“Tom Jones” by Henry Fielding (post 5): Is the narrator joking or demonstrating his honesty?

“Mrs Fitzpatrick entertained her cousin with many high encomiums on the character of the noble peer, and enlarged very particularly on his great fondness for his wife, saying she believed he was almost the only person of high rank who was entirely constant to the marriage bed. ‘Indeed,’ added she, ‘my dear Sophy, that is a very rare virtue amongst men of condition. Never expect it when you marry; for, believe me, if you do, you will certainly be deceived.’

“A gentle sigh stole from Sophia at these words, which perhaps contributed to form a dream of no very pleasant kind; but as she never revealed this dream to anyone, so the reader cannot expect to see it related here” (1, p. 530).

Many readers don’t realize what I referenced in post 4: that 90% of fiction writers have “the illusion of independent agency” and “experience their characters as having minds of their own.” So if I say that the above passage does not end in a joke, but in a demonstration of the author’s honesty, they will think I am foolish, but my feelings are not hurt.

1. Henry Fielding. [The History of] Tom Jones [A Foundling] [1749]. Edited by John Bender and Simon Stern. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.