Richardson said that he wanted to innovate an alternative to unrealistic romance novels, with their dependence on “the improbable and marvellous” and on the cheap satisfactions of wish fulfillment. Does
Pamela constitute a real alternative in this respect? Why or why not?
I think that Richardson's novel is creative and he is an innovator.He narrates the ascent of a maid to the upper classes by marrying her master. This is quite an original subject since at that time,people knew about master-and-maid relationships but this is the first time that it is spoken so publicly.
ResponderEliminarAlso, he kills two birds with one stone; he is innovative by telling a story that everybody knew but no one dared to tell it aloud, and at the same time he is realistic by being the first author to state in a novel how marriage should be.
Thanks Melisa.
ResponderEliminarAnd in your opinion, what are Richardson's ideas on marriage?
In my opinion, Richardson's ideas on marriage are quite moralistic. One of the purposes of Richardson's novel is to tell people how to behave before and after marriage. He tells women to remain virgin until marriage, and by doing this they will be rewarded. Also, after marriage he depicts Pamela as a submissive, dutiful wife, who owes her actual lifestyle to her rich husband. By default, he is being quite chauvinist, but I think it is what men at that time thought about women and marriage.
ResponderEliminarVery interesting! Thanks!
EliminarI believe that Richardson´s innovation and trascendence played a major role in the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century. He could see far away from the ordinary romantic novels of the time, with arranged marriages or relationships between men and women from aristocracy. Women of low social classes started reading and this may have generated in Richardson a strong desire to be heard in different areas and by different social classes. He extraordinarily portrayed the character´s psyche, in the case of "Pamela", by presenting the relationship between a maid and her master, told by the maid herself (a voice even more trustworthy). Feelings, attitudes and emotions are clearly presented in the work of this author. Rules of behaviour and the introduction of virtue as the most precious treasure that a woman of that time cannot be deprived of, arouse to be discussed by every reader of the novel.
ResponderEliminarThanks for your contribution, Cristina. I totally agree with you.
EliminarI found a parallelism between "Pamela" and Richardson´s biography and this is the fact that he was born into relative poverty, and, in spite of that, he married his master´s daughter. His own life contained an example of marriages between different social classes, like in his literary work Pamela. What´s more, he wanted to be a clergyman, and this may explain his puritan ideas shown in the novel, too. In a way, Richardson , in my opinion, manifested his own reality and opinions in his writing.
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ResponderEliminarHonestly, I think it doesn’t. The story depends on the improbable and marvellous in a way. I mean, at that time, while affairs between maids and masters were common, it was rare for a servant girl to actually marry her master (as Pamela did). What’s more, the heroin achieved social mobility, which was a kind of impossible dream. These are the extraordinary elements in the story: her marriage and new social status (something improbable for a maid in the past).Pamela concerns love, marriage, courtship, virtue and improbability. Things present in romance novels. For this reason, I think Richardson's novel has some aspects in common with romance, not being a real alternative to it.
ResponderEliminarHowever, despite this, he introduces realistic elements (as opposed to those improbable ones) such as affairs, power and abuses, and aspects of servants's lives.
Thanks, Flavia and Carolina!
EliminarFor me, Richardson´s novel was an innovation. This Epistolar novel composed by letters, which were something typical of women and which manifested how they behaved, thought and felt, tried to show women´s reality at that time, specially the relationship between maids and masters, including social mobility and marriage. The first thing I thought when I read the novel was about the social impact that it had. It showed reality in a clear way, a kind of "taboo" reality since nobody talked about abuses. Of course, it must have been a shock for everybody. As the novel is composed by several letters written by a maid, Pamela, the style is quite low but it helped to show what the author wanted to transmit, reality. And, what is more, the simpler the style was, more people were going to read.
ResponderEliminarThanks for sharing your personal experience, Carolina!
ResponderEliminarBy Leonela:
ResponderEliminarIn my opinion Richardson´s novel was an innovation of the 18th century novels. It was different in terms of feelings characters could express what they felt, in the case of Pamela, the main character could express what she felt through the letters that she wrote to her parents. Telling them how sad and happy she felt at times. In fact, in Richardson's work, feelings are presented most of the time. It was also different in terms of style, it was an epistolary novel that is, told through letters written by the characters, and in this case most of them are written by Pamela, the main character. According to style, she used very simple language which demonstrated the lack of education she had received. At the same time, her language could be clearly understood by her parents and perhaps by other people with low education as hers. Besides, the novel portrayed the relationship between the maid, Pamela and the rich man, her patriot. Here is reflected how he abused her and how bad he made her feel. However, she behaved well so as to conserve her virtue something that was her parents insisted on and something that society expected at that time in this way her virtue would be rewarded.