My dear sweet “Pamela,”
I feel compelled to write to you, as you have been my bedtime, albeit somewhat tedious, companion for the past two weeks now, since I have subjugated myself to your letters and journal. I wondered just how many times you could have been “undone” at the hands of the virtue hunter Mr. B____. Your Dear Mother and Dear Father, whom you hold in the highest esteem are, by you accounts, so proud of their dutiful and virtuous daughter who holds the master at bay until there is a virtuous, honest reward in the “awful words” and “the solemn words” of Mr. Williams, the vicar who asks, Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?” (Richardson 363). My poor, wretched Pamela, you protected your honest virtue through so many trials and tribulations and finally attained your freedom to be with your loving parents. Why did you give it up to “obey, serve, love and honour” your persecutor. Where is your fighting spirit now? You now like, and forgive the wretched, Mrs. Jewkes who according to your initial observation is “a broad, squat, pursy , fat thing” (Richardson 116), who beat you and took your shoes. How could you? This wretch who conspired to have you “undone” so many times is now forgiven. Now you are a servant again, although a rich one. My dear Pamela you are too good. You even wish to take Mr. B’s bastard child into your home. You are the sweet, honourable, loving, forgiving, Mrs.Pamela.
My dear Pamela, I will leave you with this thought, just keep a little of that defiance and spunk that paid dividends to you both in virtue and in your subsequent rich life and you will be “true” to the “real” Pamela not the poor or the happy Pamela.
Your most afflicted reader,
Helena
Well, that is my rant to Pamela. Now a rant at the author’s interference on page 530. It is not enough to give us 529 pages of never ending, moral instruction, you have to go further by explaining it to the reader, as if he/she were total imbeciles . More lectures, I could not bear. If this had to be in the book, it should be as a preface or as an appendix, not in the body of the novel.Richardson has also exalted woman in the name of “Pamela”to the inhuman status of untouchable perfection.
