Crescent Carnival, by Frances Parkinson Keyes

"She was even conscious of a rush of thankfulness that she had found the courage to speak from her soul, at least once, before she was silenced forever."
-- from  Crescent Carnival (130)

Contains spoilers, but seriously, they're mentioned on the book cover.

After reviewing three (very interesting) books in a row that  are collections of anecdotes and experiences -- diary entries, erotic Socratic dialogues, and a collection of short tales and lore -- I found myself with a powerful hankering for narrative. And that was certainly delivered by Crescent Carnival, an 807-page multi-generational saga, originally published in 1942.

From Keyes' New Orleans-set novels, I picked this one for the promise of historical Mardi Gras culture. Its succession of young heroines, spanning the 1890s to the start of World War II, are all expected to become Carnival Queens, and while the situations play out differently in the different time periods, there's enough description of parades and balls to satisfy that expectation.

Along the way, I was surprised and thrilled to find many specific locations in the book that I'm familiar with: the home of the earliest protagonist, Estelle Lenoir, is the building I've toured on Royal Street that now houses the Historic New Orleans Collection. The Sisters of the Holy Family convent, now a hotel where I've stayed twice, plays a role. Plus obvious spots like the cornstalk fence house in the Garden District, the Napoleon House, the St. Louis Cathedral, and an unnamed coffee shop near the Cathedral which might be Cafe du Monde (it could also be the Morning Call).

Starting at a Mardi Gras ball in 1940, the novel flashes back to the star-crossed love between Estelle, a beautiful Creole heiress, and Andrew Breckenridge, a Yankee plantation-owner scandalously involved in the real-life Louisiana State Lottery Company. The sheltered, devoutly Catholic Estelle, barely allowed to leave the house by herself, comes to the brink of defying her family, and the rules of her whole society, for love, but is frightened away by her lover's vehement romantic ultimatums: "If you want to marry me enough, you'll let the whole world crash to pieces without stopping you from doing that" (149).

While this thwarting of narrative expectations, in a novel with all the trappings of romantic fiction, was somewhat frustrating, I did like two aspects of it. First, Estelle is no Scarlett O'Hara, and neither is her daughter, who'll fall into a similarly doomed romance with Andrew's son (unhappily married to a completely incompatible woman, who sort of Carol Kennicotts everyone around her). Everyone can't defy their times, and many people still have difficulties going against the grain of social and familial pressure, and this novel doesn't pretend that most people can.

Secondly, the relative boldness of the young women in the 1940s section (Estelle's granddaughter Stella, and the distantly related Patty) is shown as a function of their time. They've grown up wearing comfortable clothes, driving cars, mixing socially with young men, and because of that lack of constraint, they are freer to make choices about their own lives. That doesn't necessarily make the course of true love run more smoothly, since throughout the book, the biggest obstacle to any couple's happiness is their own mistakes, but it illustrates changes in social attitudes without getting heavy-handed about it.

Slangy, career-oriented Stella is particularly interesting. She scoffs at her grandmother's Downton Abbey-esque view of the changing times -- "Grannie dear ... you keep telling me we've come to the end of an era " (30) -- and when she meets her true love, she can think "How could she resist an embrace which encompassed her so naturally and so inevitably? Why should she?" (522, italics and obvious implication, in the text) But she and her fiancee spend much of the book thwarting their own happiness, due to pride and mutual misunderstanding, just like their ancestors' happiness was thwarted by fears and social conformity.

The couple who bring it all together are a little too good to be true, but by then, SOMEONE deserves a happy ending, so it didn't annoy me too much.

I will warn you, this book was written by a white woman about white Southern culture, in 1942, with all that implies. Characters casually say things like "that's mighty white of you," without anyone thinking it odd, and there are various patronizing depictions of their black servants and plantation laborers. Plus, there's a whole subplot about Huey Long -- his 1935 assassination occurs within the novel --  and the characters we're following, and by extension identifying with, are politically opposed to him. They talk about his dictatorial ways and his stranglehold on the process, which makes this opposition seem perfectly appropriate and democratic. But suddenly, they're all praising an anti-Long speech against some of his legislature: "When this ugly bill is boiled down in its own juices, it disfranchises the white people of Louisiana ... you cannot sell the birthright of another white man" (528).

