PAMELA
SAMUEL RICHARDSON was born in Derbyshire in 1689, the son of a London joiner. He received little formal education and in 1706 was apprenticed to a printer in the capital. Thirteen years later he set up for himself as a stationer and printer and became one of the leading figures in the London trade. As a printer his output included political writing, such as the Tory periodical The True Briton, the newspapers, Daily Journal (1736–7) and Daily Gazetteer (1738) together with twenty-six volumes of the Journals of the House of Commons and general law printing. He was twice married and had twelve children.
His literary career began when two booksellers proposed that he should compile a volume of model letters for unskilled letter writers. While preparing this, Richardson became fascinated by the project, and a small sequence of letters from a daughter in service, asking her father’s advice when threatened by her master’s advances, formed the germ of Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740–1). Pamela was a huge success and became something of a cult-novel. By May 1741 it reached fourth edition and it was dramatized in Italy by Goldoni, as well as in England. His masterpiece, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady, one of the greatest European novels, was published in 1747–8. Richardson’s last novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison, appeared in 1753–4. His writings brought him great personal acclaim and a coterie of devoted admirers who liked to discuss with him the moral aspects of the action in the novels. Samuel Richardson died in 1761 and is buried in St Bride’s Church, London.
PETER SABOR is Director of the Burney Centre and Professor of English at McGill University, Montreal. His recent work on Richardson includes, with Thomas Keymer, The Pamela Controversy: Criticisms and Adaptations of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, 1740–1750 (2001). With Keymer, he is also co-general editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, in progress.
MARGARET ANNE DOODY, John and Barbara Glynn Family Professor of Literature, teaches at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, where she is currently Director of the Ph.D. Program. She has written extensively on Richardson and on other eighteenth-century authors, as well as a study of fiction, The True Story of the Novel.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
PAMELA;
OR, VIRTUE REWARDED
Edited by Peter Sabor
with an Introduction
Margaret A. Doody
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published 1740
Published in the Penguin English Library 1980
Published in Penguin Classics in 1985
Reprinted with Chronology and updated Further Reading 2003
33
This edition and Notes copyright © Peter Sabor, 1980
Introduction copyright © Margaret A. Doody, 1980
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
EISBN: 978–0–141–90770–3
CONTENTS
Chronology
Introduction by Margaret A. Doody
Further Reading
Note on the Text
PAMELA
Notes
CHRONOLOGY
1689 Samuel Richardson baptized at Mackworth, near Derby, the son of a London joiner, who later returns with his family to the city.
1706 Apprenticed (printer) to John Wilde for seven years.
1715 Freeman of the Stationers’ Company and of the City of London.
1719 Defoe, Robinson Crusoe.
1721 SR in business as a stationer and printer near St Bride’s Church, off Fleet Street; marries Martha, daughter of his former master.
1722 Delated to the Secretary of State as an extreme Tory printer. Defoe, Moll Flanders.
1723 Probably printing the (Jacobite) Duke of Wharton’s twice-weekly periodical, The True Briton.
1724 Starts printing the Daily Journal. Defoe, Roxana, or, The Fortunate Mistress.
1727 SR elected Renter Warden of the Stationers’ Company.
1728 Frances Hutcheson, Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections.
1733 SR, now a widower, marries Elizabeth Leake, daughter of a former employer; writes and publishes a pamphlet, The Apprentice’s Vade Mecum; or, Young Man’s Pocket Companion.
1735 Starts to print the pro-Government Daily Gazetteer (to 1746).
1737 SR’s revision of the fourth edition of Defoe’s Complete English Tradesman.
1738 SR et al., revision of second edition of Defoe’s Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain.
1739 SR’s extensive revision of L’Estrange’s Aesop’s Fables.
1740 SR completes Pamela, written in a few months; 6 November anonymous publication, 2 vols. 12°.
1741 SR’s Letters written to and for Particular Friends, on the most Important Occasions…, begun before Pamela and prompting it, published by Rivington and Osborn. Henry Fielding, Shamela. February: second edition of Pamela with changes. March: third edition. May: fourth edition; spurious Pamela’s Conduct in High Life. September: fifth edition of Pamela; French translation of Pamela; SR elected to Court of Assistants of Stationers’ Company. 7 December Pamela II published, not so successful as part I.
1742 Fielding, Joseph Andrews. Pamela, de luxe 8° published, vol. i.
1743 Pamela, de luxe 8°, vols. ii and iii published; second edition of Pamela II.
1744–6 Drafting and revising Clarissa.
1747 1 December Clarissa vols. i and ii published.
1748 28 April Clarissa vols. iii and iv published. 8 December Clarissa vols. v, vi and vii published. Smollett, Roderick Random.
1749 June Second edition of Clarissa (vols, i–iv revised). Fielding, Tom Jones.
1750 SR begins serious consideration of Sir Charles Grandison.
1751 Prévost’s French translation of Clarissa (severely cut, mostly in last two vols.; removal of ‘low’ scenes). April third edition of Clarissa, 8 vols. 12° (adding ‘Moral Sentiments’ table); SR, Letters and Passages Restored from the Original MSS of the History of Clarissa. Smollett, Peregrine Pickle. December: Fielding, Amelia.
