My Treacherous Heart: Non-Rhetorical Registers of Truth in Pamela’s Ascent
Jacob Littleton, University of California
Volume 10, no. 3, April 1998
©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 Pamela, Samuel Richardson faced the difficult task of reconciling his heroine’s moral integrity with the unsettled, innovative situation in which he placed her. For the novel’s didactic intention to be fulfilled, the reader must accept Pamela as the virtuous and form-respecting woman Richardson meant to portray; but on the way to achieving the story’s hypergamous resolution, she must act in ways that endanger simple acceptance of her sincerity. In the struggle against Mr B., Pamela, isolated from effectual aid, must defend her virtue with a foresight and acuity beyond her years; in the middle third, she must be willing to rise in society in a way that threatens to mark her as a hypocrite or social climber. These tensions have stimulated a great deal of discussion, from the parodies of Richardson’s day to current Marxist and feminist critiques. Most such critiques consider Pamela’s shrewdness; whether their aim is to deprecate or celebrate, many critics have commented on the contrast between Pamela’s youth and inexperience and the intelligence with which she achieves her favourable fortune. The continued vitality of this question is perhaps proof enough that Richardson failed to reconcile this conflict.
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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