-Sense of the individual (Comes along with the development of the novel + subjectivity that arises from having

to capture
the essence of an individual)

Timeline:
18th Century: 1660(Restoration)-1810(Revolution)

1650(Interim) > There was no monarch as Charles the 1st was beheaded and the Royalists were persecuted/went into hiding
1660: Huge spurt of literature because of the post-war revival of poetic activity/theatre due to the restoration of the crown
(Charles the 2nd) that granted relief (has a lot of post-war anxiety about whether the peace would be maintained). 2nd
anxiety came because Charles the 2nd did not have a legitimate heir
1688 “Glorius Revolution”/ “Bloodless Revolution”: Charles the 2nd dies in 1685 and William Orange takes over instead of
his brother James (Catholic –Behn was also a Catholic), which ends the Stuart line of Kings.
1720s: Rise of the printing marketplace (not only books but pamphlets, which were a hugely popular form that was
polemical and responded to big events) which goes hand-in-hand with the rise of literacy, the democratization of reading and
buying books, and the rise of fiction. You can find any number of these just by googling the period's print marketplace
Late 18th Century: French and American Revolution. Both ends of the centuries are dominated by political tumult/violence
and these sorts of violence are ordinary. Towards the 18th Century: Skepticism of novels about fancy (people don’t want to
feel tricked) “Realistic” has changed to true to life + immense focus on social mobility and the capacity for change (private
vs public, domestic, etc)

What is the novel(By the mid-18th century, the novel had emerged): Written prose fiction of a certain length often told in
first-person narration that tracks the development/ change of a specific individual and is a way of penetrating subjectivity,
carving out space for mental interiority > they tend to be realistic and could have happened in life; they tend to assert that the
story they write is true, it’s true > develops into something that could be true to life (Behn’s narrator is questionable as how
does she know what happened even though she flees when Ornooko is in trouble > how do we read minds/how do we get
into people’s head) How?: One is by pouring out one’s thoughts into letters/journals/diaries

The novel develops speedily and cannibalizes other literary modes since you can see elements of drama/poem/tragedy
infused into it > parodies and absorb different modes into itself. The history of novel and history of subjectivity is one and
the same > the self as a concept is not ahistorical as how one relates to others (collective to an autonomous, discrete self)
changes > the modern individual comes into being > immense popularity of novels as people tend to think more about
themselves as they begin to recognize bits of characters in themselves(what it means to be a thinking thing)

The shift from specific character archetypes to complicated, realistic characters + a character changes over time since there is
an upheaval that happens + opens up a response on a personal level (thinking in a private way) that is different from a public
response > focus on the “I”.

Ian Watt(1957): The rise of the novel is linked to the rise of literacy rates since more of the normal populace are able to read
+ the emergence of the middle class > led to the rise of formal realism (the form of the novel). Looked to individual sense
and realism to understand the world (don’t have to listen to a larger authority) as everyone can understand the world as long
as they have senses

TLDR: The rise of the novel is associated with the rise of literacy, the middle class, and philosophical empiricism (towards
truth and virtue to respond to multiple upheavals). Novels are tools of the middle class as they articulate themselves. Female
subjectivity and female characters have become the norm for the novel form; by the end of the century, being a female writer
is a respected profession > Behn was a prolific dramatist who created strong, independent female characters > she was
attacked for a theatre lifestyle and her friendship with the greats of that time.

Ornooko Analysis:
Black in Ornooko does not only refer to race, but also dark skin and dark haired individuals

Ornooko as a novel (?)/Questions regarding form

Ornooko’s similarity to a novel Ornooko’s difference to a novel

Contains a chatty, female narrator The narration: doesn't have interior thoughts about
Ornooko (signs of complexity but not that complex)
 Has a plot that takes place in the New World Chatty, kind of epistolatory, direct
(Coromantien)

Focused on the act of writing: Trying to get everything Not much direct dialogue
down in writing in dense, descriptive detail + captures
contrast and contradiction (signs of complexity/things not
being black and white)

Amalgamation of genres: Travel narrative, tragedy, Typological, archetypical characters (e.g. the classical
euology etc tragic hero) that are not fully developed; lack of
realism/relation to a real human

