The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding: BOOK XV., iii. – vi.

Wow. This section came within in seconds of being really dark. Sure, there have been serious moments in this novel, but…wow. I honestly had a hard time believing I was reading what the text was saying. This just didn’t seem like that kind of book. As Fielding says,

this being the most tragical matter in our whole history

But first, we’ll backtrack a bit (this whole section is a flashback that contains a flashback to get us up to the point we were at last week (or close to it, anyway).

You might recall that Lady Bellaston had this plan to help Lord Fellmar see how hung up Sophie was on Tom. It was this stupid plan where at a dinner party someone talked about witnessing a duel that resulted in the death of someone:

“A young fellow we none of us know; a Somersetshire lad just came to town, one Jones his name is; a near relation of one Mr Allworthy, of whom your lordship I believe hath heard. I saw the lad lie dead in a coffee-house.—Upon my soul, he is one of the finest corpses I ever saw in my life!”

Not at all shockingly, Sophia is distraught. And it’s not helped much when later Belaston tells her it was a prank.

Seriously? What kind of monster does that? Just wait a minute…

Fellmar sops by the next day to see Sophia, who doesn’t want to see him. He clearly has a thing for her, and she is not interested. She calls him an “odious lord” and doesn’t want anyone to admit him to her presence.

So, Bellaston comes up with a new plan—Fellmar rapes her, then she has no choice but to marry him. She’ll eventually come around and love him, but the important thing is that they’ll be married. Fellmar, to his credit, resists the notion on moral grounds. But Bellaston convinces him it’s the right thing (eventually) to do.

So, Bellaston clears out everyone from hearing range, and Fellmar corners Sophia as she reads. He pours his heart out to her, she rejects him. He’s deaf to that and more aggressively pours his heart out, she rejects him a bit more forcefully. And just as things start to get very dark Sophia is rescued.

By her drunk and enraged father, who we haven’t seen in a bit. He thinks he’s stumbled into a very different situation. He blows off Fellmar as he tries to ask for Sophia’s hand, Squire Western doesn’t want anything to do with the nobility, he wants an “honest country gentleman.” There’s a bit of a row, Western fires Mrs. Honour (so she can’t help Sophia escape again), and then Weston, the parson, and Sophia leave.

We get a chapter explaining how Western found Sophia (short version: Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his sister), but that’s pretty much where we leave things. Sophia’s on her way to get married to Blifil and Honour’s on her way to tell Tom what’s going on.

Bellaston’s gone from a semi-ridiculous plot device to a real monster. We’re done (I hope) with the Fellmar stuff and we’ve got to be headed toward the Endgame re: Blifil. The pace is picking up and I expect things are going to stay interesting from here on out.