Joseph Andrews Pt. 1 by Henry Fielding

Joseph Andrews is, for those of you who know your history of western literature (specifically American and British) is sort of a parody answer to the novel Pamela by Samuel Richardson. According to the author, the style of the prose was also greating inspired by Cervantes Don Quixote. But enough about history, let's get down to the juicy bits.

This book was a surprisingly quick read, for an older bit of literature (disclaimer; I've been told I'm a surprisingly quick reader). The story, though obviously meant to be comic and over the top in many places, moved quickly enough to keep me interested and turning the pages. There were a few places where I wasn't sure if the author was intending to send-up the over-the-top morals of his day or defend them (and there was one whole chapter of sermonizing by one of the characters that I skipped over) but the plot itself was engaging. The main character was, to me, not at all relatable, but as it was comedy and parody that worked okay anyway.

There were points where, as a modern feminist, I was a little uncomfortable with the surface moral of the book (which often implied that women are all just walking vaginas out to entrap a man). I wasn't quite sure if this was poking fun at the morals of Pamela (which suggested that man are all walking dicks and women must be careful not to be entrapped) or if the writer perhaps believed it to a degree. But, setting that aside, the story was enjoyable, at points laugh out loud funny, and an interesting bit of history trivia to add to my internal database. I would give the book a 3.5 out of 5.