Caught Unawares by a Benefactor: Embodying the Deserving Object of Charity in the Eighteenth-Century Novel
نویسنده
چکیده
When on their way to London, Tom Jones and Partridge are attacked by a highwayman, who wants a hundred-pound banknote that Tom carries in his pocket, Tom’s behavior manifests both his personal bravery and what strikes Partridge (and some readers) as a rather extravagant kindness. After deftly disarming the robber, Tom lets him tell his story. He learns that this is the first robbery that the man has attempted, that the pistol is not even loaded, and that the “poor wretch” has been driven to this act of violence by the “greatest ... imaginable” distress, “that of five hungry children, and a wife lying in of a sixth, in the utmost want and misery.”1 To prove that he is not lying, the man offers to take Tom and Partridge to his house, “not above two miles off.” When Tom pretends that he and Partridge would indeed go with him and “his fate should depend entirely on the truth of his story,” the man expresses “so much alacrity,” that Tom feels “completely satisfied with his veracity, and [begins] now to entertain sentiments of compassion for him.” As Fielding puts it, “He returned the fellow his empty pistol, advised him to think of
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