Khalifa 1 Khalifal

Nada E.Khalifa

Professor Sameh Saad

Fiction

6th December 2021

Pamela or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson: As An Example Of Sentimental Novel

In general sentimental novels relied on emotional response, both from their

readers and characters. They feature scenes of distress and tenderness, and the plot

is arranged to advance both emotions and actions. The result is a valorization of "fine

feeling", displaying the characters as a model for refined, sensitive emotional effect.

The ability to display feelings was thought to show character and experience, and to

shape social life and relation. In other words the sentimental novel exalted feeling

above reason and raised the analys1s of emotion to a fine art . The assumptions

underlying the sentimental novel were Jean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of the

natural goodness of man and his belief that moral development was fostered by

experiencing powerful. In England Samuel Richardson's sentimental

novel Pamela (1740) was recommended by clergymen as a means of educating the

heart.

In this paper we are going to deal with Pamela (1741) by Samuel Richardson as

an example of the sentimental domestic novels, highlighting the sentimental aspects

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both in its context as how it reflects its heroine emotions besides how the readers

interact emotionally with it.

Pamela reflects a shift away from the Enlightenment drive towards pure

reason and science, and instead focuses on the more subjective elements of

human experience. After all, the novel takes love as one of its central themes.

In this way, The Way of the World functions as an anti-Enlightenment response

to scientific and philosophical attempts to rationally explain all parts of life.

The fact that this novel is a drama rather than a comedy (the latter of which

was far more popular at the time of its initial publication) is key to understanding

the text and its relationship to the literary world at that time. Unlike the way

of the world, themes of love, lust, and morality are treated seriously in this

work; Pamela's threatened chastity serves a didactic purpose (rather than a

comedic one), as it places her life in jeopardy. As the title implies, Pamela's

"virtue"a trait that few of the Congreve's characters seem to have-is of

fundamental importance.

Because the novel was a new literary form, Richardson was in a unique

position to shape the genre's reputation and reception. Rather than going the

comedic route, Richardson elected to prove that the novel was a worthy art

form by attempting to instruct his reader in moral virtues rather than illustrate
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the scandalous or fantastical. Also, Richardson was famous for his "mastery in

theliterary delineation of the female heart." (Levin, 1978, p6l).

Pamela or Virtue Rewarded maintains intensive sense of religious

sentimentality. Samuel Richardson wrote Pamela as an example of the value of

moral behavior. Believing in the direct intervention of God, Richardson felt that
virtuous actions led to success on earth as well as in heaven. Pamela's love for God

direct her in every single action she takes. She is ready to sacrifice her life for the

sake of God.

Pamela and her parents are ready to die but not to disobey God, and the next abstract

articulates this aspect:

"No, my dear father and mother, be assured, that, by God's grace, I never will do

any thing that shall bring your grey halrs with sorrow to the grave. I will die a

thousand deaths, rather than be dishonest any way. Of that be assured, and set

your hearts at rest"(Pamela Letter I).

Regarding Pamela as an example of sentimental novel, Richardson masters

the portrayal ofthe heroine's emotional side. Richardson go deeper into her psyche;

through the act of writing letters or personal journals the author reveals more of

Pamela's intimate persona. As Pamela's act of writing transcendental journals helps

in transferring to the readers her deep emotions:

OMY DEAREST FATHER AND MOTHER!

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Let me write, and bewail my miserable hard fate, though I have no hope how

what I write can be conveyed to your hands.-I have now nothing to do, but

write and weep, and fear and pray! But yet what can I hope for, when I seem to

be devoted, as a victim to the wil of a wicked violator of all the laws of God and

man!" Pamela Letter XXXII ).

Samuel Richardson use the epistolary technique to tighten the sentimental bonds

between Pamela and the readers. As illustrated by Roy Roussel (1987) how the

Richardsonian missive genre has the unique ability of decreasing the narrative

distance between author and readers, and thus, producing a more inmmediate and

intimate text.

In other words Pamela invites the reader to sit next to her as she puts pen to paper

(Dale. 57):
I must write on, though I shall come soon; for now I have hardly any thing else

to do".(P.108) and "I will now, my honoured parents, proceed with my journal"

(p.491).

Some critics go on to describe the "sentimental domestic novel" as

having "pledged to advance sentimental versions of the cause of virtue, often

infuenced by Richardson" ( James.23). This is said as though there is some vast gulf

between "sentimental versions of the cause of virtue" and an ethical/philosophical

approaches.
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In other words we can say that Samuel Richardson is the god father and the founder

of sentimental domestic novel, attaining this position in literature by presenting two

significant novels in this genre which are Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747).

Considering dealing with a sentimental novel, we can say that there is some sort of

game oflove taking place in the core of the main plot in Pamela. This love game is

like a monopoly of lower-middle-class serving maids.

Typically (as so often in real life), the classic game of love begins in blundering

happenstance: in Pamela, this happens for the first time after Lady B's death:

"I have been scared out of my senses; for just now, as I was folding up this letter

in my late lady's dressing-room, in comes my young master! God sirs! How

was I frightened! I went to hide the letter in my bosom; and he, seeing me

tremble, said, smiling, To whom have you been writing, Pamela?-I said, in my

confusion, Pray your honour forgive me!-Only to my father and mother. He

said, Well then, let me see how you are come on in your writing! O how ashamed

I was" (Pamela Letter ).