Tracking the development (or downfall) of a character
(Ornooko)–the story is full of losses (children, dynasty,
nobility, characters through death etc.)
Struggle with Omniscience (questions of authority): The
unnamed narrator’s position is kind of floaty/flakey, on one
hand, she’s a major colonial figure’s daughter and on the
other, she’s helpless/flees from the scene whenever
Ornooko is in trouble

Who is authorized to tell whose’s story: The unnamed

narrator is not in Ornooko’s position; Ornooko’s legacy as
a romanticized hero + the unnamed narrator’s failure to
save him

Immense focus on violence as a spectacle that is clearly

derived from drama > Ornooko contains a lot of scenes
where people are watching something > some of the
violence serves to implicate the readers

Setting: When brought together, the 3 settings create the notorious slave trade triangle
England(implicitly referred to): Post fall, corrupt world where “honour” has become meaningless > lost nobility
Suriname: Prelepsarian/Pre-fall location, innocent, beautiful and peaceful > a world of sexual frankness (possesses an
honesty that has been lost). Behn depicts Suriname as representative as a Golden Age; a place of natural goodness where
people live in harmony with nature/distant past (assumes that the natives of Suriname would never provide slaves to the
colonies)

Across Behn’s works, she imagines a renaissance golden age where people lived in “Suriname” > Behn is a royalist who
believed that people should be ruled by an honourable king/inherent nobility; believed in the divine right to kings (great
chain of being) as, without it, everything falls into degeneracy

Narration: Ornooko’s narrator is on the fringes of the narrative, either fleeing or writing (raises questions of female
authorship) She speaks for Ornooko and believes that she’s close with Ornooko. Her pronoun usage shifts a lot, floating
conveniently around the narrative > e.g. she sometimes refers to the Christians as “they” (do not identify with them) or
would sometimes refer to the colonies as “we” > she tells the stories from different angles, remaining opaque/shadowy. By
aligning herself with powerless groups, she does not need to claim responsibility for the brutality but by aligning herself with
the colonies, she does not need to claim responsibility for Ornooko’s death.

Race (One way of reading)

The novel is sympathetic to the black african slave who is horrendously treated (sympathy, identification and empathy). At
this point however, England is puny and slavery is picking up speed; not yet an Empire since the time in which the story was
written was 100 years before the 7 Years War. As slavery is not yet associated with Black Africans as it came to be (not yet
linked to a specific people), race is one marker of difference rather than THE marker of difference (don’t be anchronistic).
Actually, Christian or not Christian is more important to this era as race is a non-standard category.

Ornooko has hints of emerging racism: Behn plays up how noble O and I are by comparison with the slave traders to
emphasise how bad they are + depicts O with a lot of European features/ideals by European standards. However, the is no
real sense of wanting to abolish slavery as Behn just accepts slavery as part of normal life. Although Behn shows sympathy
(albeit limited), she perpetuates racist categories she tends to reject, showing an emerging racist aspect of her culture > both
problematizes European colonial ideology and a cutting critique of it (emergence of contradiction/complexity in the novel)
Another way of Reading(Aristocracy):
Ornooko questions nobility and inherent worth, using race to demonstrate something about aristocracy (somewhat classist),
emphasizing how there is such thing as a royal blood and some inherent royal qualities associated with this royal blood > she
hijacks discourses of race to talk about nobility.

In the garish end scene and through tremendous amounts of violence, O is almost sacrificed for the pleasure of the readers.
Through describing the unbearable pain and violence O takes on, she emphasizes how Ornooko’s noble character perseveres
despite facing adversity, showing that Ornooko maintains his dignity and is a saint from start to end.

His death also reiterates the tragedy of losing inherent nobility/mobility (disembodiment) > loss of the most important
qualities. She also emphasizes how violence will always happen, putting readers in the same position of a helpless and
complicit individual that is part of the colonial appetite, putting readers in an uncomfortable position as they are powerless to
act

Physicality/The Body (Potential Paper Topic): The novel’s intense focus on the body undercuts soft ideals that are spoken
(undercuts idealism) and depicts how Ornooko’s moral/noble character stays consistent true and true. Behn depicts how he is
the same inside and outside, emphasizing how action speaks louder/ truer than words (bodies show honesty better than words
can) > also depicted by how O and I communicate without speaking (i.e using their bodies to speak) Ornooko also portrays
how violence can occur when a body is displaced, dislocated and forced into a new one > dislocation ends in violence.

