Pamela by Samuel Richardson (Epistolary Novel)

A Slideshow presentation regarding the famous novel Pamela written by Samuel Richardson.

Neoclassicism in English literature refers to a movement which flourished between 1660 and 1798. The term refers to a style that is based on, but different from, the classic structures of the Roman and Greek writers of old. ''Neo'' means ''new,'' so the term literally means the ''old classic.'' However, neoclassicism was a unique style with its own themes and works.

1. English Assignment - 2022 -23 Paper-5 (Neoclassical Age)

2. Introduction to Neoclassical Age Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism in English literature refers to a movement which flourished between 1660 and 1798. The term refers to a style that is based on, but different from, the classic structures of the Roman and Greek writers of old. ''Neo'' means ''new,'' so the term literally means the ''old classic.'' However, neoclassicism was a unique style with its own themes and works. Neoclassicism began after the Renaissance. Whereas the Renaissance focused on lifting the individual and making people larger than life and limitless in their potential, neoclassicism placed the individual in the context of society. The individual became flawed, and passion needed to be curved by reason.

3. Neoclassicism in English Literature Neoclassicism in English literature refers to a movement which flourished between 1660 and 1798. The term refers to a style that is based on, but different from, the classic structures of the Roman and Greek writers of old. ''Neo'' means ''new,'' so the term literally means the ''old classic.'' However, neoclassicism was a unique style with its own themes and works. Neoclassicism began after the Renaissance. Whereas the Renaissance focused on lifting the individual and making people larger than life and limitless in their potential, neoclassicism placed the individual in the context of society. The individual became flawed, and passion needed to be curved by reason.

4. When was the Neoclassical Period? Neoclassicism started in 1660 when the Stuarts returned to the throne and the Enlightenment was in full swing. When the neoclassical period was the predominant style, artists like Daniel Defoe and Samuel Johnson flourished. The publication of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads in 1798, however, marked the end of the neoclassical time period. These poems ended Neoclassicism and began the Romantic Age. Whereas Neoclassicism looked to the beauty of order, Romanticism later emphasized the individual and put more weight on the imaginative and personal.

5. About Samuel Richardson He (19 August 1689 - 4 July 1761) was an 18th-century writer. He received very little education and did not go beyond English. He was an established printer and publisher for most of his life, and printed almost 500 different works, including journals and magazines. Richardson was a skilled letter writer and his talent is traced back to his childhood. During the 1730’s his press became known as one of the 3 best in London. Aged 71, he died due to seizing with a very severe paralytical stroke.

6. About Pamela by Samuel Richardson Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740) is a famous example of an epistolary novel, or a novel composed of letters. Richardson was famous for this style of writing and used it in his other novels. Pamela differs from Richardson’s other novels in that the letters are mostly from the titular Pamela; whereas in his other novels, more points of view are included. The novel focuses on Pamela to hone in on her experience and state of mind. The book opens with Pamela, a 15-year old waiting-maid, writing a letter to her parents mourning the loss of her lady.The novel begins with the lady’s death. Pamela’s real sorrow mingles realistically with her anxieties about getting another job. The lady’s adult son Mr B assures this daughter of a poor family that she need not worry, but eventually she finds cause for concern in his attentions. Pamela Andrews must free herself and find another situation.

7. According to convention, Mr B should pass the maidservant on to his sister, Lady Davers. But he seems little inclined to this solution. Sometimes he speaks to Pamela in the lofty manner of a social superior, as her ‘master’. He is, as we say, ‘the boss’. At times he speaks very differently. When Mr B makes advances to her in the summerhouse, Pamela can no longer doubt his sexual intention. Their dialogue reflects their social background, familial influences, various cultural influences such as their different reading, and their temperaments. This young country squire, an important local landowner, is trying to mimic the aristocratic manners of a class just above his own – but his show of grand masculinity often collapses into uncertainty or colloquial pettiness. Pamela, in attempting to communicate her resistance effectively, appeals to the serious religious rhetoric in which she believes. Her statements are seasoned by comic observations, impetuous bluntness – and by an anger inappropriate to her class. Servants are not supposed to be bold or rude. Her language is demotic, of the people. As an epistolary novel (i.e. one told through letters), we come to know these characters directly: we hear their voices as we endeavour to decode their rhetoric and the folds of their minds.

8. Pamela’s Structure Pamela - an epistolary novel - was first published in 1740. It was a bestseller of its time. Richardson first began writing Pamela as a conduct book. Then later, he decided to write in a different genre. Most novels of mid 18’s and 19’s followed Richardson’s ability to teach as well as amuse their readers. Extremely popular during the 18th century, mainly because of Richardson’s Pamela Richardson claimed that he was writing ‘to the moment’, i.e., Pamela’s thoughts were recorded nearly simultaneously with his action. The novel was an experiment, but it allowed Richardson to create a complex heroine.

9. Realistic Elements Richardson put an end to the romance of fancy and shifted towards realism. Pamela being the first notable novel of sentimental analysis heralded the advent of everyday manners and common people to artistic acceptance. Richardson stirred the readers’ emotions, and gave definite satisfaction to their latent thirst for sentiment. He presented the readers with living, actual, flesh heroes and heroines; and responded to their liking for reality and substance in fiction; re-imparted a moral lesson. Thus, the reader can find himself one with the rising reaction against the sceptical levity of the preceding age.

10. Richardson’s novels are filled with a spirit of bourgeois criticism of the privileges and the corruption of the great, and, at the same time, they are flavoured with the essence snobbishness. The impatient self-assertion of the middle-class, and its quiet setting down into conservative grooves of feeling are foreshadowed. Pamela is an illustration of the Christian equality of souls, quite in keeping with the wide-spread modern tendency to exact a sentimental, theoretical democracy. On the other hand, an involuntary sunservience to the innate dignity of rank and richness. Religion and moral thoughts of the age were well depicted in the novel.

11. Character of Pamela The courage of Pamela to reject her master’s attempt of seduction and her eventual success strengthened the role of womanhood. Pamela’s character is a devotee of god, which often makes her seem vain, manipulative, selfish and hypocritical to others but it is her virtuous behaviour that ultimately redeems her. In the first edition, Pamela’s diction is that of a lower-class maid, but in later editions Richardson made her more linguistically middle-class by removing the lower-class idioms from her speech. In this way, Richardson made her marriage to Mr. B less scandalous as she appeared to be more his equal in education.

12. Virtue and Morality . Richardson wanted to teach as well as entertain us with his novel. His main target group was the young generation of both sexes and had the intention to illuminate certain behavioural reactions. By raising the topics such as religion, virtue, morality, etc, he expected the young readership to keep those values alive. In the novel, he creates the character of a vituous young woman who is blessed with intelligence, natural beauty and innocence. Pamela impresse her master with honesty and a behaviour which was not associated with her low social status in the 18th century.

13. Morality and religion play an important role in the novel. This is shown by the way Pamela continually refuses to be her master’s mistress. He again and again attempts to seduce her. The majority of the readers were young women who were fascinated and inspired by Richardson’s way of showing that morality, religion and virtue lead to a good life. The success of Pamela over aristocratic man puts gender and social roles into question. The story of Pamela shows and wants to highlight that barriers can be broken. The novel put the class, social rules and gender into question by asserting that domestic order can be determined not only by socia-economic status but by moral qualities of mind too.

14. By Moinkhan Pathan