The Four wheels of the English Novel

Introduction

The eighteenth century--"our glorious and indispensable eighteenth century"- is well-

known within the history of English literature significantly for the birth and development of
the novel. The 18th century was the golden age of the English novel. The English novel
developed throughout the eighteenth century, partly in response to an expansion of the
middle-class reading public. There was a public demand for the novel. With the enlargement
of the center category, more people could read and they had money to spend on literature.
There was already a high interest in biography, biography, journals, diaries, memoirs. The
rise of the novel in 1740 marks the top of prose fiction designed entirely for amusement and
diversion. The important nature of the new sort is sort of continually apparent from this date,
and usually there is a well- defined purpose clearly expressed in the author's preface. The
theme of the eighteenth-century novel is that the history of persons, regarded as moral beings,
and treated in relation to each other and to society. The second and third quarters of the
eighteenth century were years significantly watchful and demanding all told matters poignant
the non-secular, moral, social, and political conditions of the times. Professor Saintsbury
designates Tobias George Smollet (1721-1771), Laurence Sterne (1715-1768), Samuel
Richardson (1689-1761) and Henry Fielding (1707- 1754), as the “Four Wheels of the Wain”
of the English Novel in the eighteenth century. Sir Walter Scott called Fielding “the father of
English Novel”. He said that Fielding had “high notions of the dignity of art which he may be
considered as having founded.

Henry Fielding- Joseph Andrews as a Comic Epic Novel

The comic epic poem in prose is a work of prose fiction with elements of comedy,
epic, and romance. Henry Fielding is regarded as one of the greatest writers among English
novelists of the Eighteenth century and was determinant in the emergence of the novel as a
respected literary form. He is the first novelist to analyze the nature of his art and lay down
its rules. Fielding created the “comic epic novel”. Joseph Andrews”, is in literary history a
work of great importance. In the evolution of the kind of literature – the Novel, it is a
hallmark. The novel Joseph Andrews came out in 1742 Fielding thought he had hit upon a
new genre of literature and it was his prerogative as well as his duty to explore its
possibilities. He called ‘Joseph Andrews’ a ‘comic epic in prose’.

Fielding’s use of epic similes lends a flavor of its own to the novel. When Mrs.
Slipslop tries to make a moral assault on Joseph, Fielding writes, “As when a hungry tigress
who long has traversed woods in fruitless search sees within the reach of her claws a lamb,
she prepares, leaps on her prey so did Mrs. Slipslop prepare to lay her violent amorous hands
on poor Joseph.” A heroic epic has a towering hero, grand theme, a continuous action, a
journey to underworld, wars, digressions, discovery, high seriousness, a high ethical lesson
and declamatory diction in it and in “Joseph Andrews” there is a normal hero, a journey from
one place to another place, mock-wars, digressions, discovery, humour, a high moral and a
bombastic diction in it. The element of wars and conflicts is extremely vital in an epic and
it’s no exception in “Joseph Andrews”. First of all, there is a conflict between lusty advances
of lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop and chastity of Joseph. Also there is a conflict between
generosity of Parson Adams and misely Parson Trulliber and Mrs. Tow- Wouse. Then we see
some real action in the form of a war in an inn where Joseph was insulted by the host. Parson
Adams was annoyed and challenged the host. There started the primay war between each the
parties. The funny situation of the bloody fight in which Parson Adams gets doused in hog’s
blood is described in Homeric terms. Then Parson Adams rescues Fanny from a ruffian and
then, a squire attacks Parson Adams with his hounds and a fierce battle is fought between
hunter’s hounds and parson Adams. Joseph’s encounter with the dogs let loose on Parson
Adams is delineated in epic-style.

Another epic convention is the use of digression. There are two major digressions in
“Joseph Andrews”. There are, seemingly, moot stories of Leonara and Mr. Wilson. Epic
writers considered them as embellishments. Fielding, however, makes the interpolations
thematically relevant. For, these are not irrelevant in reality. The formula of discovery, as
described by Aristotle, an essential element of an epic, has also been used by Fielding. In the
end of the novel, we see that Joseph is recognized to be Mr. Wilson’s child and Fanny as the
sister of virtuous Pamela. High seriousness is an important element in epic. But in “Joseph
Andrews” there's an excellent deal of comedy and humour, because it is a comic epic novel;
indeed, in Joseph Andrews the comic point of view is sustained throughout the novel. But
behind this comedy, there lies a serious purpose of reformation. We have a gamut of vain and
hypocritical characters in Parson Trilluber, Parson Barnabas, passengers in the stage-coach,
Mr. Tow-wouse, Mrs. Slipslop, Peter Pounce and the various Squires. The surgeon and the
lawyer and the magistrate are also some other example of hypocrisy and vanity. Each of
those characters provides an excellent deal of humour and amusement beneath a heavy
purpose. Every epic encompasses a ethical lesson in it and this is often no exception with a
comic book epic. Fielding’s views on morality are sensible, choked with logic and tolerance,
liberal, versatile and a lot of realistic.

