectibility, natural
harmony between individual and society, rationality
 Houyhnhnms: horses who are nothing but reason, Yahoos: the physical parts of human beings
 at home Gulliver cannot re-adapt to human society, prefers the company of horses
“I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals […]; principally I hate
and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth. This is the system upon
which I have governed myself many years […]. I have got materials toward a treatise, proving the falsity of that definition
animal rationale, and to show it would be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of misanthropy […] the whole
building of my Travels is erected; and I never will have peace of mind till all honest men are of my opinion.” (Swift in a
letter to A. Pope, 1725)
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Pride as a possible unifying theme: we have literally nothing to be proud of.