di A London Justice of the Peace closely in contact with life, Henry Fielding admired qualities like frankness, generosity, courage and openness of spirit, and rebelled against the tendency to equate morality with sexual control, so typical of the Puritan standards of the middle class. He valued people more for was in their hearts than for their actions. His morality was warm and compassionate, though stern to those who deliberately did harm others; he understood that people are neither totally bad or totally good, and he created characters that were true-to-life. The reading public delighted in Tom Johns, because they understood him, and in reading about him the recognized themselves.
Fielding drew on the picaresque tradition, by setting his characters on the road and involving them in a series of adventures told with humorous gusto. His Tom Jones presents a hero involved in a series of adventures which seem to be about to destroy him, but at the same time there is the comic awareness of the absurdities of life.
His stories are told by a third-person omniscient narrator, who is also intrusive because he often intervenes to comment on the characters ans the events, associates with the reader and inquires his opinion. As a result the reader is constantly involved and amused.
