The first obvious difference between Pamela and Joseph Andrews is in authorial mode . Richardson stands behind the virtually total screen of Pamela's authorship. Fielding, however much he affects the humanly incomplete 'biographer'(' I never could discover...',etc.), is an ever-present artificer. Fielding's thoughts on Richardson's epistolary mode are encapsulated in one sentence of Joseph Andrews, at I,13 : the 'dying ' Joseph, thinking of his beloved Fanny, 'desired paper and pens to write a letter, but they were refused him ; and he was advised to use all his endeavours to compose himself' . Apart from the double-entendre thrust at Richardson's editorship, the sentence, allied to the subsequent fact of Barnabas's false prognosis, questions the credibility of a letter written in a highly emotional state .
Fielding describes not men, but manners ; not an individual, but a species, and a good test of this is to examine the other 'death-bed' letter in J.A.(II,4) : Bellarmine's letter to Leonora . The Frenchman, still hopeful of marrying his dapper, courtly expertise to her English money, consciously adulterates, anglicizes his language to suit the English moment : brilliant for brillant ; toute le respecte for tout le respect .Once back in France, and now with no ulterior motive, Bellarmine's adieus to Leonora are letter and gender perfect (II,6). ' Similarly, the gentleman recently travelled in Italy (II,5) anglicizes his Italian--accustomata for accostumata ; spectaculo for spettaculo . It is affectation, the will to impress, plus the will to be understood .
These are minor characters, but perhaps Mrs Slipslop would be enough to establish a species . The emblem of this lady is the 'hard words' she confuses all and sundry with in the early parts of J.A. . This is also the period when she is physically close to Joseph and Lady Booby : putative lover and definite rival . After one youthful slip and a long inter-regnum of chastity, this post-menopausal virago has conceived a highly polarized passion for Joseph, only to find it coinciding with the less polarized passion of her Lady for him as well . Slipslop is torn between long-established loyalties and position in service, and a passion to be resulted . The 'hard words' coincide with the physical presence either of rival or of putative lover .Later (II,4), when Slipslop is one of the bevy of 'genteel' ladies in the coach gossiping on the Fall of Leonora, she gets her single 'hard word' here--quandary-- right : this when she is not in an emotional quandary, and is among genteel people discoursing on the genteel life and love of an unknown third party . In short, Fielding shows that people either purposely manipulate words--and often to express an emotion which may not be felt-- or that when in an emotional state they produce words the credibility of which is in question .
Where Fielding diffuses the initial, potential melodrama by disgorging Joseph into the picaresque events on the open road, Richardson encloses Pamela in a scenario of imprisonment, harassment, and protracted passionate pursuit . Her experience is internal picaresque, an inner progression--rearticulated 'on the hoof' by mind onto paper--through events insignificant in themselves, but given moment by the occasion of continuously parlous plight .The light and dark of Mr B's moods, the genteel or vulgar language these produce, the journey through unknown countryside, the sunflower as poste restante, the bull in the field, even simply managing to write a letter without Mrs Jewkes knowing---these are a series of avantures, a graduated test of Pamela's election to the petty aristocracy .
But it is not to the petty aristocracy on their terms . The Lincolnshire set--Darnfords et al-- plus Lady Davers and Mr B are like Don Quixote : they belong to a class which has no function . They have an apparent social function as aristocrats and Family, with dependants in employ and in thrall . Their societal role is inherited, complacently practised, and lacking an internal dynamic which would project the class as worthy 'leaders' of society . It is a debilitated class, sorely in need of a remedial, restorative exemplar-infusion : in need of Pamela, Grace Abounding, the Richardsonian version of the Man of Ross .
Richardson has not chosen a dead exemplar, whose perfections are blazed forth definitively, in broad strokes . His is alive and female, a mere teenaged servant girl, and her foibles are minutely self-articulated . After Pamela loses her existential identity of waiting-maid to Lady B, Mr B then, by her kidnap and seclusion, by machination and manipulation of his dependants, tries to wear down by attrition her extant identity--that instilled by her virtuous, religious parents . Of these, as the letters reveal, her father is the most influential, and it is no accident that he is a teacher down on his luck . Pamela's virtuous stand is the product of his example and instruction . Mr B would force the identity of mistress on her, with Mrs Jewkes in loco diabolis when he is abroad . In the moral balance, Mr B loses out to that primary identity . However, on his side he has control, physical control . Pamela has her letters, which at first are a medium to her primary identity, and are an assertion of her existential identity, if even just on paper . Unknown to her, the letters become the means of her mental control over Mr B, as he progressively becomes beguiled by her written Word : the new Bible for the morally debilitated petty aristocracy . The letters--and, later, the journal--progressively highlight the development of Pamela's post-puberal identity . She is physically isolated from the primal innocence of home and of her companionship with the protective and instructive Lady B and the maternal Mrs Jervis, but they remain in her mind, jockeying with the new, perplexing emotion of not being able to hate Mr B .
