Like me, Samuel Richardson was the son of a joiner and one of nine children. Those are just two of the reasons he interests me. He showed a precocious talent for writing. By the age of 13 he was helping girls of his acquaintance reply to love letters, which brought him close to the drama of romantic love at an early age. Too poor to train for the ministry, he was apprenticed to a printer, after which he opened his own printing shop and went on to earn a very good living as a publisher. He had a dozen children, of whom four daughters and one son survived into adulthood. He came to fiction late. His first novel Pamela was published in 1740 when he was 51. It was a huge success, immediately resonating with the novel-reading public.
Early in the story the young maid, Pamela Andrews, is cornered in
the summer-house by her master. This (edited
slightly for length) is from her account of the experience:
Well, says
he, I have a mind you should stay to hear what I have to say to you. I stood
confounded, and began to tremble, and the more when he took me by the
hand; for now no soul was near us. He said, I tell you I will make a
gentlewoman of you, if you be obliging, and don’t stand in your own light; and
so saying, he put his arm about me, and kissed me!
Sobbing, Pamela pushes him off and angrily tells him that he
should treat her properly. The master, “vexed and confused”, does his best to calm
her down:
If you can keep this
matter secret, you’ll give me the better opinion of your prudence; and here’s
something, said he, putting some gold in my hand, to make you amends for the
fright I put you in. Go take a walk in the garden, and don’t go in till your
blubbering is over: and I charge you say nothing of what is past, and all shall
be well, and I’ll forgive you.
I draw three
conclusions from this scene: there’s nothing new about narcissistic or unscrupulous men exploiting their power for sexual purposes; there’s nothing new about women not
liking it; and there’s nothing new about the perpetrators wanting to hush it
up. All that’s changed is that the hushing up is getting harder to do.
No doubt there were people who bought Richardson’s book for
its tabloid content, because they liked being shocked and enjoyed the salacious
details. But enough readers must have strangely anticipated modern progressive
opinion in finding the master’s behaviour thoroughly reprehensible, while
others, like today’s scoffing fogeys, dismissed such disapproval as political
correctness gone mad.
Henry Fielding responded to Richardson’s success by writing
a parody called Shamela. Here’s how
his heroine recounts her experience of being molested:
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 it took away my
Breath – and I pretended to be Angry, and to get away, and then he kissed me
again, and breathed very short, and looked very silly…
Fielding had had considerable success as a playwright, but
this was his first attempt at fiction. Meanwhile Richardson, coming from nowhere
as a writer, had more or less invented the bodice-ripper. With some
justification, Fielding found Richardson’s style overheated. He was also
bothered by the way Pamela’s story reduced moral virtue to a bargaining chip on
the way to an advantageous marriage, and the hypocrisy of readers who tutted with disapproval as they lapped up the sex. Fielding’s parody turns the woman
into the predator. Shamela is on the make and ready to use her assets to trap a
wealthy squire.
Fielding has generally been considered the better writer. Richardson’s second novel, Clarissa, is more highly rated than
his first. But at a time when women’s voices were rarely heard, in Pamela he gave voice to a female
perspective, opening a window on a problem that, in real life, wasn’t funny
then and isn’t funny now.
