Focusing on the second chapter of the tenth book of Tom Jones it will be shown that Fielding's novel keeps in line with Watt's original criteria for the eighteenth-century novel. .
In the second chapter of Book X, when the Irish man, Fitzpatrick, arrives at the Inn to inquire after his wife, the narrator, through dialogue, conveys briefly the hardships Fitzpatrick has gone through to find and secure his run-away wife. The reader needs little other information to understand that Fitzpatrick is in distressed and determined to find his wife. .
Directly after Fitzpatrick is shown to the bedroom the narrator interjects. Though interrupting the action, the narrator has vital information the reader needs to understand the following scenario; to understand the followings hilarity. The narrator continues: "It hath long been a Custom established in the polite world that a Husband shall never enter his Wife's Apartment without first knocking at the Door" (462). Here, the reader should catch the term polite. The narrator has implied that Fitzpatrick might not knock, if he does not knock then he is surely an impolite man-according to custom. The interrupting narrator has provided an authentic report of social customs and particulars of the place and time of the action. .
Up to this point it might be difficult for the reader to believe that Fitzpatrick is realistic; in modern terms, he might seem a flat character. But the scenario does not end there, nor does the narrator. The narrator says "To say the Truth, there are several Ceremonies instituted among the polished Part of Mankind, which, tho' they may, to coarser Judgments, appear as Matters of mere Form, are found to have much of Substance in them, by the more discerning" (263). The distressed Irish man is not discerning. The narrator describes him as coarse and unpolished-though not necessarily impolite. These adjectives that describe Fitzpatrick creates a character that is as authentic as Tom Jones, and as detailed as we need to understand his behaviors.
