Tom Jones- Henry Fielding.

            

                                          Tom Jones,

                                                                    -  Henry Fielding

                                       The first edition of The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling was published in London on February 28, 1749, by Andrew Miller. A second edition, containing numerous revisions, appeared later that year. A third edition was published in 1750.

                                                     

 

                        On an inherited estate in Somerset shire in southwestern England, Squire Allworthy lives comfortably in a magnificent Gothic mansion with his spinster sister Bridget. Allworthy had been married to a beautiful woman who bore him three children, all of whom died in infancy. Their mother then followed them to the grave. The squire does not intend to remarry. If Bridget marries and bears a child, it would become the squire's heir. She has time, for she is still in her thirties. 
              One evening, upon his return from a three-month business trip in London, the squire discovers an infant soundly sleeping in his bed and summons his housekeeper, Mrs. Deborah Wilkins, to care for it until the squire gets a nurse for the child. Mrs. Wilkins speculates that the child was born of a neighborhood "hussy" who ought to be punished severely.

"Faugh! how it stinks!" she says. "It doth not smell like a Christian."
                     She recommends that the squire place it in a basket and take it to the local church. But he has already grown fond of the little chap.

                              At breakfast the next day, Allworthy informs his sister of the find. She exhibits compassion for the child but not for the mother, whom she refers to as an "audacious harlet," "wicked jade," and "vile strumpet." After concluding that none of their virtuous servant girls could be impugned in the matter, the Allworthys charge Mrs. Wilkins with learning the identity of the mother. The housekeeper secures the help of a friend, an elderly matron who knows her way around the neighborhood.            .                                    

                                             It is not long before they fix their suspicion on a young girl named Jenny Jones, the servant of a schoolmaster, Mr. Partridge. She is unlike other girls her age in that, surrounded by the schoolmaster's books, she has educated herself and even learned Latin from her master. The suspicions of the two women intensify when they recall that Jenny had spent time in the Allworthy home tending Miss Bridget during an illness. 
.                       When Mrs. Wilkins summons her, she confesses her guilt. Squire Allworthy, a magistrate, tells the girl that the law empowers him to punish her. However, he merely upbraids her for her immoral conduct, then informs her that he will rear the child in his home and provide for it in a way that she cannot. When he asks her to identify the father, she says honor and “religious vows" prevent her from doing so. Allworthy sends her to Little Eddington, a town a day's journey away, to protect her from wagging tongues. Neighbors then aim their gossip at Allworthy, suggesting that he fathered the child. He is, of course, innocent of the charge.