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Title: Pamela, Volume One (Everyman's Library)
ISBN: 0460870645
Author:
Samuel Richardson
Publicate Date: 1991-10
Publish: 1991-10
List Price: $7.95
Average Customer Rating: 3.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.49
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| Customer Review: |
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1: It's a Classic, What Can You Do?
I tried to avoid reading Pamela, but after reading Joseph Andrews & Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (not to mention slowly through most of Tristram Shandy) I felt compelled to read Pamela. It truly was a sensation in its day, and reading this edition- with the original text restored- it's easy to see why. Like other 18th century classics, it's far more ribald then many later english novels and the tense sexual politics ultimately outweighs the at-times tedious verbiage.
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2: Hard to stomach
I normally love all of the classics and have read dozens, but I just could not finish this book. I started reading it because Henry Fielding (a great author, one of the most entertaining books I've ever read is his "Tom Jones") wrote a parody of it called "Shamela" so I thought I should read the original before I read the parody; before I was 50 pages in I understood why Fielding wrote his book. The heroine is completely unbelievable and almost nauseatingly saintly, the "villian" has an unrealistic turnaround, and there is absolutely no plot to speak of. 70 pages can go by without a single interesting event happening. As Samuel Johnson said "If you were to read Richardson for the story your impatience would be so much fretted you would hang yourself."
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3: Pamela - Dumb like a Fox
If you enjoy epistolary books this is quite enjoyable with less maddening characters than in Clarissa. I would suggest reading this prior to Clarissa.
As always, Richardson brings out the worst in people and makes each fault larger than life. Do not use this as a what I want to be when I grow up primer.
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4: Of dubious moral value
Samuel Johnson considered the plot of this book to be dreadful; rather, he thought one should read it for the sentiment. Unfortunately, that sentiment does not and should not play well in the 21th century. What's more interesting is that it didn't necessarily play well in the 18th century, either. Both Henry Fielding (SHAMELA--brilliant) and Eliza Heywood(ANTI-PAMELA) took it to task. The publication of this novel divided literary society into two camps--the Pamelists and the Anti-Pamelists.
Why all the fuss and feathers? It's a fairly straight-forward story wherein a young servant girl of great virtue overcomes the lascivious and debauched designs of her employer to tame his passions and to convert him to virtue and marriage. At that point, Society, as represented by his sister, shows its violent disapproval of Pamela's sinning above her station. However, Pamela's virtue and her Christian faith overcome even this object and she and her husband go on to live happily ever after.
As a plot, it's simple, but melodramatic; frankly, the Victorians would blush. Furthermore, the characters are never fully rounded, but too often stick-figure representations of specific virtues and/or vices. For about the first 160 pages, one has a pretty good description of the power relationship between master and servant, but after that, to the modern reader, it turns into a sado-masochistic relationship wherein Pamela comes to identify with her abuser--and Mr. B does abuse her, even by the standards of the 18th century. Also, there's the technical execution--even by the standards of the 18th century, the narrative becomes repetitive and self-circling in a fashion one does not see in Fielding or Heywood or even Defoe. All-in-all, one reads this really only to understand what Fielding and Heywood are rightly mocking.
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5: I read most of Volume I and just couldn't take any more!
I am generally a huge fan of 18th century Literature (even if I have not had any formal education in it), but I couldn't STAND this book! Pamela herself is a complete Mary Sue, to use the fanfiction term- she is a picture of perfection in every way, and is so insistent about how good and chaste she is that some times I just wanted to smack her! Her would-be seducer, on the other hand, is so inconsistent in his behavior that I sometimes wondered if he was the same person. Here is a man who will go to ridiculous lengths to get what he wants (He even gets his housekeeper to hold Pamela down so he can forcibly rape her!) and then drones on and on about how she is the best, most beautiful, most virtuous of women, etc. You would think that after their marriage he would be reformed, but he soon starts making silly arbitrary rules that his new wife must follow, as if apparently her only purpose was to please him- and she begs for even more of these "wise injunctions"! Some of the other characters display the same illogicality: the neighboring gentry in Lincolnshire do nothing to help her when they know she is being held against her will, and then turn around and give more of the same speeches on Pamela's perfection as if nothing had happened! The fact that Pamela is "rewarded" with marriage to the same man who spent so much of his time trying to ruin her, and that she goes on as if he were the most honorable man in the world is alone cause for complaint. I think my only consolation for having wasted so much of my free time on reading this will be being able to understand Shamela and Anti-Pamela.
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