1753 SR, Sir Charles Grandison starts publication; vols, i–iv in 12°(first edition) and 8° (second edition). II December vols, v and vi. Smollett, Ferdinand, Count Fathom.
1754 14 March Sir Charles Grandison vol. vii, 12° and 8°. 19 March 7 vols. 12° (third edition). Death of Fielding. SR elected Master of the Stationers’ Company.
1755 SR, Moral and Instructive Sentiments… contained in… Pamela, Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison.
1760 Sterne, Tristram Shandy vols. i and ii.
1761 4 July death of SR. Rousseau, La Nouvelle Héloïse. Diderot, Éloge de Richardson.
INTRODUCT
ION
WHEN Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded appeared in two volumes in November 1740 it was soon what we should call a ‘best seller’, the first example of that phenomenon in the history of English fiction. Everybody read it; there was a ‘Pamela’ rage, and Pamela motifs appeared on teacups and fans. Many praised the novel enthusiastically both for its liveliness and its morality, but some condemned the work as undignified and low, seeing in the servant girl’s story a pernicious ‘levelling’ tendency. Pamela has never ceased being a controversial work. It is certainly a revolutionary book. It changed the life of the novel as a literary genre, pointing out new directions in subject, style and form.
By the standards of polite society, the author, Samuel Richardson, was scarcely less ‘low’ than his narrating heroine. Richardson (1689–1761), son of a respectable working-class man, had had a little schooling (we still do not know quite how much) and always loved reading, but by the standards of his contemporaries he was not an educated man, as he had no knowledge of Latin and Greek, and he was certainly not a gentleman. In his early teens he was apprenticed to a printer, and until middle age his life was spent in building up his own business. Before he became a novelist he had done a little writing connected with his trade, such as composing prefaces, and he had produced a handbook for apprentices and a version of Aesop’s Fables. Then in 1739 Rivington and Osborn, booksellers, asked him to produce a little book of sample letters, the sort of book which provides models of business and personal letters to assist the semi-literate. The ‘letter-writer’ had been a minor genre of popular literature for over a century, and it was customary for authors to indulge in a certain amount of character-drawing and humour, especially in capturing the phrases and cadences of country bumpkins. Richardson became unexpectedly fascinated by his new project, and a small sequence of letters from a daughter in service, asking her father’s advice when she is threatened by her master’s advances, became the germ of Pamela. Familiar Letters on Important Occasions was put aside until the novel was finished.
The inspiration of creating Pamela’s narrative in letters and of letting her speak for herself in her own manner (which might be termed the country style) Richardson owed to the letter-writer. But he owed another and larger debt to English popular fiction of his lifetime. Until recently, literary historians have been largely content to deal only with the early masters of the novel, Defoe and Richardson, but in fact, as MacBurney and Richetti have shown, there were a great number of novels appearing between 1700 and 1740, though few of these had a very long life or attracted widespread attention. A large proportion of these little novels were by women, and dealt with the experiences of women in the trials of love. Some are stories of love and courtship, others of love and seduction (or even rape). The authors show their heroines, however constrained by law and convention to endure restriction and passivity, as women who think, feel, analyse, react. Woman takes the centre of the stage as a consciousness. In the novels or novellas of writers like Elizabeth Rowe, Mary Davys, Jane Barker or Eliza Heywood, the heroine, however disadvantaged, can implicitly defy the world of masculine authority around her by becoming the centre of the narrative, with masculine characters only figures in her story.
Richardson adapted this popular feminine and domestic fiction, seeing in it the possibilities the earlier authors only hint at; he raises this ‘low’ fiction to another level. It becomes part of the tradition of the novel, in the mainstream not only of English but also of European fiction. It is remarkable that Fielding, who writes consciously within the classical and continental tradition, had a great influence on English literature, but little immediate effect on other European works, whereas the novels of Richardson, homegrown as they are, were to have considerable importance in the development of European literature. Pamela, which we with hindsight can see presages the era of the French Revolution and of Romanticism, was to influence Rousseau, Diderot, Goethe and Pushkin.
The novel is revolutionary in its depths, not just on the surface, though there are overt statements which have far-reaching significance. When Pamela says ‘my soul is of equal importance with the soul of a princess’, she is, as Roger Sharrock points out, making an obvious Christian statement, and the statement has social implications. Pamela is threatened by Mr B., who uses and abuses his power as a man, as an employer, and as a member of the governing class. He is the local J.P., so Pamela cannot turn to the law because her oppressor is the law. He subjects her to a form of imprisonment, and threatens rape. The novel is constructed out of Pamela’s power of defiance.
‘And pray,’ said I, (as we walked on) ‘how came I to be his property? What right has he in me, but such as a thief may plead to stolen goods?’ ‘Was ever the like heard!’ says she. ‘This is downright rebellion, I protest!’
