You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Samuel Richardson's Pamela with its sequel (1740-41), which greatly influenced the English novel, has remained controversial because of its seeming moral confusion and contradictions in motivation. The principal controversy centers in the motives of the heroine, Pamela Andrews who, soon after the death of her mistress, finds herself intensively pursued by the son, Mr. B. Though she expresses fear of harm, she delays returning to her parents; when she does leave, she is abducted at B.'s instigation, confined for more than a month in his house in Lincolnshire, maltreated by his servants, and when B. appears, almost raped. Her efforts to escape are inept and she readily accedes to B's wishes. Yet, when, having failed to seduce her, B. offers to marry her, one tends to agree with B.'s statement at one point that she is a “subtle, artful gipsey.”1 After her “trial,” when B. proposes to punish a servant who struck her, Pamela responds: “when I see that my happiness is brought about by the very means I once thought my greatest grievance, I ought to bless those means” (I, 269). But Pamela is not an exploration of hypocrisy; the remainder of the novel and its sequel reveal the blameless Pamela as model wife and mother-indeed, the moral instructor of B.—whose chief fault turns out to be impiety and whose accession of religious faith late in the sequel marks his complete reformation.2
The suddenness of B.'s reformation is puzzling, as is Richardson's willingness to continue playing on fears that should have been laid to rest, once Pamela's fortunes begin to rise, as reward for her piety and virtue. For a time, Richardson keeps alive the possibility that B. has arranged a sham marriage.