Samuel Richardson Pamela as an Epistolary Novel

Epistolary novel, a novel told through the medium of letters written by one or more of
the characters. The first “true” novel is usually said to be “Pamela” by Samuel Richardson. In
Richardson’s novels the reader begins to think about the characters as real individuals. In his
novel “Pamela” the story is told through a series of letters. Because we are reading someone’s
letters, we feel that person is much more real, and really does exist. It makes Richardson’s
characters more complete and complex. His major works are: Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
(1740-1) Clarissa (1747-8) the novels of Samuel Richardson are concerning real individuals
and are told as ethical lessons. Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel centering
on the connection between a pretty servant girl and her blue blooded master. An epistolary
novel is one during which a personality (or characters) tells the story through letters (epistles)
sent to a friend, relative, etc., and/or through journal entries. Samuel Richardson began
writing Pamela in 1739 and completed and published it in 1740. In Samuel Richardson’s
Pamela, there is a stress on letters and their use. The entire narrative is delivered to us
through the use of letters, written by the protagonist herself towards her parents, with a few
responses as well. Letters are thus information being departed from Pamela towards her
family and to us as well. Yet, another character is additionally aware of great deal of this
information; the male Master of the household in which she serves. He intercepts her very
first letter and urges her to continue writing, all the while hinting at a narrow allowance of
subject coverage. “…you ought to be wary what tales you send out of a family. Be faithful
and diligent; and do as you should do, and I will like you the better for this.” (44).

However, Pamela's journal-writing - imaginative and powerful as it may be - does not

always allow her to escape her material reality, and the relationship between her act of
writing and her anguish becomes more and more clear. Soon we realize, for example, that the
act of writing journals helps her deal with (and forget about) her daily sorrows. Furthermore,
the revelation of Pamela's troublesome feelings is in a sense dependent upon her private
journals. Yet writing does not necessarily ease her suffering; rather, the anguish seems to
have an existence of its own and it appears to grow more and more intense as she writes. For
example, the first letter of v. I opens, "I have great trouble" (p. 43). Later she writes, "O my
dear mother, I am miserable! truly miserable!" (p. 53) and "All the next day I was very sad,
and began my long letter" (p. 58). Her "careful but loving" parents also write on her pain,
stating that "[their] hearts bleed for [her] distress" (p. 59).

Richardson enjoys hinting to his reader that Pamela's thirty-two letters and dozens of
journals, somehow, have a life of their own. Likewise, Pamela's correspondences (letters and
journals) invite the reader to sit next to her as she puts pen to paper. As Roussel points out in
his study, "Reflections on the letter: the reconciliation of distance and presence in Pamela"
(1987), this technique decreases the narrative distance between author and reader and creates
a very close and immediate relationship between the two (Roussel, p. 101). For example,
Pamela writes:

"But I am forced to break off [from writing]. Here comes Mrs Jervis" (p. 77);

"I must write on, though I shall come so soon; for now I have hardly any thing else to do" (p.
108);

and "I will now, my honoured parents, proceed with my journal" (p. 491).

