Turning the Hearts of Our Enemies
	The Game-Theoretical Design  of Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews
	Overheads for a lecture  in Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook's English 30, W97
	Francis Steen Department of English, UCSB Monday, March 3, 1997

1. Game-theoretical model: how to achieve cooperation
2. Cheater detection: how to tell the truth behind appearances
3. Commercial society versus the traditional agrarian society: resolving the conflict in a creative conceptual blend
4. The destabilization and reaffirmation of gender codes

• Joseph is dismissed for refusing Lady Booby's advances
• Robbed on the way home, he is left for dead in a ditch
• A lawyer in a coach saves him to prevent a lawsuit
• Betty the chambermaid gives him a bed at the Tow-wouse's inn
• The surgeon and parson Barnabas pronounce him dying
• Parson Adams arrives and makes sure he recovers
• Betty tries to seduce Joseph and ends up with Mr. Tow-wouse

• Joseph doesn't want to give in to Lady Booby
• The thief takes his money for nothing and beats him up too
• The people in the coach at first see no reason to help him
• Mrs. Tow-wouse thinks he's not worth taking care of
• Joseph's failure to enlist people's cooperation almost kills him

• The thief falls for Temptation and leaves Joseph with a Sucker's payoff
• The people in the coach worry about Sucker's payoff and prefer no cooperation (Z)
• Mrs. Tow-wouse worries about Sucker's payoff and prefers no cooperation
• Parson Trulliber worries about Sucker's payoff and prefers no cooperation

The problem of any community: how to realize the benefits of cooperation, or move from Z to R.

What makes it even more difficult is what is known as Banker's Paradox: the bank will lend you money only if you can prove you don't need it.

Joseph becomes victim to the Banker's Paradox: he's really in trouble and needs help badly--and this is precisely when people are the most reluctant to help him, because they're worried they'll be stuck with a Sucker's payoff

• In Richardson's Pamela, the actions of the heroine could be interpreted to be basically selfish--as Fielding's parody Shamela shows
• This morality doesn't overcome the Banker's Paradox, since you would only help people who can provide you with significant advantages
• In Joseph Andrews, Fielding wanted to propose a more radical morality: always cooperate, on the basis of

• Empathy means to be open to experiencing another's distress, which will lead you to cooperate even if the favor cannot be instantly (or ever) reciprocated, at least not personally

• Parson Adams showed "a great deal of emotion at the distress of this poor creature" (50), before he knows it is Joseph
• He holds "it was the duty of men of all professions to apply their skill gratis for the relief of the poor and necessitous" (51)
• He says of the second inn-keeper, who shows no compassion for Joseph's bruised leg, "he believed the devil had more humanity" (99)
• He asks Trulliber to lend him money "which, peradventure, I shall return to you" (140)
• He argues we should "forgive others their debts" (184)
• He is "the good parson, whose heart was naturally disposed to love and affection" (145)
• He "always sympathized with his friends on [sad] occasions" (189)
• In contrast, Mrs. Tow-wouse shows "an insensibility to human misery" (160)

• If most people are empathic and compassionate, this works as insurance: the risk is spread out, and on average everyone is much better off
• As Adams puts it at the end of the book, the aim is "not only to defeat the designs of our enemies, but even to turn their hearts" (265)
• That is, to move not from Sucker's payoff to Zero (which is the main concern of the unvirtuous characters), but to a stable cooperation.

• The empathic strategy, however, is vulnerable to cheaters, who consistently fall for Temptation and leave you with a Sucker's payoff
• Since nobody has infinite resources, nobody can survive a long string of Sucker's payoffs--Joseph is cutting it very close
• Parson Adams doesn't deal with cheaters very well--he is too gullible

B. Seeing through appearances, cheater detection

• The second book is a string of people who are not what they seem
• Parson Adams is not very good at seeing though people
• He sees no further into people than they desire him to
• This makes him extra vulnerable to the Sucker's payoff

• Adams walks off and Joseph is stuck with the bill for the horse
• Adams hears the two lawyers blame and praise a justice (the pretend virtue of truthfulness)
• Slipslop rescues Joseph; in the coach they hear the story of Leonora
• Adams encounters the self-proclaimed patriot (the pretended virtue of courage)
• He rescues Fanny from rape before he knows it's her--but almost gets killed
• The assailant manages to stick the blame on them (the pretended virtue of the innocent victim)
• They are recognized at the justice's and released, and walk to the next inn
• Fanny faints when she hears Joseph, and Adams throws his Aeschylus on the fire
• Joseph and Fanny meet, and Adams dances for joy
• Adams visits Trulliber, the avaricious parson who pretends to be a man of charity (the pretended virtue of charity)
• They encounter the man of false promises (the pretended virtue of magnanimity or generosity)
• Adams and the alehouse keeper discuss book learning and life experience

