Comedy
It's been a while since my last post! Not because this book took me that long (though not far off), but because course reading has been taking its toll!
Anyway, on with the review.
Henry Fielding's Tom Jones is an incredibly well known novel, and Fielding a novelist whose comic novel, one of the earliest on the list (published in 1749), is something that takes a good deal of time to wrestle with.
It is difficult to categorise this novel simply as being a comedy, because in its 346,747 words, Fielding fits a hell of a lot in; romance, family drama, social commentary... There was a great deal to contend with in this book, but although a long, long, novel, it wasn't unmanageable. Interestingly, for a book published over 260 years ago, Tom Jones gets away with being relatively readable.
The most interesting relationship that Fielding tackles in the novel, I think, is that of Jones and his half-brother Blifil, whose high-birth and standing cause him to become a less than attractive character. The religious figure, the aptly-named Thwackum, comes to represent the hypocrisy of the Church, an institution that seeks, within the novel, to control and condition through fear and pain.
Being an eighteenth century novel, it is perhaps unsurprising how much of the novel is concerned with religion and the crown. It seems that a great many of the 'good' characters of the novel, who end up 'happily ever after', eventually, are loyalist and Anglican, whereas the 'bad' are Jacobites and Anti-Hanoverians.
Tom Jones is by no means for the faint of heart. It is an intensely wordy book, and very long indeed. It is, however, a very rewarding novel to finish, and although the comedy is often that of a 'I can see why that would be funny' kind, there are moments which are truly laughable.
The next book on the list is Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry.