Summarizing Notes: The novel’s narrative voice is one that is both affected and effected, feigning empathy and being
empathetic, powerful, and powerless > contradictions are important as they form the basis of modern discourse > eerie sense
of the undocumentability of certain events (how to represent discourse, relationships etc.)

Defoe’s Roxana
-Focuses on inner consciousness and interiority of a character > Roxana focuses on money, status, fancy dresses, and
makeup. There is a juxtaposition between surfaces and interiority > scene where the Prince is in disbelief because there is no
makeup to be wiped away > question of authenticity)
-Context: Birth of Modern Capitalist Systems and how this relates to psychology
-Tricky, slippery text (Moralistic Victorians changed the ending to either her dying or her repentance)

Historical Context:
-The 1720s (Decade of Defoe’s fiction > Defoe’s a prolific writer who didn’t only write fiction and only turned to fiction
later in life > Crusoe played into questions about Britain and the world; the story of self-sustenance
-HISTORICAL BRITAIN IS NOT YET AN EMPIRE IN THE 1720s but is in the first phase of the empire > the early
period of setting up factories, outposts etc. Only after the 7-year war, there is a sudden acceleration due to the unexpected
gains in territory. Pope and Swift (the Augustinians) cater to a more educated/neoclassical audience while Defoe was kind of
a commercial/pulp-fiction novelist. Defoe is an anti-dissident protestant.
-Roxana uses Calvinist doctrine to denigrate herself and doesn't become a true believer like Crusoe does > something
shadowy/mysterious quality of Roxana as it appears that even Roxana herself doesn't even know her motivations (shadowy
motivation > unknowability makes it palpable > there is something to be read about Roxana but that something is
unreadable). We don't even know what happens to Roxana at the end; Roxana is always caught in a web of lies

Themes
TLDR: Sense of inner doom and punishment(but not knowing why), gender categories, fascination with material things, a
palpable sense of regret, and possible sense of insanity that manifests at the end> Defoe focuses on irrational impulses in
light of the renaissance priority of logic and critical thinking > way in which people have been trying to perform
“psychology” in fiction

Crusoe’s Theory of Fiction:

-Skepticism of the truth of printed things (Goals of the 18th Century Writing: They are instructive and enjoyable; instructive
in an enjoyable manner)
-It’s funny how Crusoe the character insists that he is real
-Contradiction: Using something to represent something else (allegorical) vs the objective (historical) > condensation of so
many events (Defoe’s caginess > doesn't want to give up on his story being fiction but doesn’t have the vocabulary to
represent his stories in a way he wants to)

Roxana Preface:
-Insistence on historical fact; picks up the discourse of fact (emergence of facts has just accelerated > concept of the word
“fact” has a certain mystery because scientific “truth”/ “logic” is new > empiricist zeal, method of collecting knowledge by
observing the world fascinates Defoe
Themes: -Roxana is a cautionary tale > money(moving, saving, protecting money > endless pages of description devoted to
material accumulation; letters of guarantees, investments > capitalist interests), power and gender are important themes

Money
On one hand, Defoe respects the protestant work ethic of making money, but this is contrasted with Roxana’s problematic
obsession with material things and money that begets more money. In Roxana, Money is described as something both
impressive and monstrous; wealth is both described as “monstrous” and alluring > incestuous moral stance of wealth
growing (money begetting more money). Tremendous focus on money complicates how we should read Roxana as a
cautionary tale as Roxana should be punished instead of rewarded and a lot more time is allocated to the accumulation of
money compared to the fuzzy, ambiguous ending > i.e more time dedicated to the monetary rewards and her fabulous
lifestyle > her money doesn't come only from her whoring, but also her careful balancing of accounts

