Dress Down Sunday: Pamela by Samuel Richardson

published 1740

LOOKING AT WHAT GOES ON UNDER THE CLOTHES

[Pamela, a young maid, is virtually being kept prisoner in her employer’s house, with an older woman guarding her]

But I begin to be afraid my writings may be discovered; for they grow large: I stitch them hitherto in my under-coat, next my linen.

[Her employer is demanding to see her writings. He says:] I have searched every place above, and in your closet, for them, and cannot find them; so I will know where they are. Now, said he, it is my opinion they are about you; and I never undressed a girl in my life; but I will now begin to strip my pretty Pamela; and I hope I shall not go far before I find them. I fell a crying, and said, I will not be used in this manner.

Pray, sir, said I, (for he began to unpin my handkerchief,) consider! Pray sir, do!—And pray, said he, do you consider. For I will see these papers. But may be, said he, they are tied about your knees, with your garters, and stooped. Was ever any thing so vile and so wicked?—I fell on my knees, and said, What can I do? What can I do? If you'll let me go up I'll fetch them to you….

And so he let me go up stairs, crying sadly for vexation to be so used. Sure nobody was ever so served as I am! I went to my closet, and there I sat me down…. I must all undress me, in a manner, to untack them… So I took off my under-coat, and with great trouble of mind, unsewed them from it.

observations: This entry arose from my Diaries piece published in the Guardian books blog this week: as I said then, Pamela sews her account of her life into her petticoat. Could there be a finer metaphor for the history of women and their stories over the past 500 years?

This book is confounding. It constantly tips up your 21st century expectations – one moment it feels quite modern, the next you are left open-mouthed with shock at the attitudes of 250 years ago.

Pamela has been maid to Lady B, and when her mistress dies, she is ‘inherited’ by the son, Mr B. She is beautiful and innocent, and he has designs on her, which she strongly resists. He plots and schemes to seduce her, and the twists and turns of the story at this stage are engrossing. Some people can be trusted and some people cannot. Eventually he carries her off to a different house, where she knows no-one.

You can understand why the book was a huge bestseller in its day, because you really do want to know what will happen to Pamela, and it’s not always guessable. Apparently, groups of people would get together to read it aloud, ooh-ing and ah-ing at the tribulations of Pamela – like an early form of a radio serial.

The first part of the book is in the form of letters from Pamela to her parents. Later, she writes a journal for them – these are the papers she sews into her clothes above. And around the halfway mark, things start going wrong to modern eyes.



SPOILER AHEAD – this really is a book where it is best not to know what is going to happen, so if you think you’ll ever read it, bail here.



The book has a hugely happy outcome as far as Pamela is concerned: because Mr B, the man who has tried to at best seduce and at worst rape her, decides (rather as in Mr Darcy’s first proposal in Pride and Prejudice) that he can overlook her low common background, and he stoops to marry her. And she is delighted: ‘such excess of goodness and condescension’ she says. After he chats to her a bit, she says ‘An ample recompense for all [my] sufferings did I think this sweet conversation only.’

Very difficult for modern women to understand….

There will be more entries on the book.

The picture of a woman and her garter is by Edouard Manet, 150 years later, and is from the Athenaeum website.