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Book 3, Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Joseph Andrews, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hypocrisy
Lust vs. Chastity
Social Class
Religion and Charity
Summary
Analysis
The host says his name is Wilson. He tells Abraham Adams that he came from a good family and learned Latin and a little Greek in school. His father died when he was 16 and left him some money that he couldn’t use until he was 25. At 17, he left school and went to London. There, he blew all the money he had, but he also learned how to be a gentleman. The man attracted the attention of six women (Abraham Adams groans disapprovingly when he hears this part of the story), but Wilson insists they were all chaste.
While Wilson’s story starts out as a fairly typical origin story for a gentleman, it quickly turns into something less conventional. It turns out that despite Wilson’s plain appearance in middle age, he had a wild youth. Adams, who has a hard time keeping quiet, sometimes interrupts the story to indicate his disapproval.
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Wilson spent three aimless years like this in London, spending long hours dining, at a coffee-house, and at theatres. One day, he flirted with the wrong woman, angering a local captain, and causing many of his acquaintances shun him. A man advised Wilson that he should fight the captain in a duel, but instead, he fled the area to a new place called the Temple.
Although Wilson seems to have been a larger-than-life character in his youth, some elements of Wilson’s life—particularly his involvement with the theater—seem to have been inspired in part by author Henry Fielding’s own life in London.
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At the Temple, Wilson lived an even more decadent life with playhouses and “whores,” until eventually a surgeon advised him that he needed to stay in his room for a month. Wilson agreed, then he found a mistress to live with him who came recommended from a “celebrated bawd.” He and the mistress only got along sometimes because she flirted with other men. Wilson parted with his mistress but didn’t give up on chasing women, much to the surgeon’s frustration.
Because Wilson’s doctor told him to stop going out and living such a wild life, Wilson simply paid a woman to live in his room with him. “Bawd” is an old-fashioned word for a procurer (also sometimes called a pimp or madam). Wilson’s business arrangement with the sex worker resembles a marriage, perhaps raising questions about how a real marriage is or isn’t different from sex work.
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Wilson eventually put aside love to pursue other hobbies, like drinking. He continued to live a rowdy lifestyle and got to know some gamblers. He got involved in a scheme to sell subscriptions, a concept created by great writers like Alexander Pope, though soon, lesser writers began to use it, taking subscription money for future works they didn’t even intend to write. Wilson applied this payment method to plays. He continued to go back and forth between other get-rich-quick schemes until finally he ended up with a lottery ticket that was worth £3000—unfortunately, he gave it away to a relative only a couple days later.
Fielding and other writers like him would have been very familiar with subscriptions as a way to make money. Although writing is generally a more respectable and stable occupation than gambling, this passage satirizes writers by showing how even their profession is vulnerable to get-rich-quick speculation, particularly when people start selling subscriptions to works that will never actually come out. Wilson is so distracted trying to make a quick buck that he throws away his lucky break before he even realizes it.
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Wilson’s schemes eventually got him into debtor’s prison. He received a letter from Harriet, the daughter of the relative that he gave the £3000 ticket to, saying that her father had just died, and that she inherited the money. She enclosed £200, which angered Wilson. Nevertheless, he went to go thank Harriet. He found her so beautiful that he fell in love with her, wooed her, and eventually married her.
On the one hand, Harriet’s gift of £200 is stingy compared to the total of £3000, but on the other hand, she is one of the few characters in the book to demonstrate real generosity instead of just talking about it. Wilson might pursue her at first for selfish reasons, but he ultimately finds himself in a stable, happy marriage, suggesting that a person’s youth doesn’t necessarily define their adulthood.
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Wilson concludes his life story after his happy marriage to Harriet. He then begins to talk about how he’s lived for 20 years with his wife and raised several children. All of his children make him happy—except for the eldest child, who is gone. Abraham Adams reminds Wilson that everyone dies, but Wilson clarifies that his son was stolen by traveling “gipsies.” Adams cries with him in sympathy. Wilson finally announces that he’s finished for the moment and will go fetch another bottle for the parson.
It is not immediately clear why the seemingly minor character Wilson gets such a long story-within-the-story; this is a mystery the book will return to later. The abduction of Wilson’s son adds one last dramatic twist to his winding life story. The bottle that Wilson offers Adams suggests that no matter what type of person Wilson was in his past, he has grown to become an unusually generous person in the present.
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