Money buys titles and status for Roxana; financial freedom and gains her the ability to travel the world (mobility) > but
haunted by Susan, her daughter who resembles her both physically and in name, who plunges her into the depths of her
interiority/melancholy and kickstarts her descent into insanity> we have sympathy for Roxana (Defoe describes in great
detail about her destituteness/poverty and how marriage laws penalize women + her friendly address) but there is also an
ambivalence regarding Roxana

Gender
Defoe draws on gender norms and Christianity to depict how Roxana is a deviant figure (more appealing to modern readers
because of her masculine traits like accumulating money etc) > but he presents this in contrast to the more rigid gender laws
> pointing out the injustices in the treatment of woman in 18th Century (condemnation of high society and how immorally
people lived > mistresses treated as princesses and ordinary wives as slaves).An interesting critique of feminity that Roxana
challenges (Roxana rejects her maternal nature > and tell readers that she has no inclination towards the maternal)

A cautionary tale that undermines its own moral cautions > Defoe as fascinated with money, impressed by Roxana and her
eternal beauty; how she “trades” her beauty for material comforts. Strange of a cautionary tale because Roxana is self-aware
about her whoring/ how men are irresistible to her charms (uncertainty about which gender he is critiquing)

Defoe is interested in increasing value (capitalist fantasy) and how you can create value out of nothing just from trading; he
is interested in the marketplace/stock trading > and compares human emotion to the marketplace (genders/personifies the
marketplace > emotional, unreadable, irrationality associated with gendered terms of “hysteria” > the accumulation of
money/material possessions as linked to irrationality) > money increases mysteriously

Secret, mysterious impulses as driving trade (something divine because it’s not controlled by individuals) > impulse to make
money shapes a society. In the text, Roxana is in itself the thing is traded (personification of trade and the objection of
Roxana > confusion between people and things) Context: Paper money becomes commonplace (what stands in for what >
replaces the whole “worth your weight in gold” > a new kind of symbolic order within the paper money since it exists in a
specific system of things that give it value > raises questions about the worth of money and will exchange rates fluctuates >
hyper-anxiety of what money/bills are for > money as symbolic and metaphorical > things retaining value and how these
things are subjected to change/decay

Roxana’s Character: Defoe explores female interiority as a male writer in 1700

-Why is there a focus on female interiority/female characters > is it unknown to these male authors? Is it more domestic and
thus separate from the social realm they inhabit
-Focus on Roxana’s behavior; is Roxana represented as a victim or a deviant woman?
-Readers strive to understand the psychology that drives Roxana as she tries to understand her own actions/motivations
(some degree of unreadability surrounding Roxana)
-If a woman denies her caregiving role, is she denying a certain aspect of her nature and is thus monstrous(?) but he also
brings up how it’s the more pragmatic option > Defoe seems to lean into the more deviant perspective
-Disillusionment > Roxana loses her mind (?)

Susan (Roxana’s Daughter):

-A lot of psychoanalytic analysis of Roxana (haunted by her subconscious/ punished by her subconscious (?))
-Persistent double of Susan, very very insistent about finding her mother
-We didn’t know Roxana’s name until Susan’s appearance > we learn new things about Roxana and this fact brings us back
to the start
-Causation and Predeterminism: Will Susan end up like her mother? > Susan’s presence perpetuates the cycle of new
beginnings and how it leads to the undoing of our old protagonist, Roxana > which perpetuates an inevitable, repetitive cycle
(Is Susan leaning towards distraction like her mother?)
-Defoe refuses to let us know about Roxana (ambivalence of the ending): She remains a shadowy figure at the end and it isn't
explained if she did murder Susan

The structure of the text:

-Roxana is a converging/conversion narrative; is a convergence waiting to happen. The oscillations in the text have to deal
with a character’s faith since either a character’s faith goes up or down. However, despite the peak (The storm, which has
resonances of portending death), Roxana continues to oscillate
-Duplication, repetition, and cyclicality are repeating motifs in the text; the acting motif is important to the text > Roxana is a
“protestant whore” (Nell Gwyn as a historical reference > Lecture 2–in itself an oxymoron as how can you reconcile religion
with such a deviant act) and a good actress, playing both a character and herself (not necessarily distinct)
-Questions of performativity, authority and authenticity arises in Roxana > Defoe is toying with what constitutes both a
moral and successful character > Defoe is trying to understand what makes an interesting persona and what ways of speaking
give Roxana a kind of depth
-The text ends on an open-ended note: One possible reading is how Roxana may be a socio-political commentary on Charles
the 2nd since Roxana embodies traits of the libertine

