My final essay will try to unmask the true face of Pamela Andrews. The question that is continuously coming up to my mind is the following. Is Pamela Andrews truly virtuous or a convincing hypocrite?
Pamela regards her virtue very highly, but there are many understatements in her behavior when it comes to her relation with Mr. B. From one side as the title says virtue rewarded, reader could say that she is really a pure person without any sins, but then there is the other side when you take a closer look up that may seems that Pamela is simply playing around and hiding her true personality. She seems to be really virtuous young woman that was thought very well about being righteous by her parents. Maybe church and what family will say are the most important and she values that the most. Then there is a question if she really just acted out virtuous and she wasn’t like that at all? Would she get to the place where she ended at the end of the book? Would she get married with Mr. B? If she was so easy at the beginning and let her master do whatever he wanted with her he might just get bored and live her alone. She would be just one of many mistresses that he’s ever had. So this is a topic that has to be closely analyzed.
The other book that will help me to analyze my problem is the publication of Shamela. After Pamela’s book came out, Henry Fielding published Shamela which was a parody of Richardson’s novel. Fielding believed that Pamela didn’t resist her master’s attempts because of fear, morals and virtue, but because she thought she might get more out of him if she’ll play hard to get.
In the end what’s the truth about Pamela? Is she a real example of virtuous young lady or is she just plotting a plan of seduction of the prince? Is she just a hypocrite? We’ll see the result after I’ll try to analyze each case separately.
I think your question is more likely to discuss among readers. In my opinion, she is truly virtuous. First, Pamela wouldn’t have expected that Mr. B intercepted her letters which were sent to her parents. Pamela was afraid of Mr. B
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I think your question is more likely to discuss among readers.
I agree with statement that she is truly virtuous. First, Pamela wouldn’t have expected that Mr. B intercepted her letters which were sent to her parents. Pamela was afraid of Mr. B truly and wanted to get advices from parents. She couldn’t pretend to be feeling fear in order to attract concern from Mr. B. Also, if she was just a hypocrite, she wouldn’t be loved by many people during her whole life time. She was loved and respected from all social class’ people (after she married, she adapted to upper class life well and accepted by that class people too, even Mr. B’s sister.) So, I support that Pamela was a really pure and innocent girl. I want to see your conclusion in your final essay after you are done!
The question you chose has potential for a lot of analysis. However because there is already a lot of criticism of Pamela, some examples we know being Shamela and Joseph Andrews, it will be a bit more difficult to provide an original argument without just reiterating someone else’s thoughts. Maybe you could chose one of the already existing critiques and go deeper into it or counter it in some way.