On Rural Nostalgia In Tom Jones

Henry Fielding is the “Father of the English Novel” as well as the founder of the realistic literature. British literary historian Leslie Stephen compared him to the center of literary circles and chose him as the standard to measure other writers. His classic novel Tom Jones made him well-established in the history of British literature. As the whole novel, except for the trips of the characters, centers on the rural landscapes in Somersetshire and the city landscapes in London, thus the thesis tries to explore Henry Fielding’s rural nostalgia in Tom Jones with the perspective of cultural geography.Cultural geography studies culture from the geographical view, emphatically on how culture influences people’s life and living spaces. Except for the natural geographical landscape, human landscape and community landscape are also the objects of cultural geography, to study the humanistic activities in terms of geography. Based on such three aspects as natural landscape, home landscape and community landscape, this thesis tries to contrast the country and the city represented in the novel and finds that the two places are endowed with different cultural connotations, i.e. the traditional morals of diligence, kindness and family orientation in the country versus new utilitarian benefit-oriented morals in the city, the country’s harmonious and ordered scenes with the city’s corruptive and crime-ridden social reality, and thus sees the author’s affection and attachment to the beautiful and harmonious traditional rural culture at the turn to the new society.Chapter One deals with Fielding’s attachment to the rural area from the perspective of natural landscape. The two idyllic manors of Squire Allworthy and Mr. Western with huge gardens are representatives of natural landscape of the countryside. The tranquil and pastoral scenery of large mansions, lawns, flowers, birds, fish, waterfall and path in woodland all represent a healthy environment and show country people’s vigorous, leisurely and comfortable life state; contrastively, in the city’s noisy environmental landscapes, the bustling streets are filled with vendors’ and beggars’ cries, modern but commercial architectures such as bazaars, theatres and gambling houses give people a sense of insecurity. And its coldness in human relationship the characters witness reveals the author’s unsuitable feelings and criticism of the city. Chapter Two analyzes home landscape to show Fielding’s attachment to the traditional ethics. As a traditional male writer in the eighteenth century, Fielding cared about women’s happiness, but with the shrinking and diminishing traditional morality at that time, he strongly maintained and advocated patriarchy as a traditional recipe for family and social harmony through the happy marriage of Tom and Sophia; while the reduction in the utility of patriarchy in the city leads to the instability of family and disharmony of society. Meanwhile, master and servant relationship was one of the major relationships in British families. Most masters regarded their servants as family members and servants would do services loyally for their masters in Somersetshire, though hierarchical differences still existed between them. But in the city master-servant relationship was money-based and mercenary with colors of capitalism. Thus it shows Fielding’s praise for country people’s simplicity. In Chapter Three, the thesis deals with public landscape to express Fielding’s rural nostalgia. The striking contrast between the country’s good-neighborliness and the city’s money-supremacy interpersonal relation, the effectiveness of the civil magistrate’s enforcement in Somersetshire and the depravation of judicial system in the city can reveal Fielding’s deep emotional attachment to the ordered and harmonious countryside with criticism to the cities of commercial inclination.With the growing power of the bourgeoisie in the city in eighteenth century Britain, the traditional values in the countryside were shaken constantly. The simple and sincere country life was polluted, the effectiveness of the patriarchy was weakening, and the defects of judicial system became obvious, and traditional morality was questioned and challenged. Thus Fielding’s representation of his strong affection to and nostalgia for the countryside through Tom Jones actually meant to arouse the preservation and maintenance of the shrinking and diminishing traditional morality.