:: The Young Enthusiast ::

Plot: Pamela Andrews has been employed for a number of years as a servant-maid to Lady B, but when her lady dies her life quickly becomes interesting. Lady B’s son, Mr. B., offers to keep Pamela in his household staff and Pamela agrees, not wanting to be a burden on her poor parents. However, Pamela quickly begins to realize that Mr. B’s intentions are not honorable.

In order to avoid Mr. B.’s advances Pamela begins sleeping in the bed of fellow housekeeper Mrs. Jervis. This angers Mr. B. and a confrontation ensues in which he kicks Pamela out of the house. However, when Pamela actually tries to leave he becomes angry and directs the coach to take Pamela to his country estate, where she is imprisoned forcibly by the fat, evil Mrs. Jewkes, who (unlike Mrs. Jervis) does not have Pamela’s best interests in mind. During her imprisonment she is able to keep up the correspondence with her family thanks to the help of Mr. Williams, the country parson, who smuggles her mail in and out of the house. Mr. Williams quickly falls in love with Pamela, but when the two of them contrive her escape Mrs. Jewkes gets wind, tells Mr. B. and Mr. Williams is jailed on false charges, thwarting he and Pamela’s plans.

Pamela again attempts to escape by herself, but she is again caught and her treatment becomes more severe. Eventually Mr. B. arrives at the estate and attempts to rape her, but Pamela falls into a fit and discourages him. Soon, however, Mr. B. proposes marriage to Pamela, but Pamela suspects a sham marriage and sets off to her parents’ home. However, on the way she receives a packet of letters from Mr. B. begging her to return. She decides that she does love him after all and returns to his estate and the two marry.

After the wedding Mr. B’s sister, Lady Davers, arrives and she immediately takes a disliking to Pamela because she does not agree with her brother’s decision to marry someone so far below his social rank. Eventually Lady Davers comes to like Pamela after she reads the letters Pamela wrote during her and Mr. B’s “courtship.”

Next, Mr. B. introduces Pamela to a daughter who is the result of a previous love affair, and Pamela takes a liking to the girl and takes her under her tutelage. After going through a similar hate-turns-to-love relationship with Mr. B’s uncle, Sir Jacob Swynford, that she went through with Lady Davers, the couple moves to London where they have a son, Billy. However, Pamela the plot thicks when Pamela learns that Mr. B. is having an affair with a countess in a neighboring city. She confronts him about the affair and he admits his mistake and vows his future fidelity, and Pamela sends the woman with whom he had an affair copies of her letters in order to sway her to the path of virtue.

Comments: Margaret Doody’s introduction to the novel has a great deal to say about the way class functions in Pamela. One of the chief innovations of Richardson’s project was the idea of portraying a lower-class character in a non-satirical way. Pamela’s concerns are a whole different set of concerns for a fictional heroine; in fact, it would have seemed strange to call her a heroine at all because what she really wants is not to be a leader, an example or an archetype, but merely to live her own private life and get along happily in the social world that she inhabits. In doing so, Pamela becomes a pattern that novelists will follow for centuries to come.

However, while Richardson wanted to portray a lower social class, his work also celebrates the lower culture and gives them a dignity and importance that they did not previously have. For instance, the idea of Pamela clinging so tightly to her virtue would have been very unexpected from a girl of her class. The chastity of the upper and even the middle classes was demanded for economic reasons, but servant women were generally thought to exist, at least in part, for men’s sexual pleasure. Pamela’s insistence on her own chastity is unprecedented, especially since it runs counter to the wishes of her boss Mr. B.

Speaking of Mr. B., Doody notes his tenuous position as a member of the gentry. While he is certainly a nobleman, he is a bit of a booby squire (as Fielding will later dub him in Joseph Andrews). He does not have the cool, unaffected grace that we see in the court-centered Restoration comedies; in fact, when he goes to court he can’t resist showing Pamela the outfit he will wear, a type of boasting that would be extremely unbecoming a gentleman in a novel such as, say, Evelina.

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