For Once the first encounter has happened, however, and the two partners have

tacitly agreed to play the game, the rest of the affair is a strictly codified series of

gambits and counter-stratagems, with the winner of the game determined by the skill

and perseverance of one partner over the other in manipulating the code to his or her

advantage. The stakes in the game are clear though never spoken: his objective being

carnal pleasure, hers being marriage. The game is over when one of the partners has
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achieved his goal before the other has achieved his or hers that is, when either

she has lost her virginity, and so lost the game of love, or he has lost his patience,

and so will settle for marriage rather than seduction.

But already we know that Pamela wins this love game by stacking to her chastity,

making squire B marries her at the end:

"[Her Person made me her Lover; but her Mind made her my Wife" (Pamela.

Letter XXXI).
Back in Bedfordshire near the end of the novel, Mr. B. explains to his rakish friends

why he decided to marry Pamela. His explanation involves a distinction between

Pamela's mind and her body (or "person") and the different responses appropriate

to each. In former days, Mr. B. was categorically averse to matrimony; one of the

casualties of this aversion was the life in England of Sally Godfrey, and the only

thing that prevented his continuing to treat Pamela as Sally Godfrey II was the

acquaintance with Pamea's mind that he acquired through his reading of her letters.

Crucially, however the distinction between mind and body, or husband and lover, is

not an opposition: the mental and the physical are not mutually exclusive in this

arrangement but rather complementary. Mr. B's bodily attraction to Pamela is not

sufficient to make him a good husband for her, but neither does it lead him astray;

rather, the value he eventually places on her moral and emotional life, her head and

heart, serves to sanction his original, pre-intellectual impulse.

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Eventually, we can say that Mr. B. partially wins in this love game by making

Pamela loves him. In her journal she wrote: "he was charmingly dress'd. To

be sure, he is a handsome fine gentleman! What pity his heart is not as

good as his appearance! Why can't I hate him?" (Keymer, 2001, p 79). It

is clearly for readers that Pamela was already fell in love with her evil master

simply because she who denies all confesses all and the more one tries
hide, the more one is exposed. In other words, he succeed in moving Pamela"'s

emotions towards him , and we can see that through her emotional words:

"I know not how it came, nor when it begun; but creep, creep it has, like a

Thief upon me; and before I knew what the Matter was, it look'd like Love.

(Pamela Letter XXXII, p.248)

"Thus foolishly dialogu'd I with my Heart; and yet all the time this Heart is

Pamela." (Pamela Letter XXXIL, p.251)

These abstracts articulate pamela's emotional condition after Mr. B. dismisses her

angrily from Lincolnshire, she marvels at the progress that her feelings for him have

made, all unbeknownst to her. Up to this point, the story has followed Pamela's

efforts to discern, as a matter of self-preservation, the content of the hearts of those

around her, so that she might know who her friends and enemies are. That project

has been thorny enough, but Richardson now confronts her with the even greater

challenge of knowing the content of her own heart. As it turns out, Pamela has acted
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her own enemy in her recent conduct toward Mr. B. Whether her acting counter to

her genuine feeling makes Pamela a hypocrite, as has so often been charged, or

whether it simply makes her lacking in self-knowledge, is a matter for individual

readers to decide.

Also, Pamela pens this observation soon after her dismissal from Lincolnshire has

triggered her long-delayed recognition of her love for Mr. B.

In a crucial distinction, "Pamela" is not her head but her heart: her love for Mr. B.

has been no weaker for her ignorance of it because the truth of her emotions trumps

whatever she knows or does not know intellectually. Even more generally, this

identification of Pamela's heart with her deepest self is part of the novel's statement

of the dignity of instinct and emotion. As one critic has put it, Richardson presents

love as (in Pamela's words) an "irresistible Impulse; though it may require control,

its basic promptings are to be heeded. Mr. B. originally went about his pursuit of

Pamela in the wrong way, but his instinct to secure her as a mate was the right one,

and now Pamela, in returning to him, will respond to the same very elementary

promptings.
Also, Pamela used to wondering why she could not be really mad at Mr. B?

Why she felt happy for him once he was out of danger of drowning? Why

she felt sad and reluctant to leave when her master evicted her from the

estate? The fact is that she did not want to lose her master Mr. B and she

already fell in love with him.

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Works Cited

Blewett, D. (2001). Passion and Virtue: Essays on the Novels of Samuel

Richardson Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Keymer, T and Richardson, Samuel. (2001). Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded

With introduction New York: Oxford University Press.

Keymer, T and Sabor, P. (2001). The Pamela Controversy: Criticisms and

Adaptations of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, 1740-1750 Eighteenth-Century

Life 26:96-100.

Liu, Bingshan. (2007). A Short History of English Literature Zhengzhou

Henan People's Publish House.

Sen, Amartya, Introduction. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. By Adam Smith.

New York: Penguin, 2009. vi-xxvi. Print.

Shen Dan. (2005). Study on Narrative Theory of English and American

Novel Beijing: Beijing University Press.

Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ed. Ryan Patrick Hanley. New

York: Penguin, 2009. Print.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-century

English Fiction. New Haven: Yale UP, 2006. Print.