Roxana as Moral Fable(but what kind)

-Lack of morals in the 18th Century: Critique on liberties
-Material objects vs Faith (Roxana defies narrative convention)
-Critique of Renaissance ideals (time of tremendous upheaval)> critique of what is progressive in the new world
-Is a focus on money and material gain in opposition to protestant ideals? (is it her focus on the material realm the problem?)
> is progress undermining morality/moral values(?)
-Fable as a mystery (becomes more complicated/unreadable)

TLDR: Money’s connection with Morality, Gender Issues, The Unconscious/Dark Psyche (Subtopic Psychosis), Female
Interiority

Pamela Richardson
Historical Context: Novel becomes more recognized and established
-Roxana: R’s moral and money relationship > transactional relationship between morality and money > money as moral (?) >
remember the fascination with capitalistic structures in Defoe
-Religious Element: Defoe is a non-conformist against the high Anglican church
-Core Belief of Defoe: Shift towards the individual with the wave of empiricism (intense focus on someone’s direct
relationship with god without the middleman > people don’t need others to read the scripture for them and increasingly, can
interpret these materials for themselves)

Account(OED)
-Counting—to enumerate, to count, to sum up, reckoning-1300
-Statement to account for conduct (1610 before Behn)
-Take account/take into account: Finance and morals, money to morals
-Sums up: Novelistic, moral, and financial discourse
-R keeps excellent accounts (record keeping > related to protestant ideology) as they are encouraged to keep a tab of their
souls > being a good Christian and a good capitalist goes hand in hand, although there’s an ambivalence in the text as
Roxana is pulled by different tensions

Richness and Riches of Roxana:

-Question of who’s being oppressed and who’s doing the oppressing
-Defoe shows how Roxana plays as both perpetrator and a victim (a question of who survives their extreme
circumstances—although it can be argued that being a victim of patriarchal society pushes her to become a perpetrator)
-Independence and morality in Roxana as conflicted > R remains shadowy to us as she resists what she is expected to do
-Richardson’s Pamela: Standing up to corrupt men according to Christian virtues > double standards and showing the
vileness of patriarchal society

1720-1740 Novels:
Following Richardson’s(born 1689—not formally/well educated but was indoctrinated into the England book press trade in
London) direction, the novel begins to take shape
-Pamela is realistic and instructive but some thought it was undignified and low due to its overly sexual nature > Fielding
calls it veiled pornography. Fielding was in modern terms what we can call a classist since he upheld the hierarchical/
aristocratic mindset and saw Pamela as dangerous because it disrupted class hierarchies > radical as it questions the value of
its main character, a poor female maid, and asks if everyone’s worth is the same (Famous quote: If my soul is worth as much
as a princess?)

Form and Intepreting interiority:

-Letters > epistelotary (associated with the voice of love given the long history of letters and love)
-Themes: Family(Parents are poor and dependent on P’s job), Class (P is completely aware of her status but as a lady’s maid,
she can do things that most other women in her class cannot + has an ambiguous elevation that makes her difficult to place)
-Faith in God > Christian > Socio-religious
-Foreshadowing: Mother passing a young girl to her son > Assumption of danger as a poor young girl’s chasity is valued
differently from that of an aristocratic girl’s since she is fiercely subjected to her social class and her chastity is presumed to
be for the taking > R attacks the power differentials and the violent fate that girls of P’s class often end up receiving>
Question of human value: do we need to care about a poor, vulnerable lower class girl
-Protagonist is a very ordinary girl; is a specific character in a specific circumstance that uses practical language and is
familiar with protestant ideology + has a slapstick sense of humour. Richardson has a very ordinary girl acting in an
extraordinary manner and gives an unsatorical/straightforward account of a lower class girl as R wants us to sympathize with
her
-P is capable of deep feeling: “blotting the paper” > P’s tears as blotting the page as she writes imbues her writing with a
sense of immediacy > readers are positioned as vouyers (notice the materiality of the page that reveal the tensions in the
materiality > intimacy and immediacy)

