The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams

Adams is a man of 50 years who is the curate in Lady Booby’s parish. He is also a close friend and mentor to Joseph. Adams is highly educated; he values literature and is fluent in languages like Greek and Latin. However, Adams’s education in the ways of the world is lacking. He is charmingly naive, always assuming the best intentions from others, which repeatedly gets him into trouble during his journey with Joseph and Fanny. He has strong opinions about godliness and charity, which he does not hesitate to share with everyone he meets or defend in a physical altercation. His high standards often prove impossible to live up to and are more easily articulated than accomplished.

Adams often demonstrates a forgetfulness and absence of mind that leads to comical situations, like when he mistakes Fanny’s room for his own and gets into her bed despite many signs that the room is not his. Despite his absence of mind, he is a moral compass for Joseph, encouraging Joseph to maintain his virtue and advising him and Fanny to marry for the right reasons. Adams is similar to Joseph in that both men possess and live according to strong moral convictions, but Adams is blinded by a false ideal of inherent goodness in mankind, which makes him vulnerable to manipulation. In contrast, Joseph generally has enough worldly wisdom to recognize dishonorable motives in others.

At 19 years old, Fanny is two years younger than Joseph. She is poor and uneducated but unparalleled in beauty. Wherever she goes, men and women alike notice her curvy figure, porcelain skin, thick brown hair, and red lips. Mrs. Slipslop dismisses her from Lady Booby’s employ due to her extreme beauty, and several men try to woo and even rape her because of her attractiveness. Fanny also possesses a “natural gentility” despite her low social status, as well as “a sweetness, whenever she smiled, beyond either imitation or description” (108). Fanny is far more than a pretty face to Joseph, who loves her for her pure and caring heart.

Fanny’s deep love for Joseph gives her bravery, which is demonstrated when she immediately travels alone to find him after hearing he is injured. Shy and innocent, Fanny is almost annoyingly perfect. Despite her beauty and modest spirit, or perhaps because of them, she constantly attracts malice from others, either in the form of male predators, such as the squire and his friends, or jealous females, such as Lady Booby. Her engagement to Joseph drives much of the narrative’s plot, and her patience and loyalty are rewarded when the two are finally married.

Lady Booby, a wealthy and well-known gentlewoman in her parish, exemplifies hypocrisy. Easily swayed by the opinions of others, she allows the norms of high society and Mrs. Slipslop’s words to dictate her behavior. She is torn between attraction to Joseph and pride in her social status. Her refusal to sacrifice her high status for Joseph proves that her feelings for him are based more on physical attraction than true love. She flirts with Joseph but then acts like she would be scandalized if he made sexual advances toward her. Her egotism leads to her own unhappiness. Lady Booby believes that if she offers herself to Joseph, there will be no question that he will take her, but she underestimates Joseph’s love for Fanny and is sorely disappointed.

Lady Booby is as unwilling to sacrifice her reputation for Joseph as she is unwilling to see him marry Fanny. Her attempts to sabotage their relationship put Fanny at risk for rape, banishment, and hanging, and reveal Lady Booby as the villain of the story. In the end she winds up in London, immersed in the city’s false pleasures and artificial glamour, and excluded from the happy ending.