The virtue that is rewarded is in large measure the virtue of rebellion.
It is not just the occasional phrase which gives the reader this contact with revolt, with the questioning of hierarchy. The novel itself lacks (ostensibly) the controlling, authoritative and soothing presence of the monarchical author. The real author refuses to appear, calling himself an editor (this device was not in itself new). The heroine tells her own story, but in that telling she has no final authority. Heroines like Roxana or Jane Eyre tell their stories after everything is finished and the pattern of a life can be seen – they know what the end is, what the point is. Pamela as she tells her story is always in the middle of her own experience. Her narration is fresh, even to herself; she hasn’t the advantage over us of having thought it through, of having arranged her experience over the years. There is only one point at which Richardson lets go of this method of narration, the linking passage explaining the abduction; in Clarissa he was to achieve complete disappearance.
The novel in letters had existed before Richardson, but not in any work of the same scope. Since the success of Lettres portugaises (1669), which was thought of as a collection of real-life letters by a Portuguese nun to the French cavalier who had abandoned her, the epistolary mode had been recognized as presenting the voice of love – and of course there was the classical and poetic precedent of Ovid’s Heroides. The authors of English popular feminine fiction had used the epistolary mode occasionally, but customarily only for heightened passion; the more intensely feelings are expressed, the less we see of individual character or local circumstance. Richardson, coming to the novel from the direction of the ‘letter-writer’, creates a disconcertingly individual character and very definite social circumstances. The kind of novel which Richardson discovered in Pamela and developed in Clarissa exploits the idea of ‘the moment’. The heroine writes ‘to the moment’; all her actions and thoughts take place in a moving halo of time. Pamela is confusedly aware of the significance of particular moments, but she cannot create a novelistic plot out of these moments, any more than we can in our own lives as we move from Tuesday into Wednesday. Her attempts to see pattern or something like novelistic plot are, like our own, fragmentary, soon superseded by something else. When she tries to get up a ‘plot’ with the feeble Williams (and she is quite delighted at her own cleverness) it crumbles very rapidly, and nothing much has happened.
It has often been said – and rightly – that Pamela begins a literary tradition which leads to the novels of Proust, Joyce and Virginia Woolf. But letters do not provide a Woolfian ‘stream-of-consciousness’. Writing a letter supposes some degree of articulate wakefulness, a sense of order and a desire to communicate. Thoughts are no longer in the muddle of the psyche, but are moving outward into the world; in Dryden’s phrase the writer is ‘moving the sleeping images of things towards the. light’. Richardson’s imagination is deeply fascinated by the point where unconscious personal (and archetypal) feelings and perceptions come from the deeps to the surface – where the planes of the outer world and the inner meet. All Richardson’s major characters are, in effect, authors, as if the authorial occupation were in itself a great primary image of the work of consciousness in the human bei
ng. Pamela wishes to correspond, in all senses of the word; it is part of her frustration that at times her letters cannot get through to anybody, and a more important and constant frustration that her letters as they emerge into the outer world do not quite correspond with the mind of anyone else in that world (save, of course, the minds of the readers of Richardson). She is alone; her perceptions, her integrity, her passions do not seem to fit in with the world, or other people’s ideas. Her parents are good-hearted but inadequate readers of Pamela (they wish her to marry Williams); Simon Darnford and Parson Peters reject and rebuff her; Mr B. is infuriated and mocks her. Ultimately, Mr B. becomes her reader, almost the ideal reader, allowing her freedom of choice and then initiating a real, not dictatorial, correspondence with her. They correspond.
The effect of the novel depends upon Pamela. Richardson has given his character an enormous job to do, for it is her voice alone which is to carry the narrative. She must have a language of her own. All novelists have to wrestle with at least two languages – their own, and that of at least one character. We might find a phrase and call these ‘fictional dialects’. Actually, an author has several dialects, and so does each major character. Pamela’s language is the central problem for the novelist, as Richardson showed in his continual revisions; responding to criticism of novel and heroine as vulgar, he refined the language to some extent, as we can see in the differences between this, his last version of the novel, and the first edition. Generally, the refinement consists in giving Pamela fewer words and more connected sentences rather than in sweeping away striking phrases or vulgar usages. Indeed, the author’s constant interest in vulgarisms, varieties of common speech – in dialects – can be seen in the rewritten and amplified scene at the farm, where the farmer is now given direct (instead of reported) speech, in country language: ‘he will not come NERST her’, ‘a quite otherguess light’. The author also provides new psychological motivation for the farmer, a despiser of women who wants to use Pamela as an object lesson to his own daughter. A little family tyrant is well created in the new scene with its physical objects and gestures: ‘pulling out his spectacles’, ‘then slap went his hand upon the board’. Richardson was always fascinated by the power politics of small groups, especially families, and the gestures which manifest power struggles and emotional tensions. Even when personages were originally conceived merely to serve the narrative, Richardson was not satisfied with leaving them as blank counters, but went back and worked them up into full-blooded characters.
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