• Adams' gullibility has got them into trouble again--they're stuck with the bill
• Joseph knows Adams is wrong to believe that "knowledge of men is only to be learnt from books" (150)
• Nor do we have much reason to rely on his conviction that "a skilful physiognomist will rarely be deceived" (155)
• In the next book, the whole sequence with the Roasting Squire demonstrates that Adams lacks the ability to detect deception
• The doctor, for instance, "could laugh inwardly without betraying the least symptoms in his countenance" (211), tricking Adams into a tub of water
• The moral of this is that Joseph cannot rely on Adams alone: society is not what Adams thinks it is, and poses a set of problems that are not all solved in old books

C. Literature as a Social Reference Library

Developmental psychology

• Humans tend to look to others--elders and peers--for guidance for how to behave
• A six month old infant crawling on a glass floor with a 'visual cliff' will pause and look to the mother
• If the mother shows anxiety, the infant will retreat and maybe start crying
• If the mother smiles and nods, the infant will crawl onto the glass--in spite of its fear of heights

• For much longer than recorded history, human beings have lived in tribes of around a hundred people
• A vital aid for survival has consistently been the knowledge obtained from others in the group--typically elder teaching
• Humans are biologically disposed to acquire culture--to look to others, rather than continually reinventing the wheel
• Empathy is the cognitive adaptation for solving the cooperation problem--but culture, or elder-teaching, determines how it is activated
• Human cooperation is enabled by empathy and regulated through emotions such as affection, goodwill, gratitude, trust, and confidence; and also guilt, anger, fear, and resentment

• Renaissance society still has elements of the tribal community
• Most people still live in villages--perhaps 90%
• Even in the cities, craftsmen live in guilds, or stable neighborhoods
• A single morality--or standard of behavior--is preached from the pulpits
• The world was imagined to be a single coherent body--the Great Chain of Being

• Society is conceived of as a mechanism rather than an organism
• Massive urbanization: people move into spaces without real communities
• Trade becomes a significant new source of wealth
• Economic efficiency creates room for social mobility and independence
• The aristocracy loses its idiological dominance
• The new society needs a new set of morals

• People are looking for a set of social reference points to orient themselves
• Richardson's Familiar Letters sets out to do this--a form of elder teaching
• It grows into a novel, Pamela, which functions as social reference
• Since "examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts" (13), the novel--or "biography" as Fielding calls it--is a more effective form of elder teaching than moral treatises
• The Hollywood bankrobbery on Friday appears to have been scripted in the movie Heat, down to the costumes
• Fielding claims "emulation … inspires our imitation in an irresistible manner" (13), and focuses on describing good individuals
• Deceitful behavior will also be depicted, "to hold the glass to thousands in their closets, that they may contemplate their deformity, and endeavour to reduce it" (159)
• The kinds of things that can go wrong are depicted, and the cause is frequently a lack of good advice:
• Leonora ends in a pickle because she gets poor advice from her aunt
• The female narrator of the story deplores the "blameable levity in the education of our sex" (109)
• Mr. Wilson imputes all his misfortunes to an "early introduction into life, without a guide" (170)

Events in Book III

• Adams, Joseph, and Fanny get scared by lights and voices
• They are invited in to Mr. Wilson's house to rest
• He tells them his story of the Rake's Progress
• This is how he becomes a good judge of character, and learns to see through false appearances--such as the coquettes, who "are never what they seem" (177)
• Mr. Wilson in a man of the world who has deliberately constructed his life in the country, drawing on the best of both worlds and creating his own
• They depart and are entertained by the Roasting Squire
• Ill treated, they flee and take in at The New Inn
• The squire's men come to kidnap Fanny, and succeed
• She is freed by Peter Pounce, Lady Booby's steward
• They cover the final miles to Lady Booby's parish

Commercial society versus traditional agrarian society: resolving the conflict in a creative conceptual blend

• The Novel is the space where the ideology of the middle class is developed
• Wilson, the Gentleman Farmer, embodies the virtues of the self-sufficient man--with money deriving from the wine-business in London
• Desire is acceptable if its gratification does not destabilize the social order
• Compassion and empathy is reduced by the insulation provided by a retirement from the world--the forerunner of suburbia--and tempered by skilful cheater detection
• At the end, Joseph "declares he will imitate [his parents] in their retirement" (298)--we here have the social referent of choice

