Joseph Andrews

The character of Joseph has been a stumbling-block to many modern readers for whom sexual purity may not seem intrinsically valuable, and the extent to which Fielding intended even eighteenth-century readers to take his title character seriously is a matter for debate. The character of Joseph has a serious precedent in the Book of Genesis, in which his namesake is sold as a slave to the house of Potiphar and rebuffs heroically the sexual advances of Potiphar's wife.