The directness of the narrative is evident, and this immediate structure helps to eliminate the
"foreignness" of the letters. An excellent matter indicator that illustrates the facility of
Richardson's epistolary format to project the psychological development of Pamela seems
towards the end of the novel, when the heroine returns triumphantly to Bedfordshire and
stops writing in order to "apply [herself] to the Duties of the Family" (p. 387). The writing of
letters in the narrative gives the reader an idea - and this is the only instrument of time that
we have – of how many days have passed in Pamela's life, and also when certain events
have occurred. Thus, key phrases, especially those that open and close the first thirty-two
letters are fundamental clues to figuring out when events happened in relation to others.
"I know my dear parents that you longed to hear from me soon; and I sent to you as soon as I
could" (p. 65) "So I will make use of it now, and tell you all that has happened since my last
letter" (p. 70)

Laurence Sterne -Tristram Shandy as an Anti Novel

Anti novel is a type of prose fiction in which conventional or traditional novelistic elements
are rejected. Laurence Sterne is legendry for only one novel Tristram Shandy. There was no
real story. Tristram himself was not created as a “hero”. He was the opposite—a kind of
“anti-hero” - and by breaking all the principles, “Tristram Shandy” was not a novel, but a
type of “anti-novel”. The novel has an extraordinary technical virtuosity, and a very modem
philosophy of time. It seems to be a chaotic, disorganized “stream of consciousness” The
novels of Laurence Sterne are about the importance of life and individuality.

Tristram Shandy, the anti-novel, derives from the fusion of traditional elements and new
techniques. The traditional elements are: 1. the picaresque form; 2. the mock- heroic
treatment; 3. the cast of characters, both high and low; 4. the biographical structure; 5.
authorial digressions. The new techniques are based on: 1. the association of ideas; 2. a new
sense of time. Influenced by Locke's theories on time and association of ideas author wrote a
novel that aimed to represent however the human mind works. The author was significantly
curious about the principle of psychological time: it consists of the succession of ideas that
float in our mind without being influenced by human rationality. These ideas are thus
connected by chance only. Consequently though author tried to present the reader some
written record references that may facilitate him in contextualizing the work, he put
chronological time aside focusing on the protagonist's mind. The author tried to represent the
precise succession of ideas within Tristram's mind.

The passage is written in the first – person. Tristram itself narrates about the night when he
has been conceived. Tristram was conceived in the night between the first Sunday and the
first Monday in the month of March of the year 1718. His conception was interrupted by a
trivial incident that his mother asked his father in the middle of that important event: Tristram
mother asked his father if he had not forgot to wind up the clock. The question had been
caused by the fact that Mr. Shandy, one of the most regular men in everything he did, had
made it a rule to wind up a large houseclock and to have sexual intercourse with Mrs. Shandy
on the first Sunday night of every month. That is why, by an unhappy association of ideas,
his wife could never hear the said clock wound up but the thought of some other things
popped into her mind, and vicevesra. Hence her question, which, by interrupting what
Tristram’s parents were about when they begot him, may have negatively affected the
formature and temperature of his body, genius and mind and influenced the transfusion
of the animal spirit from father to son.

This novel by Laurence Sterne made nonsense of all the “rules” that had been used before.
There was hardly any real story, a lot of the story was told backwards, there were pages and
pages which had nothing to do with the story, and Tristram was not created as a “hero”. He
was. In fact, the opposite of a “hero” – he was an “anti-hero”
- and by breaking all the rules, “Tristram Shandy” was not a novel, but a kind of “anti-novel”.
Sterne was a great joker, who delighted in breaking the rules. Using caricature, digressions,
absurdly over-done language to describe the most ordinary things, and a collection of quite
mad characters, Sterne makes glorious fun of the earlier serious novelists like Samuel
Richardson, and even of the more jokey Henry Fielding. But underneath the jokes and
nonsensical parts, and underneath what seems to be disorganised chaos, there is a very solid
strength of form and story that has made “Tristram Shandy” a lasting and important novel. It
tells a very human story, told in loving, even sentimental detail, of the two Shandy brothers-
Walter and Toby- and their sometimes philosophical, and sometimes ridiculous ways of
dealing with the world around them. Both men are dominated by women: Walter Shandy by
his wife, Uncle Toby by the greedy Widow Wadman. Both men see a world that tries to stop
them having a good time, and both men refuse to give in to the pressures of the world. The
novel has an extraordinary technical virtuosity, and a very modem philosophy of time (it
takes the hero four books in which to be born.) It seems to be a chaotic, disorganised “stream
of consciousness” (i.e. writing down the ideas in the order in which Tristram thinks about
them) but its ideas about the importance of life and individuality give it an emotional sense of
completeness.