D. Reaffirming Destabilized Gender Codes

Events in Book IV

• They all arrive at Booby-Hall
• Lady Booby is still torn between love and pride
• She tells Adams to prevent the match; he refuses
• She enlists lawyer Scout to get rid of them; he acquiesces
• Her nephew Mr. Booby and his wife Pamela arrive
• As Joseph and Fanny are about to be sent to prison, Mr. Booby frees them
• Lady Booby is jealous of Fanny and schemes to get rid of her
• She talks her nephew into trying to convince Joseph; Joseph stands firm
• Beau Didapper accosts her and kisses her on the street
• His servant pimp tries to buy her and rape her, but is beaten by Joseph
• Mrs. Adams advices the parson to stay out of trouble
• Adams advices Joseph not to love Fanny too much
• The pedlar saves his son Dick from drowning
• Lady Booby and Beau Didapper comes to visit the parson's house
• Dick reads them the story of Leonard and Paul
• Beau offers Fanny settlements and starts fondling her
• Joseph boxes him on the ear, but a fight is averted
• The pedlar announces that Fanny is Joseph's sister
• Slipslop informs Lady Booby that Beau's servants will kidnap Fanny
• The project is dropped when they find out she is Fanny Andrews
• The whole gang spends the night at Booby-Hall
• Beau goes to rape Fanny, but ends up in Slipslop's bed
• Slipslop holds on to him and cries rape
• Adams comes and beats up the masculine Slipslop
• Lady Booby discovers them both naked
• Adams returns to his room, but ends up in Fanny's
• Joseph finds them (innocently) together in the morning
• Gammar Andrews reveal the babies had been exchanged
• Mr. Wilson testifies that Joseph is his lost son; Lady B leaves in agony
• They all go to Mr. Booby's place, celebrate the wedding, and undress Fanny in front of the narrator, "discovering, not putting off, ornaments" (297), unlike Shamela, who is "with all the pride of ornament cast off" (305).
• After a pleasant wedding night, Fanny gets £2,000 from Mr. Booby, Adams a living of £130 a year, and Joseph and Fanny settle near his parents.

Reaffirming Destabilized Gender Codes

• In Book I, there is the assumption of a symmetry of gender codes:
• Female mistresses desire their servants as much as male masters desire their maids
• Women (Lady Boody, Slipslop, and Betty) are attracted to men exclusively because of their external appearance and youth, just as men are conventionally attracted to women for their youth and beauty
• Women attracted to men desire to sleep with them instantly, just as men conventionally have little inclination to delay consummation
• Male servants have has much reason to preserve their 'virtue' (chastity) as female maids do

• At the end of Book I and throughout Book II, the traditional gender codes begin to reassert themselves:
• Betty's active desires are diverted to make her the "the vanquished one" who "quietly submitted … to her master's will" (72)
• Mrs. Tow-wouse is furious, but mainly at Betty, and quickly composes herself; his infidelity is no very serious matter
• Leonora makes a fatal female mistake: she is inconstant, and spends the rest of her life bemoaning it
• Horatio still loves her, she is (for what we know) still a virgin; the mere knowledge she has loved another spoils her in the respectable marriage market
• Fanny is rescued from a rapist, after a violent fight: a lot is clearly at stake
• When Fanny and Joseph meet, Fanny is shy and coy, Joseph forward and eager

• In Book III, the value of Fanny's virtue in general and virginity in particular comes to the fore:
• Women do wisely to consider "the many occasions on which the strength of a man may be useful to you" (163), most notably to keep other men off
• She is more frightened of men than ghosts (165)
• Mr. Wilson's youth demonstrates what happens to young girls who don't take care of their virtue
• He ruins a girl promised in marriage to a humbler but better man; her mind is ruined by the company of other kept mistresses, she steals money from him and leaves him, and ends up as a prostitute
• The unfaithful wife is abandoned by her husband, and Mr. Wilson's fondness for her does not last
• Finally, the constant Harriet Hearty wins all his affection, gets him out of prison, marries him, and has children with him--the perfect glue in a companionate marriage ("for what union can be so fast as our common interest in the fruits of our embraces?" (191)
• The Roasting Squire's designs to rape her heighten the sense of the pivotal value of her virginity; Joseph, tied to the bedpost, agonizes over her "untained innocence" (225)

• In Book IV, the continued fuss about Fanny's virtue is supplemented by these final elements:
• Gammar Andrews knowledge about Joseph not being their son that she conceals from her husband
• How can a husband be sure that his wife's child is his?
• Perhaps men are obsessed with female virtue because men who didn't care much ended up raising other men's children?
• Fielding proudly announces Fanny is pregant at the end--and the implication is that Joseph can't possibly have anything to worry about