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Richardson's Pamela: An Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Stuart Wilson
Stuart Wilson*
Affiliation:
State University College, Fredonia, New York
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Abstract

The heroine of Richardson's first novel is neither a meretricious young hussy nor a paragon of virtue; she is a complex personality who moves from a naive adolescence to a composed maturity in the course of the narrative. The conflict between her devotion to moral principle and her growing affection for Mr. B., which develops in the first, or Bedfordshire, section of the novel, brings a near-psychic collapse in the second, or Lincolnshire, section. The imagery and symbolism show the nature of her torments, her growing awareness of a love that combines eros and agape, and her need for the reconciliation between conscience and libido which is completed after her return to the Bedfordshire estate in the third section. The formal symmetry of the novel evolves from the narrative process within which Pamela is tested and proved capable of an honest love and a tranquil marriage.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 88 , Issue 1 , January 1973 , pp. 79 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1973

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References

1 Donovan, “The Problem of Pamela, or, Virtue Unrewarded,” SEL, 3 (1963), 377–95; Golden, Richardson's Characters (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1963); McKillop, The Early Masters of English Fiction (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 1956); Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1959).

2 This and all subsequent references to the novels are to the Shakespeare Head Edition: Pamela (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1930); Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1931).

3 Richardson's strong sense of decorum is confirmed by his reluctance to make changes in subsequent editions. He rarely yielded to those who would have had him elevate and purify the “low” language of his rustic heroine. See T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, “Richardson's Revisions of Pamela,” SB, 20 (1967), 61–88.

4 Samuel Richardson, Printer and Novelist (Archon, Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1960), p. 23.

5 The image might have evolved from the use of the medieval chastity belt; in any case, it appears in the Roman de la Rose, Chaucer's Merchant's Tale, Herrick's “Corinna's Going a Maying” (“Many a jest told of the Keyes betraying / This night, and Locks pickt, yet w'are not a Maying”), and Pope's version of the Merchant's Tale, “January and May.” During the 18th century, it occurs in such markedly Richardsonian plays as Isaac Bickerstaffe's alteration of Wycherley's Plain Dealer (1766). As my colleague Douglas Shepard has pointed out, Henry James uses the figure in Watch and Ward in the form of a watch key, and apparently for the same reason as did Richardson, if we are to believe Leon Edel: the imagery “shows us the young James, at his writing desk, finding verbal release for much libidinal feeling that was later to be artfully disciplined,” Watch and Ward, ed. Edel (New York: Grove Press, 1959), p. 8.