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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
Abraham Adams, Joseph Andrews, and Fanny make it two miles from the inn and reach a parish. A gentleman is smoking a pipe outside. The man notices that Adams is a clergyman and offers him some beer and a pipe at a nearby inn, which Adams eagerly accepts. The man is pleased with his guests and believes Joseph and Fanny must be true Christians as well. He likes that Adams is familiar with them; by contrast, the parson of his own parish is distant with common people. Adams is hesitant to criticize a fellow clergyman, so he doesn’t agree with the man’s observation.
Adams is always eager to accept a drink and a smoke, showing how he isn’t as different from the greedy clergyman Trulliber as he might want to believe. Adams also likes anyone who is eager to praise his own work, although he maintains his loyalty to his profession by refusing to criticize a fellow clergyman that he hasn’t met before.
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The gentleman generously says he’d ask Abraham Adams to stay at the parish and become his own chaplain, if only Adams didn’t have such a large family. The gentleman offers to at least put Adams, Joseph, and Fanny up for the night. Then he remembers that his housekeeper is abroad and has locked all the rooms—which means can’t have guests. He offers to lend them some horses instead.
This random gentleman seems to be one of the most generous characters that Adams, Joseph, and Fanny have encountered so far on their journey. But when the gentleman must actually make good on his promises, he gives an excuse so strange that it is almost certainly made-up.
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As it turns, out, the gentleman can’t lend Abraham Adams a horse either because a groom has declared that all the horses are sick. Adams feels the gentleman must be one of the unluckiest in the world to have such mischievous servants. They retire for the night, and in the morning, the gentleman returns to his house alone. That morning, Adams decides to at least write a letter to the gentleman to ask him for money to pay their new bill at the inn (plus a little extra for the road), but it turns out the gentleman has just left on a long journey. Joseph Andrews begins to suspect that the generous gentleman isn’t actually so generous, but Adams scolds him.
It is clear that the “generous” gentleman likes to talk about his generosity more than he likes to actually practice it. Even the naïve Joseph Andrews suspects that the gentleman does not intend to follow through on his promises. Perhaps the reason why Adams can’t see through the gentleman’s lies is that Adams himself has a similar tendency to talk about generosity without practicing it in the real world.
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The host at the inn informs Abraham Adams and Joseph Andrews that the gentleman was in fact lying about his hospitality and doesn’t have much to offer anyone. Adams says he’s never heard of such a thing. Furthermore, Adams adds that the gentleman deceived him and the others into racking up a tab so large at the inn that they can’t pay it. The host says he’ll trust Adams, and that even if Adams doesn’t pay him back it won’t ruin him. He offers Adams another drink, which pleases Adams.
Adams may value education and learning, but he also likes to maintain his ignorance at times when it suits him. Here, Adams blames his overindulgences not on himself but on the false information that the gentleman gave him. The host seems to have experience dealing with men like Adams and the gentleman, which is why he doesn’t make a big deal over Adams’s inability to pay.
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