Passion and Compassion

Early in Fielding’s The Governess, the pupils of Mrs. Teachum’s academy are reformed by an experience in which they physically fight over an apple, feel and inflict pain, and later reflect seriously on the motivations for and consequences of their actions.  This, their first of many lessons, soon finds the girls, when dining together, “so changed, that each helped her next Neighbour before she would touch any for herself” (59).  I was surprised, then, to encounter, just a few pages later, what seemed a very different sentiment regarding one’s fellow person.  When, out on a walk, the class comes upon “a miserable ragged Fellow, who begged their charity,” they move instinctively to provide him aid, which prompts the following from their governess: “She told them, she approved of their Readiness to assist the poor Fellow, as he appeared to them: But oftentimes those Fellows made up dismal Stories without much Foundation, and because they were lazy, and would not work” (109).  That Mrs. Teachum would advocate caution, even mistrust, when interacting with the seemingly needy seemed incongruous with what I had thus far read.  Further reflection recalled, however, a story shared by Miss Jenny Pearce earlier in the novel, by which I began to form a clearer picture of that which Fielding is here promoting.  Jenny tells of a time in her youth in which she was much grieved by the loss of a beloved pet.  When Jenny's mother believes her daughter to have spent sufficient time mourning her loss, she advises her daughter thus: “Now tho’ I have always encouraged you in all Sentiments of Good-nature and Compassion . . . you are to consider, my Child, that you are not to give way to any Passions that interfere with your Duty" (65). 

The narrator soon offers several striking exemplifications of the validity of Mrs. Peace and Mrs. Teachum’s calls for caution.  In the fairy tale concerning Princess Hebe, the queen warns her daughter against “the Indulgence of the most Laudable Passion, even Benevolence and Compassion itself, through the tale of a “Hen, who, thinking that she heard the Voice of a little Duckling in Distress, flew from her Young ones, to go and give it Assistance” (129).  In consequence of committing this charitable act, the helpful hen is eaten by a fox, and her offspring by a falcon.  Yikes.  Soon after, Mrs. Teachum’s students are told, by Miss Jenny, of Princess Hebe’s being tricked into estrangement from her mother by her impulse to rescue a shepherdess from the clutches of the deceitful Rozella and of the fairy Sybella’s having been similarly hoodwinked in her efforts to aid what seems an old man interested in the reformation of his wayward son (135; 137).  These grave lessons could clearly be perceived as suggesting that charitable action leads to disaster.  However, as so many didactic voices throughout the novel explicitly commend benevolence, there is obviously something more at work here. 

This may simply amount to one aspect of Fielding’s larger admonition against acting with “Passion.”  In the aforementioned examples in which charitable action has dire consequences, it is important to note that each hinges on a spontaneous reaction, that of leaping to the aid of one in need, to a spontaneous emotion, that of compassion.  Happily, there are many examples in the novel in which concern with the well-being of others does not lead to oppression or death.  The students’ selfless interaction with one another following the “apple fray” is, of course, one important example, as the girls are only equal to such magnanimity after careful reflection upon their own and the others’ behavior.  Fielding posits reason, then, rather than passion, as the proper impetus for action. 

Because I, in my reading of The Governess, thought its views on charity strikingly pronounced, I wondered what other philosophy may have informed these views.  Having read, in the text’s introduction, that Fielding was influenced by Locke’s theories on education, I was interested in Locke’s views on benevolence, and I found Steven Forde’s “The Charitable John Locke” to be helpful (29).  It would be very difficult to paraphrase Forde’s treatment of the complex nature of Locke’s views on charity, but the following excerpt from his essay, though seemingly not wholly related to that which I am concerned with here, is instructive:

“In both [his “Venditio”] and the passage on charity in the First Treatise, Locke is very precise in his language: though charity is a duty it is not a duty of ‘justice.’  Justice, in matters of property, is concerned only with respecting the possessions of others and with fair rules of trade, a standard relatively easily reconciled with self-interest. Charity is a more exacting moral standard, but one to which people cannot strictly be held . . . [M] men are duty-bound only to refrain from harming or destroying one another.” (451)

Forde also asserts, ultimately, that “Lockean morality is not individual right per se, but concern for the common good.”  (1).  If I, in my admittedly very limited study of this aspect of Lockean theory, am correct in believing it to suggest that, because a natural right to self-preservation logically engenders self-interest, mediating one’s compassionate impulses through one’s self-interest is ethical, then these views seem to relate to those espoused by Fielding in The Governess.  For Mrs. Teachum and the novel’s other educators, self-preservation amounts, of course, to the preservation of one’s moral character, or the strict adherence to one’s “Duty.”  I would be interested in learning of the extent to which Fielding, like Locke, conceived of such preservation as ultimately beneficial to both the individual and society.