Pamela Flashcards
Talk about women and letter writing in your Quals texts.
Across many of my Quals texts – 12th Night, The Country Wife, Pamela, maybe P&P, definitely Incidents, and the Spanish Tragedy – letter writing is closely tied to female identity and agency. It’s a method that is open to manipulation perhaps because it is so closely tied to identity. Writing letters is a way that women can affect their situations, and is sometimes the only way they can exert any agency at all.
Sometimes this agency is exploited by others, and sometimes female characters are able to use it to exert influence on the world around them.
Make the argument that Pamela is the beginning of the novel. (5 points)
- Avoids an episodic plot by basing his novels on a single action (courtship)
- unprecedented psychological detail (level of depth and detail)
- writing about every day people (housemaid)
- realistic character (that the reader could identify with)
- emphasis on private and personal relationships (transition from objective social world to subjective personal world)
- not retrospective, but essentially happens as it is narrated
Richardson innovated the combination of psychological realism and amplitude of concrete detail that is the special province of the genre of the novel.
Who pursues Pamela?
Mr. B
Why did Fielding find Pamela hypocritical?
While Richardson meant for Pamela to be a model for “virtue rewarded,” some critics like Fielding felt that is was hypocritical, and that Pamela only married Mr. B for his money (she’s crafty).
How old is Pamela when the book begins?
15
Who is Pamela’s keeper at the Lincolnshire estate?
Mrs. Jewkes
Who tries to help Pamela (and who she almost marries)?
Mr. Williams
What’s a significant structural difference between this and later marriage plot novels?
The marriage of Pamela and Mr. B takes place halfway through the novel, not at the end.
What was Richardson’s profession?
Tradesman/Master at a Printing House