-Letters are a way to get one’s direct thoughts out, bridging the gap between the character’s interiority and the world
(provide a sense of eavesdropping)
-Depths are brought to the surfaces as letters are not polished essays
-Has a stream of consciousness nature and focuses on access and interiority since P writes about events as they happen > P is
not narrated in a retrospective style and thus doesn’t have the luxury to make sense of things since P is constantly trying to
make sense of events as they happen (writing in great duress and in the moving moment of time where there is no sure
pattern and nothing is discernable > “writing in the moving moment of time”)
-Intimate and revelatory/friendly
-Her journal acts like a portable record of events + Richardson emphasizes the episodic/clear sense of events and brings
people to confront things they normally will not be able to access > how do we say things a character wouldnt know about
themselves
-Genres always operate on defining what is already written > no two authors approach a topic in the same way

Themes and Symbols:

-Pamela is trying to find someone that understands her (looking for an ideal writer) > she is trying to voice her own narrative
by growing past her parents and prevent Mr B (who constantly misreads her for the wrong thing) from controlling her
life/destiny that eludes her since her letters either do not get through or are often misplaced > P tries to write to control her
own narrative > P focuses on the act of writing and individuality
-Letters are physical objects and a lot of P’s imagery is physical in nature (since P works with here hand + labour > unlike
Roxana, there is a certain groundedness/concreteness to P’s character) > Mr B takes her experiences since the letters act as a
stand in for P’s experiences (Mr B always tries to snatch/grab her letters > mtries to render her without language/identity and
history)
-Letters as affording a privacy >offers a perspective of a person who exists when other people are not watching (focuses on
the private sphere)
-Questions of property and proprietary (Does P own her body/virginity > is she mistress of herself or is she owned as a
servant): Always points out that Mr B is not acting with propriety + is always afraid of releasing private details to the public
world (is P an agent or is she an object)

Visualilty and Morality

P’s body as representative of morality/virtue; acts as a sort of metoymy > virginity as fetishized as you cannot visibly tell a
chaste woman from an unchased woman > if you cannot see someone’s virtue then how do you know it > how do you make
virtue/chasity visible > the visibility of P’s chastity always poses a problem since there exists a huge kind of mistrust about a
woman (given that it raises the questions about bloodlines > embedded virtue: need to trust P’s words + actions)
-After marriage, chastity doesnt matter anymore > Fielding keeps attacking this notion by distorting the notion of virtue as
vartue

Pamela’s body(Question of P as an agent is reflected through the body):

-The body cannot lie as its responses are very immediate; the body betrays an honesty when words fail or when Pamela
cannot speak > focus on physical response and physical appearances that are constantly subjected to an audience/ being
watched by others > showcases the extensiveness in which society has an influence on the body(e.g. Through her curtseying)
-Ironically, a lot of P’s responses are very passive (stereotpye of female hysteria) > her actions have a positive effect on the
people around her
-Act of reading: Play as the body as text, play with the readability of words/actions > “reading the female character” >
accessing depths and surfaces in relation to the novel > Richardson pits christiantiy against questions of human worth (R is
not arguing against the dismantalation of class structures)

Major Scenes:
-Property Scene: How much agency can you exert on yourself (e.g through choice oc clothes/what P thinks/what P thinks
she owns >e.g rejects Mr B’s gifts > demonstrates an attempt at being an agent as how much can you own yourself +
question of what you own determines who you are in society).
-Objects confirm one’s humanity and one’s authority (Property is everything in the 18th Century) > Those who had property
had the right to rule and those who didn’t don’t> raises questions on how could one person own another and how can
someone be the property of another
-Propriety and property: P rebels against the social hierarchy using Christianity > critique about aristocracy (those who have
property) who didn't have propriety > failure of the aristocracy on both social and material fronts owing to their immorality
and their increasing loss of wealth > stations are starting to give way/shift
-Mirror Scene(Has a Lacanian Slant to it): One way of reading is to focus on the misrecognization as she realizes her true
self through looking into the mirror
-P’s worth as tied to her labour, as shown by how she constantly desires to finish the waistcoat + produce/create things >
although P is initially imprisoned in Mr B’s estate, she begins to claim it as her own territory that she will eventually own >
P believes that her limited property is earned
Word Linking: Propertie > Proprietary (Proper, suitable, socially acceptable) and Property (Something you own > P believes
that she can own herself)

