Slipslop screams for help, bringing Mr. Adams, who mistakenly attacks Slipslop while the Beau gets away.
The companions flee the scene and find accommodations at the home of a family named Wilson. Lady Booby, the wife of squire Sir Thomas Booby, takes a romantic interest in Joseph Andrews for his good looks and popularity, and makes him her footman.
Two days later Joseph and Fanny are brought before the Justice of the Peace, who is perfectly willing to acquiesce in Lady Booby’s plans.Joseph and Fanny arrive at the Adams home, where Mr. Adams counsels Joseph to be moderate and rational in his attachment to his future wife. Mr. Booby dispenses a small fortune to Fanny, a valuable clerical living to Mr. Adams, and a job as excise-man to the Pedlar. She claims to oppose the marriage of the young lovers on the grounds that they will raise a family of beggars in the parish. Lady Booby then arrives to find Adams and Slipslop in bed together, but the confusion dissipates before long and Adams makes his way back toward his room.
On his first night out, he runs into Two Ruffians who beat, strip, and rob him and leave him in a ditch to die. Joseph attempts to point out to Adams his own inconsistency, but to no avail.Meanwhile, Lady Booby is plotting to use Beau Didapper to come between Joseph and Fanny. He's found and nursed by an innkeeper's maid, which stirs lusts there, again besides his honorable conduct, but is found by the good Parson. Plot Summary. When Adams refuses to cooperate with Lady Booby’s efforts to keep the lovers apart, Lady Booby summons a lawyer named Scout, who trumps up a legal pretext for preventing the marriage. After a year or so Sir Thomas dies, leaving his widow free to make attempts on the footman’s virtue. Lady Booby alias "Belle" (Ann-Margret), the lively wife of the fat landed squire Sir Thomas Booby (Peter Bull), has a lusty eye on the attractive, intelligent villager Joseph Andrews (Peter Firth), a Latin pupil and protégé of Parson Adams (Sir Michael Hordern), and makes him their footman. Lady Booby returns to a life of flirtation in London.Joseph Andrews is writing his sister Pamela to tell her that his mistress has fallen in love with him. His virtue infuriates her, so she sends him away again, resolved to terminate his employment. Mr. Adams rides in a coach with the obnoxious Peter Pounce, who so insults the parson that he eventually gets out of the coach and walks beside Joseph and Fanny’s horse for the last mile of the journey.The companions finally arrive home in Lady Booby’s parish, and Lady Booby herself arrives shortly thereafter. Adams rejoices and once again thanks the Pedlar, then resumes counseling Joseph to avoid passionate attachments. After a couple more miles on the road, the travelers encounter a gregarious Squire who offers them generous hospitality and the use of his coach but then retracts these offers at the last minute. Unfortunately, a wrong turn brings him to Fanny’s room, where he sleeps until morning, when Joseph discovers the parson and the milkmaid in bed together.
Mr. Adams, not so detached, weeps copiously for his son, who fortunately comes running up to the house before long, having been rescued from the river by the same Pedlar who earlier redeemed the travelers from one of their inns. Joseph Andrews study guide contains a biography of Henry Fielding, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.Joseph Andrews essays are academic essays for citation. "Joseph Andrews Summary". Summary Joseph Andrews (full title: The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams) is a novel written by Henry Fielding and published in 1742. Soon Joseph endures and rebuffs another, less subtle attempt at seduction by Lady Booby’s waiting-gentlewoman, the middle-aged and hideous Lady Booby sends for Joseph and tries again to beguile him, to no avail. Just as Adams finishes his recommendation of stoical detachment, someone arrives to tell him that his youngest son, Dick, has just drowned in the river. The owner of the hounds, a sadistic Squire whom Fielding labels a “The Hunter of Men and his retinue of grotesques taunt Mr. Adams throughout dinner, prompting the parson to fetch Joseph and Fanny from the kitchen and leave the house. He has also been noticed by the parson of the parish, Mr. Abraham Adams, who wishes to cultivate Joseph’s moral and intellectual potential. This book is one of the first novels written in English, and Fielding described the work as a comic epic poem in prose. In London, Joseph falls in with a fast crowd of urban footmen, but despite his rakish peers and the insinuations of the libidinous Lady Booby he remains uncorrupted. Joseph and his cudgel come to the parson’s defense, laying waste to the pack of hounds. Adams discusses this strange behavior with the innkeeper, who tells him about the Squire’s long history of making false promises.Walking on after nightfall, the companions encounter a group of spectral lights that Mr. Adams takes to be ghosts but that turn out later to be the lanterns of sheep-stealers.
The Pedlar suddenly thinks of the Wilson family, who long ago lost a child with a distinctive birth-mark on his chest, and it so happens that Joseph bears just such a distinctive birth-mark. She then suffers agonies of indecision over whether to retain Joseph or not, but eventually Joseph receives his wages and his walking papers from the miserly steward, Joseph sets out for the Boobys’ country parish, where he will reunite with his childhood sweetheart and now fiancée, the illiterate milkmaid Joseph defies the Surgeon’s prognosis the next day, receiving a visit from Mr. Adams ends up getting a loan from a servant from a passing coach, and he and Joseph are about to part ways when he discovers that he has left his sermons at home and thus has no reason to go to London. There, the Pedlar reveals that he has discovered that Fanny is in fact the long-lost daughter of Mr. and Late that night, hi-jinx ensue as Beau Didapper seeks Fanny’s bed but ends up in Mrs. Slipslop’s.