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Book 1, Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Joseph Andrews, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hypocrisy
Lust vs. Chastity
Social Class
Religion and Charity
Summary
Analysis
The narrator writes of Hesperus putting on his breeches and Phoebus winding down for the day before telling of the momentous meeting between Lady Booby and Joseph Andrews. He describes the many fine features of Joseph’s appearance, like his brawny shoulders and Roman nose. When Lady Booby sees him, she begins to second-guess what she wanted to say.
The beginning of the passage humorously mimics Greek poetry. Phoebus is the sun and Hesperus is the dusk, so the narrator is just using fancy words to say it was evening time. While it is humorous to use such fancy language for a simple meeting, it does also help convey how important the conversation between Joseph Andrews and Lady Booby will be, at least for the events of the story.
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Lady Booby starts by telling Joseph Andrews that she regrets hearing the complaints about him having sex with maids. Joseph blushes at the accusation, which makes Lady Booby think he’s guilty. She tells him that despite his guilt, she won’t fire him. Joseph protests that he’s never done more than kiss anyone, but Lady Booby doesn’t believe that he can restrain himself with just kissing. She asks what would happen if she let Joseph kiss her. Joseph says he wouldn’t do so, and that if he did, he’d still control himself to preserve his “virtue.”
Lady Booby clearly hasn’t given up on her passion for Joseph Andrews. As she did before, she speaks in a way that gives her plausible deniability, hoping that Joseph will be the one to break through the formal language and do something improper. Her words have the same outcome as before, with Joseph refusing to take the bait, no matter how obvious Lady Booby makes her advances.
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Lady Booby gets angry about all of Joseph Andrew’s talk about “virtue.” She thinks it absurd for men to talk about chastity. Joseph replies that he is the brother of the famous Pamela and that he wants to preserve the honor of his whole family. He apologizes if anything he said offended Lady Booby, and she says he is right to apologize—she didn’t mean anything, she was simply testing him to find out if the rumors she heard were true. She rings the bell to call Mrs. Slipslop, who doesn’t have far to come because she was listening at the keyhole.
This passage suggests that there is a double standard on chastity, with the virtue being admired much more in women than in men. Joseph’s character subverts this trope. Joseph has all the traits that were so valued in his sister Pamela, but in this novel, characters don’t value these traits to the same extent.
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