Essentially, Pamela is a reworking of two themes in Chaucer. The initial rape in the Wife of Bath's Tale becomes in Richardson a constant threat, as backcloth to a depiction of Pamela as knight-errantress who actualizes 'what every woman wants' : 'sovereyntee...to been in maistrie hym above' . Pamela unwittingly achieves this through her letters, but she also 'cannot hate' this ogre of a man, and he is transformed, in the manner of Chaucer's Troilus, through love into maturity and into being a tall and very majestic man who is the embodiment of Romance genereux . And that runs over into literal largesse to people as people, not as dependants, in celebration of what the text makes evident : Pamela's concession of his 'maistrie hir above' in public, the outward sign of the inner grace that leavens their love--Pamela's 'maistrie hym above' .
Having said all this, it does not clear away the matter Fielding highlights : that the veracity of those prone to affectation or of those subject to genuinely emotional states is suspect--in their words . In the trials Pamela undergoes whether through Mr B or the vigilant Mrs Jewkes, she is often at a high pitch of emotion, has often to practise deceit and denials, to affect postures . And all of these are transposed into the written Word which beguiles Mr B . The accusation is that her love for him is prudential . Well, firstly, she is not aware that Mr B is reading her correspondence . Secondly, she is consistently for her release and return to her parents . Most importantly, it is Mr B who introduces the immoral quid pro quos : accommodate yourself to Brandon Hall and I'll stay away ; monies for yourself and your family for your chastity ; and the protracted wrestling with himself towards the marriage proposal, betokening his enormous sacrifice of quid pro quo . It is Mr B who imbues the culminating love-relationship with the pervasive market-place odour of 'bele chose' pro quo.
Also, Mr B's most telling point in indicating what he sees as Pamela's artfulness is her fits on the point of being raped by Mr B seconded by Mrs Jewkes . Are these fits, in the circumstances, so surprising--let alone indication of artifice--in a youthful, virtuous-minded virgin of sheltered, unworldly upbringing ? Mr B's ascription of 'artfulness' does not make the observation apt, any more than does that of Mr Andrews (p,198), who attributes Pamela's consistently virtuous stand to prudence . This either denotes mercenariness or a correctness consistent with the primary identity instilled in Pamela by her parents . Either way, it is his comment . But it can have truth and application if it accords with characteristics of the parent-child relationship as revealed in the text, and in this respect one can use Fielding's test that actions reveal the heart : Mr Andrews' overnight tramp to Brandon Hall does not suggest a worldly-wise father ready to trade off Pamela's virtue . The fact that he only uses when needs must Pamela's guineas to pay the creditors does not suggest one who envisages and anticipates a lucrative trade-off, and who could presently make more ready use of Pamela's money . On Pamela's side, there is her consistent attachment to her one parcel of plain clothes, to the wages honestly earned in service (and which Mrs Jewkes purloins to hinder an honest going), and to the intention of going home to a financially uncertain but honest future, a future welcomed and anticipated by her parents, no matter that it bodes ill financially . In short, Pamela is artful and mercenary within the parameters of her primary identity . That is her touchstone . It is Mr B who is amorally artful and mercenary, because he has almost no such touchstone .
What Mr B does have is the residual touchstone of the refined, courtly attitudes of the late Lady B . These Pamela too has acquired, superposed on her primary identity, and these will be the couple's common meeting-ground, but only when Mr B has divested the slough of feudal despot . Mr B exacts vasselage from his dependants--honest John, Robin, Colbrand, Mrs Jewkes--not in the service of gestes which will validate the feudal ethos of himself and his class, but rather, of gestes and a class that are not worth a song . In so doing, he unwittingly creates and designs a proving-ground, a world of avantures for the courtly knight-errantress, Pamela . And, as courtly progressively wins over feudal ethos, Brandon Hall shades from prison and embattled tower---feebly intended to exclude primary identity, when it is already within, in Pamela's mind---into a castle of succour and replenishment, like that which greets Calogrenant, in Chretien de Troyes' Yvain (ll.175-277) . When Pamela voluntarily returns to Brandon, it signifies Mr B's conversion to vavasour, and he succours Pamela for the coming avantures of winning over the Lincolnshire gentry . Then, with Lady Davers' arrival, and the vavasour not in place, Pamela must make an unseemly exit through the window of a Brandon Hall transmuted into feudal stronghold, the location of a climactic avanture : the clash of courtly ethos and feudal ethos across the blood-line, with Mr B as novice knight-errant, Pamela as supportive vavasour, and Lady Davers with feudal ogre as incubus to be exorcised, so that the late Lady B's courtly ethic can flourish forth on what of late has been fallow ground . Pamela can be said to have been the catalyst in this process of change, because her, the Andrews', honesty , a Christian one, is close to that which underpinned secular, courtly 'honour' before 'honour' became interchangeable with wealth , demesne, and class superiority . But Pamela changes, the dimensions of her character are enhanced, when her practice of the courtly ethic, imbued with the primal Andrews honesty, is reciprocated by a Mr B embodying courtly as a living ethos .In this instance, the late Lady B has been source, but she too was simply extant practitioner.
The true catalyst has been and is the courtly ethos itself .
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