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Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, first published in 1740. It tells in the first person the story of the virtuous lady's maid Pamela and the modest and agonized delicacy, yet determination, with which she rebuffs and reforms her aristocratic would-be seducer Mr B and is rewarded with marriage to him. Told through Pamela's probingly introspective letters and diary, Pamela is widely considered a seminal influence on the direction the novel form was to take towards psychological analysis and self-examination. The heroine, Pamela Andrews, is a maid whose master makes unwanted advances towards her. She rejects him until he shows his sincerity by proposing a fair marriage to her. In the second part of the novel, Pamela attempts to accommodate herself to upper-class society and to build a successful relationship with her husband.
Conduct books and the novel When Richardson began writing Pamela, he conceived of it as a conduct book. (One could say that the eighteenth-century conduct book is the forerunner of today’s etiquette and self-help books.) But as he was writing, the series of letters turned into a story. Richardson then decided to write in a different genre, the novel. He attempted to instruct through entertainment. In fact, most novels from the middle of the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century, following Richardson’s lead, claimed legitimacy through their ability to teach as well as to amuse. Epistolarity
Richardsons revisions The popularity of Richardson’s novel led to much public debate over its message and style. Richardson responded to some of the criticisms by revising the novel for each new edition; he even created a “reading group” of women to advise him. Some of the most significant changes that he made were his alterations to Pamela’s vocabulary. In the first edition her diction is that of a lower-class maid, but in later editions Richardson made her more linguistically middle-class by removing the lower-class idioms from her speech. In this way, he made her marriage to Mr. B less scandalous as she appeared to be more his equal in education. Literary significance & criticism Richardson’s novel was the bestseller of its time. It was bought and read by countless people and was also read aloud in groups. For example, one apprentice might buy or borrow the novel and read it aloud to the others while they were working. The novel was also integrated into sermons as an exemplar. It was even an early “multimedia” event—fans and mugs, among many other items, were illustrated with Pamela themes. While selling thousands of copies, Pamela also sparked controversy. It was widely mocked at the time for its perceived licentiousness and inspired many parodies, including two by Henry Fielding: Shamela (1741), which features Shamela (the parody of Pamela) as a conniving social-climber, and Joseph Andrews (1742), which exposes the sexual hypocrisy in Pamela by retaining the plot but switching the sexes of the protagonists. Today, Pamela is widely studied in university academia. See also | ||||||||||
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