Samuel Richardson's Pamela Not So Virtuous

In the novel Pamela, by Samuel Richardson, the main character Pamela is portrayed as a servant-girl who will do anything to maintain her "virtue" and would rather die than give it up to anyone and shame her poor parents. Henry Fielding, author of Shamela, feels that Pamela's character is a farce, and I agree with him. Even though Pamela is successful in making all of the characters in the novel believe that she wants to maintain her virtue, she was not successful in convincing me. I feel that she "played up" this façade in order to gain a higher social station and monetary wealth by marrying Mr. B. Pamela was neither virtuous nor pure in the course of the text with her intentions with Mr. B, and she reveals herself through a number of "accident-like" slippages in her letters, revealing her true want for him.

Pamela, in my opinion, is an unreliable narrator. She is not only affected by her social class, but she is also affected by her age. Pamela is only in her mid teens during the course of the novel, which could affect her in many ways making her confused and misguided. She, in my opinion, is however old enough to know the value of social and economic class, being able to understand that there is a significant amount to be gained from Mr. B due to his status and wealth. Since she has been raised in a lower-class family she has experienced struggles due to lack of money in the household, and she may have, from a very early age, been told that money is a solution to strife. If this is the case, as would make the most sense historically, then she would have been conditioned to try and marry above her social station in order to make her living conditions more comfortable.

Throughout the novel Pamela herself is often confused about her feelings towards Mr. B, she is not sure if she loves him or if she hates him, and she lets the reader know her true feelings by making it seems as if it were both at the same time. She states, "Is it not strange that love borders so much upon hatred?" (Richardson 88). This statement reveals how Pamela actually feels about Mr. B. she must say that she dislikes him and his "attack" on her virtue in order to keep up the façade of her virtue being of utmost importance to her. Pamela displays here, on the contrary, that she actually wants Mr. B to partake in some level of romantic interaction with her. Maria K. Bachman states, "Pamela is strangely repulsed from, and yet attracted to Mr. B." (Bachman 14). I feel that this statement explains the "show" that Pamela puts on for the characters in the book, as well as for the reader, in order to fool us in to believing in her false esteemed virtuous intentions.

The entirety of the narrative gives me enough reason to believe in my suspicion of Pamela's true motives, even though they were never blatantly stated within in the text by Pamela or any other character. The second instance of suspect comes on P. 91 where Pamela states, "I have been, and am, in a strange fluster." (Richardson 90). Pamela has just revealed herself to Mr. B wearing the peasant clothes that she has made for her return to her poor humble parents home. She talks of how she can not return to her poor house wearing the lavish clothing that her lady left to her, so she buys inexpensive fabric and creates clothing that would better suit the socioeconomic class of her family and their neighborhood. This entire scene where Mr. B first sees Pamela in her "poor" clothes seemed very flirtatious and almost "game-like" to me as I read it. Mr. B was obviously attracted to Pamela more when he saw her in the clothing, and Pamela seemed as if she was trying to convince Mr. B that she was serious about her virtue and her leave of him. To me, it was all in attempt to make Mr. B more attracted to Pamela, and to further frighten him with her leave of him, she is doing nothing more than trying to make Mr. B call her bluff.

Even while being held "prisoner" to Mrs. Jewkes, Pamela stills lets her feelings show on occasion. On P. 235 she states, "Why can't I hate him?" (Richardson 235). After all of the anger she has expressed towards Mr. B, and all of the mean things that he has done to her, she is still expressing that she has a longing for him and still manages to let her true feelings slip out in her letters. The reason she can not make herself hate him is because she is relying on him to raise her in social and economic class, she needs to love him, or at least make him believe that she does, in order to obtain her goal of a marriage with him.

By the end of her imprisonment with Mrs. Jewkes Pamela has also succeeded in completely quilting everyone around her in to believing that she has been under the worst care and treatment. Mr. B finally sends her a list of articles, basically offers, which would be in exchange for her virtue. Pamela continues to "play the game" by writing him back with a reason to reject each article, using her virtue and honor as the reason that she will not comply. This rejection of his articles on P. 227 helps Pamela further make Mr. B want her, by pushing him away and rejecting his offers she is able to make him believe more in her honor. She pretends that it is not money and material possessions that she is after, and she even denies money that would be sent to her parents. Pamela, in actuality, is provoking Mr. B to lust after her even more when she rejects his proposals. This was a deciding factor for me in whether or not Pamela was after Mr. B from the beginning.

When Pamela does finally accept B's offer for marriage she is given money and run of the house that she used to be a servant in, if she truly did not want the money then she would not have made so much use of it in the last part of the book. Also this point of the marriage is crucial when understanding how her plotting has affected Mr. B. For Mr. B to propose marriage he would have to be at the breaking point, provoked by Pamela, and lusting after her due to her guise of virtue. She was able to make him so crazed over her honor that he was forced to propose because he knew that the only way that she would relent would be in the bond of marriage.

In the end of the novel Pamela ends up getting everything that, I feel, she has wanted all along. She gets to marry Mr. B, a man of high social class and of considerable wealth. So with the marriage she gains social class, which was of great importance, and has climbed her way out of her lower class title. She also gets to become the lady of the house that she was a linen servant in, which gives a feeling of dominance and authority over all of the people who she used to be friends with. The most important thing to pay attention to in the end of the novel is the fact that Pamela successfully, in my opinion, tricked everyone around her in to believing that she was truly virtuous, keenly and slyly setting herself up to wed Mr. B.

WORKS CITED

Bachman, Maria K. The Confessions of Pamela: "A Strange Medley of Inconsistence." Literature and Psychology. Providence, RI. 47.1 (2001): 12-33.

Richardson, Samuel. Pamela. Penguin Books. New York, New York. 1980.