Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog
It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.
Currently reading
The Modern Husband, Henry Fielding
My only previous experience with Fielding was om Jones and it didn't go all that well; the authorial voice in the novel overwhelmed everything else and for the most part I kept thinking, "this is supposed to be funny," rather than, "this is funny."
Well, this is a stage play - authorial voice can't be a problem. But would it be funny? Frankly, no. I didn't find it funny at all and I think a director would have to be very inventive to drag much visual humour into it. That said, I don't think it's a bad play - it's just that its merits don't include belly laughs, or even chuckles, really.
It's very satirical - primarily of its contemporary audience who are portrayed as going to the theatre, turning up late, to be seen and to gossip and intrigue, with the stage action being a mere distraction. The are further made out to be a bunch of vice-driven gamblers and libertines more interested in the appearance of virtue than any kind of morality at all.
Women are shown to be the main victims of all this, with husbands prostituting wives in order to maintain appearances when in financial difficulty and rich predators corrupting all and sundry through abuse of power, influence and money.
The most interesting character here is not the young newly wed wife who maintains her principles when all around have none but the older wife who has capitulated to her husband's demands that she act as mistress to others in order to raise income when his legal affairs have consumed all their money.
Mrs Modern is no saint, being quite vindictive at times and an inveterate gambler and intriguer, but it is clear that circumstance and her husband have exerted enormous pressure on her and that she was reluctant to start down the round to infamy. She points up the fundamental social problems (the imbalance of power between men and women inside and outside marriage) more clearly than the young virtuous woman she tries to ruin.
I find the satire rather biting and what the play lacks in humour it makes up for in righteous anger. A much simpler, quicker and superior work than Tom Jones.
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