The Political Controversies of Pamela

Abstract

Within two months of its first publication, the Gentleman’s Magazine implied that Pamela was being read by every Londoner with the slightest curiosity: ‘[It was] judged in Town as great a sign of want of curiosity not to have read PAMELA, as not to have seen the French and Italian dancers’ (The Gentleman’s Magazine, 11 Jan. 1741, 56). Within the first year the novel had appeared in six authorised editions, a number of pirated editions, an unauthorised newspaper serialisation, and Richardson had published his own sequel. A huge number of critical pamphlets, imitations and parodies had also been published. More than a ‘vogue’, Pamela had become a phenomenon; more than a ‘phenomenon’, Pamela had become a controversy, or, an ‘epidemical Phrenzy now raging in Town’ in the words of Parson Oliver (Shamela; Fielding 1980, 323). The language here of epidemic is appropriate for a publication whose effects were far-reaching and sometimes, it seemed, too radical even for its own author.²

[Pamela] divided the World into such opposite Judgments, that some extolled it to the Stars, whilst others treated it with Contempt. Whence arose, particularly among the Ladies, two different Parties, Pamelists and Antipamelists…. Some look upon this young Virgin as an Example for Ladies to follow; nay, there have been those, who did not scruple to recommend this Romance from the Pulpit. Others, on the contrary, discover in it, the Behaviour of an hypocritical, crafty Girl, in her Courtship; who understands the Art of bringing a Man to her Lure.

(Peter Shaw, The Reflector, 1750)¹

[Pamela’s] being eludes simple classification; her history is everywhere the history of a double identity, identity in the process of becoming something else. Like the text bearing her name, Pamela is an affront to all that is fixed, uniform, lapidary.

(Castle 1986, 136)