For Wednesday: Richardson, Pamela, pp.98-140 (since the letters become one long letter at this point)

Hogarth, Portrait of Miss Mary Edwards

NOTE: Below the questions for Wednesday is the handout I gave out in class on Monday. These are contemporary fictional responses to Pamela which show how two different authors felt about Richardson's novel. While Henry Fielding thought Pamela was a "sham," a woman who was playacting the entire time, John Cleland felt that Pamela was near-pornography, and decided to out-do Richardson in a work about a servant who really does sleep her way to the top--and he doesn't skimp on the sex (I included one very provocative passage below, so you can see how tame Pamela is by comparison!). 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: Mr. B goes to great and frankly criminal lengths to prevent Pamela from going home in these pages. Do you feel his intentions, however dubious, are actually honorable? Is he trying to get her to fall in love with him? Or is he merely trying to work up the nerve to seduce her once she's growing tired of being in prison? In other words, do you believe his declaration of love and his claims that he is her "passionate admirer"? 

Q2: On page 114, Pamela gives a thorough and graphic description of her new warden, Mrs. Jewkes, saying, among other things, that she is has a "dead, spiteful, grey, goggling Eye." Why does Mrs. Jewkes inspire more fear and awe in Pamela than Mr. B ever could? Do you think this has something to do with why Mr. B hired her in the first place? 

Q3: Thanks to Arthur Williams, many of Mr. B's neighbors learn of what's going on in the house, and why Pamela is sequestered there. How do they respond to this act of abduction? Does it cause a scandal, as would happen today is a rich celebrity kidnapped a young girl and kept her in his country house (shades of R. Kelly, if you know about that story)? Or did it take more to shock 18th century aristocrats where servants were concerned? 

Q4: We talked about Pamela as a round character who likes to appear flat (virtuous) in her letters. But once she's abducted, note that her letters change, and she tends to keep more of a running diary. How else does she change in these chapters? Is Richardson trying to make her more obviously round? Is she becoming more aware of her precarious situation? Or is she merely playing a new, more intricate game with Mr. B (since, after all, Mrs. Jewkes tells her that everyone assumes she'll be the new mistress of the house)? 

RESPONSES TO PAMELA: SHAMELA (1741) AND FANNY HILL (1749)

(1) from Henry Fielding’s Shamela, Letter II (Shamela to her Mother):

O what news, since I have writ my last! The young Squire hath been here, and as sure as a Gun he hath taken a Fancy to me; Pamela, says he (for so I am called here) you was a great Favourite of your late Mistress’s; yes, an’t please your Honour, says I; and I believe you deserved it, says he; thank your Honour for your good Opinion, says I; and then he took me by the hand, and I pretended to be shy: Laud, says I, Sir I hope you don’t intend to be rude; no, says he, my Dear, and then he kissed me, ‘till he took away my Breath—and I pretended to be Angry, and to get away; and by Ill-Luck Mrs. Jervis came in, and had like to have spoiled Sport—How troublesome is such Interruption! You shall hear more soon…

(2) from Letter VI (Shamela to her Mother):

Mrs. Jervis and I are just I Bed, and the Door unlocked; if my Master should come…Odsbobs! I hear him just coming in at the Door. You see I write in the present Tense, as Parson Williams says. Well, he is in Bed between us, we both shamming a Sleep, he steals his Hand into my Bosom, which I, as if in my Sleep, press close to me with mine, and then pretend to awake—I no sooner see him, but I scream out to Mrs. Jervis, she feigns likewise but just to come to herself; we both begin, she to becall, and I to bescratch very liberally. After having made a pretty free Use of my Fingers, without any great Regard to the Parts I attack’d, I counterfeit a Swoon. Mrs. Jervis then cries out, O, Sir, what have you done, you have murthered poor Pamela; she is gone, she is gone…O what a Difficulty it is to keep one’s Countenance, when a violent Laugh desires to burst forth.

(3) from John Cleland, Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure:

She had hardly time to get downstairs before Mr.H—opened my room door softly, and came in, now undressed, in his nightgown and cap, with two lighted wax candles, and bolting the door, gave me, though I expected him, some sort of alarm. He came a-tiptoe to the bedside, and saying in a gentle whisper, ‘Pray, my dear, do not be startled—I will be very tender and kind to you.’ He then hurried off his clothes and leaped into bed, having given me openings enough, whilst he was stripping, to observe his brawny structure, strong-made limbs, and tough shaggy breast.

The bed shook again when it received this new load. He lay on the outside, where he kept the candles burning, no doubt for the satisfaction of every sense; for as soon as he had kissed me, he rolled down the bedclothes and seemed transported with the view of all my person at full length, which he covered with a profusion of kisses, sparing no part of me. Then, being on his knees between my thighs, he drew up his shirt and bared all his hairy thighs and stiff staring truncheon, red-topped, and rooted into a thicket of curls…and soon I felt it joining close to mine, when he had driven the nail up to the head, and left no partition but the intermediate hair on both sides. I had it now, I felt it now; and beginning to drive, he soon gave nature such a powerful summons down to her favorite quarters that she could no longer refuse repairing thither…I lost all restraint, and yielding to the force of the emotion, gave down, as mere woman, those effusions of pleasure, which in the strictness of still faithful love, I could have wished to have held up.