How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"For by [the loss of virginity] you are rendered infamous, and driven, like lepers of old, out of society; at least, from the society of all but wicked and reprobate persons; for no others will associate with you.
If you have fortunes, you are hereby rendered incapable of enjoying them; if you have none, you are disabled from acquiring any, nay almost of procuring your sustenance; for no persons of character will receive you into their houses. Thus you are often driven by necessity itself into a state of shame and misery, which unavoidably ends in the destruction of both body and soul.
Can any pleasure compensate these evils? Can any temptation have sophistry and delusion strong enough to persuade you to so simple a bargain? Or can any carnal appetite so overpower your reason, or so totally lay it asleep, as to prevent your flying with affright and terror from a crime which carries such punishment always with it?" (1.7.8-10)
Tom Jones is all about sex. This is an amazingly raunchy novel (if you sort through all of the old-fashioned language, that is). So why does Fielding start off the book with this long moral lesson from Squire Allworthy on the evils of sex outside of marriage? Why rain on everyone's parade before the novel has really gotten started?
There are a couple of reasons we can think of: maybe Fielding wanted to show that he knows what good moral behavior looks like, even if 99% of his characters don't follow a code of conventional morality. Or maybe Fielding is trying to set up a contrast between Squire Allworthy's super-strict ideals and the sympathetic way he actually treats Jenny Jones. Squire Allworthy reads Jenny the riot act for her sins, but then he treats her with great kindness. So maybe Fielding wants to show that codes of morality need to be softened with compassion for human weaknesses.
Quote #2
"La, ma'am, what doth your la'ship think? the girl that your la'ship saw at church on Sunday [Molly], whom you thought so handsome; though you would not have thought her so handsome neither, if you had seen her nearer, but to be sure she hath been carried before the justice for being big with child. She seemed to me to look like a confident slut: and to be sure she hath laid the child to young Mr Jones. And all the parish says Mr Allworthy is so angry with young Mr Jones, that he won't see him. To be sure, one can't help pitying the poor young man, and yet he doth not deserve much pity neither, for demeaning himself with such kind of trumpery. Yet he is so pretty a gentleman, I should be sorry to have him turned out of doors. I dares to swear the wench was as willing as he; for she was always a forward kind of body. And when wenches are so coming, young men are not so much to be blamed neither; for to be sure they do no more than what is natural. Indeed it is beneath them to meddle with such dirty draggle-tails; and whatever happens to them, it is good enough for them. And yet, to be sure, the vile baggages are most in fault." (4.12.3)
It's so weird that the women in this novel often turn all the blame on other women for their sexual wrongdoing. We find this bizarre because, obviously, it takes two to tango. Why is it more Molly's fault than Tom's that they had sex? Just because Molly physically has to have the kid doesn't mean she is solely responsible for its production. But Mrs. Honour (Sophia's maid) seems happy to call Molly a "confident slut," while Tom is "[doing] no more than what is natural." This suggests that Tom's sexuality is natural but that Molly's sexuality is immoral—a division that, from our twenty-first century perspective, seems really messed up.
Quote #3
Certain, however, it is, that [Tom] saw [Molly] in the light of compassion; and though his love to her was not of that kind which could give him any great uneasiness at her inconstancy, yet was he not a little shocked on reflecting that he had himself originally corrupted her innocence; for to this corruption he imputed all the vice into which she appeared now so likely to plunge herself.
This consideration gave him no little uneasiness, till Betty, the elder sister, was so kind, some time afterwards, entirely to cure him by a hint, that one Will Barnes, and not himself, had been the first seducer of Molly; and that the little child, which he had hitherto so certainly concluded to be his own, might very probably have an equal title, at least, to claim Barnes for its father. (5.6.2-3)
Fielding seems pretty open and accepting of sex, but he also presents the basic social reality of his time and place, which is that a woman who loses her virginity before marriage has to pay much harsher public consequences than a guy does. Tom appears to think of Molly's loss of virginity as an event that can entirely change her ethical world, making her "plunge" into "vice." A dude can afford be less worried about his own chastity (though it's not unimportant, as Squire Allworthy reminds us in his speechifying to Tom), but he has to worry a heck of a lot about his partner's virtue. Why would a lady's chastity be so much more important to these people than a man's?