Comment on the theme of providence as it is seen in Joseph Andrews

If Fielding is skeptical about the efficacy of human goodness in the corrupt world, he is nevertheless determined that it should always be recompensed; thus, when the "good" characters of Adams, Joseph, and Fanny are helpless to engineer their own happiness, Fielding takes care to engineer it for them. The role of the novelist thus becomes analogous to that of God in the real world: he is a providential planner, vigilantly rewarding virtue and punishing vice, and Fielding's overtly stylized plots and characterizations work to call attention to his designing hand. The parallel between plot and providence does not imply, however, that Fielding naïvely expects that good will always triumph over evil in real life; rather, as Judith Hawley argues, "it implies that life is a work of art, a work of conscious design created by a combination of Providential authorship and individual free will." Fielding's authorly concern for his characters, then, is not meant to encourage his readers in their everyday lives to wait on the favor of a divine author; it should rather encourage them to make an art out of the business of living by advancing and perfecting the work of providence, that is, by living according to the true Christian principles of active benevolence.