Enclosing the Immovable: Structuring Social Authority in Pamela Part II
Betty A. Schellenberg, Simon Fraser University
Volume 4, no. 1, October 1991
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
In The Sense of an Ending, Frank Kermode dismisses as “simple fictions” those which do not speak of “dissonance, the word set against the word”; opposite these he sets narratives which “continue to interest us” because they “move through time to an end,” because “they live in change, until, which is never, as and is are one.” Realistic fictions, in other words, portray the aspiring individual in inevitable and sustained tension with his or her social environment. Accordingly, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Pamela, Clarissa, and even Tom Jones should “continue to interest us,” while Christian’s journey, the sequel to Pamela, Sir Charles Grandison, and Amelia can simply “go on to the dump with the other empty bottles” after the opium of their harmonious social circle has been consumed. Richardson’s sequel to Pamela has provided an easy target for neat summaries such as that of T.C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel: “the great fault of the continuation of Pamela is that there was nothing which could happen in it, and the best excuse that can be offered for it is that Richardson was evidently forced to write it, without any urge from inside.”
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Samuel Richardson” include:
Richardson’s Hands
by JAMES ROBERT WOOD (ECF 26.3, Spring 2014)
A Case for Hard-heartedness: Clarissa, Indifferency, Impersonality
by WENDY ANNE LEE (ECF 26.1, Fall 2013)
“Glorious Perverseness”: Stoic Pride and Domestic Heroism in Richardson’s Novels
by ANNA DETERS (ECF 26.1, Fall 2013)
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