Inner moving toward the Outer

-Richardson’s clothing motif: Pamela looks good in everything > reaises a lot of questions about self-determination, however
limited as we have to remember that there are little alternatives/options for Pamela
-Female desire cannot manifest unless a woman is married/safely bundled away > P has found a safe space in marriage as
she is protected from poverty and unwanted advances + she is able to rise up the social ladder (other women as
gatekeepers/arbiters of social hierarchy) > P is ultimately swept back into a system that tries to oppress her, but Richardson’s
story is nonetheless a critique of it > R emphasizes P’s ability ot redeem the aristocarcy through being the newblood who
brings about new values

Female Truama:
-Tale of persecution as readers are watching the whole plot unravel
-Identification of reader in character (the character seems real because we recongize ourself in the character) > telling stories
as a way for us to emphatize and opens up a multitude of an individual to live through + have a range of cognitive
experiences we would not otherwise have access to given the finity of our lives and from our own limited point of view >
offers us multiple POVs and through comparison, we are able to recognize the limites of our own POV
-Reading enables us to accrue a density of experiences (multiplies experiences) > we can experience a character’s experience
from a safe enclosed area > creates a distance between reader and character, generating a healthy skepticism > enables our
emphaty and developes our character as empathy is an imagined faculty of imagination > to exercise your empathy, you need
to be able to imagine yourself as the character
-Experiences of women > female trauma > schema of trauma, repression and a post-traumatic recovery which is linked to a
lack of space> panopticonic gaze of the house are the women(for e.g Mr B’s sister)
-P is forcefully taken from her home and displaced to somewhere unsafe and P is always trying to recover her identity
through her letters + rewriting herself
-The Uncanny: Something that was once familiar is now tainted with unfamilarity. For instance, P’s perception of Mr B
slowly becomes corrupted, along with her space and her experiences within these spaces > the whole typography of the
house is now changed and Pamela is now alienated from the house she once knew > discrepancy can be considered trauma >
Trauma is a fracture of the subject’s continuum of experience (everything you once knew is now radically changed) >
knowledge itself is now rendered uncanny as there is internal disorientation > you are alienated from your former self
The Physical Uncanny(Physically disorientated) and epistemic uncanny (disorientated from what you once knew)

Virtue in Pamela
-Virtue as presented as the sole commodity of females (virtue as conflated with female identity) > R is not only referring to
Female chastity as the notion of female virtue changes> Virtue is both passed off as a desirable quality and a social currency
-There is a gradual defamiliarization of virtue as it undergoes a slippage > act of protecting herself starts to have sexual
implications > virtue as rendered uncanny to Pamela as well

How does P reconstitute herself:

-P claims herself through how she chooses her clothing; projects herself on clothing (clothing itself takes on an identity)
-P vocally claims and asserts herself a lot
-P surprises herself with how she is unable to hate Mr B at his worst: P becomes in charge of people management and the
money of the estate
-Either P is lacking self-awareness of her love for Mr B or P is not telling us the whole story (Richardson pulls back) > gives
an unsatisfactory account of spatial and temporal trauma > within the confines of the 18th Century, female desire can only be
discovered through/within marriage

Locke’s Social Contract:

-Everyone is considered free > we give up certain rights conditionally (provisional) for the promise of security
-True Blank Sltae: We accrue ideas as we grow up (do people all start equally?)
- However Ownership, property, and economy differeintatie people
-Locke’s notion of property (defined in terms of labour) > L considers property as a right (but why isnt land split equally, but
what if we have no land to put our labour) > female trauma and subjectivity as put into form > happens in the realm of the
domestic (raises question as to how to capture human/female consciousness)