Tobias Smollett- The Adventures of Roderick Random as a picaresque novel

The picaresque novel (Spanish: picaresca, from pícaro, for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of
prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish, but "appealing hero", of low social
class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet
and author. He was best noted for his picaresque novels, like The Adventures of Roderick
Random and also the The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. They are stories of affection and
adventures in war – with some special details regarding sailors within the Navy (based on his
Smollett’s own experiences). They give a “real” portrait of eighteenth Century English life
(especially the stories of the sailors, the Navy, doctors, etc.) The novels of Smollett are
excellent examples of the “picaresque” style. For Smollett, the picaresque form offered the
opportunity to expose a noble hero to the corrupt influences of the world. The hero's ability
to resist temptation proved him worthy.

The Adventures of Roderick Random is a picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett, first

published in 1748. It is partially based on Smollett's experience as a naval-surgeon’s mate in
the British Navy, In the preface, Smollett acknowledges the connections of his novel to the
two satirical picaresque works he translated into English: Gil Blas, Don Quixote The novel
is set in the 1730s and 1740s and tells the life story (in the first person) of Roderick
"Rory" Random, who was born to a Scottish gentleman and a lower-class woman and is thus
shunned by his father's family. Smollett offers a vicious portrayal of the hypocrisy, greed,
deceit and snobbery peculiar to the times, especially among the upper and middle classes. He
exposes the brutality, incompetence and injustice of the Royal Navy. The Adventures of
Roderick Random technically modeled on Lesage’s Gil Blas and so belongs to the older
picaresque tradition. A series of episodes, told with vigour and vividness, are linked together
in the life of the selfish and unprincipled hero who relates them. Smollett ushers us into a
disagreeable world in which the commonest emotions spring from malice, envy, spite and
cruelty, while mutual derision forms the basis of most acquaintance ships. Smollett assigns a
moral purpose to the novel, which is to rouse “that generous indignation which ought to
animate the reader against the sordid and vicious disposition of the world. The picture of life
which he presents in his novels is not a pleasing one.” He depicts a word of spite and ill-
natured, envy and conceit. Mutual suspicion exists even between friends, Rodrick Random he
sets out to, In the preface of Roderick Random (1748), Smollett says,

“I have attempted to represent modest merit struggling with every difficulty to which a
friendless orphan is exposed from his own want of experience, as well as from the
selfishness, envy, malice and base indifference of mankind.”

Roderick Random in the story a poor, penniless by who, having been for saken successively
by his father and uncle, is left to find for himself, After a number of mishaps and adventures
he is appointed surgeons mate on a man-of-war. He has horrible experiences on board the
warship, is ship wrecked robbed by his mates and left naked on the shore. Dogged
persistently by malice and misfortune he is at cast arrested and cast into prison. But now his
uncle hunts him out secures his release and takes him aboard on a trading voyage. Finally he
meets his father who has become fabulously rich. He now goes to marry Narissa, the
beautiful girl with whom he had fallen in love. Roderick, a young Scottish man, is left with
no money and no parents. His uncle, Lieutenant Tom Bowling of the British Navy, helps
him. Roderick comes to London with his old school-friend, Trap, and gets a job as a surgeon.
He is cheated and tricked, and forced on a warship, fighting some seabattles. He returns to
London, gets a job as a footman, falls in love with a girl called Narcissa, but is again tricked
and kidnapped and taken to France where he joins the French Army. He is rescued by his
uncle, Tom Bowling, and his friend, Trap. He returns to England, but gets into trouble and is
put in jail. He tries to marry a very rich woman because he needs the money. He then meets
Narcissa again, but cannot marry her because he has no money. He takes another job on a
ship and meets a very wealthy merchant, Don Roderigo. He discovered that Don Roderigo is
his own, long lost father. Roderick now is rich, happy and returns to marry Narcissa. His
friend, Strap, marries Narcissa’s maid. They face a happy future.

Conclusion

Novel is a modern form of literature. It is born as a result of print that could be a mechanical
invention. Novels might reach a bigger audience as a result of print. Novels began to be
written from the seventeenth century and floral within the eighteenth century. New teams of
lower-middle-class; alongside the standard noble and refined categories in England and
France fashioned the new audience of novels. With the growing readership, the earnings of
authors increased. This made them free from financial dependence on patronage of
aristocrats. They became freelance to experiment with completely different literary designs.
During the 18th century, it was treated with a lot of contempt by the literary establishment. It
was the era of novels. Different categories of novel with selected works of eminent novelists
Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne appreciated. The work of this foursome is of
monumental significance, particularly because they were not only our first novelists but some
of our best.