So it was a tyrant against a bunch of racists. Wow; good times. But not inaccurate, historically.

Fortunately, there are only a few of those "eee" moments, and otherwise, it's an interesting and sprightly period piece. If I get caught up on other things, I'd certainly read some of Keyes' other works -- maybe the other New Orleans saga, Dinner at Antoine's.

Keyes, Frances Parkinson. Crescent Carnival. Boston: Second Line Press, 2014.

Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

"On the whole enormous prairie there was no sign that any other human being had ever been there." 
-- from Little House on the Prairie (41)

Well, this is crazily more dramatic than Little House in the Big Woods: crossing the river! Ma almost crushed by a log! Wolves surrounding the house! Prairie fires! Irritated Native Americans!  But oddly, it's the one I remember least well.

There's a lot of (lovely) description of the prairie, and an exhausting amount of construction. Pa builds a house, a barn, the doors, the furniture, the fireplace, the well. So there's plenty of wood-working and mud-stirring, much more so than depiction of food and clothes. Not that it's uninteresting, exactly, but it doesn't thrill me in quite the same way.

Laura is a little older and more worldly than the previous book, and she hasn't lost the rebellious nature that makes her such a beloved character. She still wants to slap her sister so badly that "she dared not look at Mary again" (181), and when reminded that children mustn't complain, "she was still naughty, inside. She sat and thought complaints to herself" (15).

That self-control that she's being conditioned to is shown in this book as a matter of survival value, as it was in Big Woods when they encountered a bear. At separate points in the story, the children doing what they're told is pivotal to their safety. However, the down side of that is obvious in the heart-wrenching moment when Laura believes their dog has drowned when crossing a rising river: "She knew it was shameful to cry, but there was crying inside her" (24). Her need to hold back her deep feelings of sorrow almost made ME cry, especially since this comes right after the realization of how nearly the whole family had come to perishing. "The river would have rolled them over and over and carried them away and drowned them, and nobody would ever have known what became of them" (ibid). That's a lot for a little girl to take in.

On the lighter side, the only things in the whole series that I like as much as the Surveyor's House are the Little House Christmases, and this is a great one: "Think of having a whole penny for your very own. Think of having a cup and a cake and a stick of candy and a penny" (250). Reading that, I couldn't help thinking we might not be better of if we could be so happy with so little, or had any real grasp of the difference between desires and necessities. Not that I want to be digging my own well any time soon.

What I remembered vividly, but didn't remember it was this book: The scene of Mr. Edwards dancing like a jack-in-the-box. I had thought the dugout appeared in this book, but now I think that's Plum Creek.

Ma's aesthetic sense: Ma's china shepherdess survives the trip in the covered wagon (117), and when they're still on the trail, she not only washes, but irons, their dresses! (47) It makes me speechless.

The current trends: Gone into town for supplies, Pa brings the girls black rubber hair combs. Each has a star cut out of it, with a ribbon underneath, so Mary has a black headband with a blue star, and Laura with a red star. "They had never had anything so pretty" (271). Since the combs are "curved to fit over the top of a little girl's head" (270), there must be enough little girls passing through for this store in the middle of nowhere to stock this kind of thing.

Progress: The problematic nature of so-called progress comes across in this book, which sees white settlers displacing the Native American population (although they'll get driven out too, temporarily). The Ingalls' neighbors hold forth on how "the only good Indian was a dead Indian" (211, 284) which, eeee, obviously, but it's certainly true to the times. Earlier, one of them had said "They'd never do anything this with country themselves. All they do is roam around over it like wild animals. Treaties or no treaties, the land belongs to folks that'll farm it. That's only common sense and justice" (211). Sort of a woman-on-the-street view of Manifest Destiny, tied in, maybe, with a perverse view of the Protestant Work Ethic, and while I couldn't disagree with this more, it does illustrate the common attitudes.

The books are often faulted in modern times for their attitudes toward Native Americans, so Wilder's perspective here is more balanced than I'd expected. Pa tells her that "when white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on," and she replies, "But, Pa, I thought this was Indian Territory. Won't it make the Indians mad to have to --" And just like real life, he shuts that down with "Go to sleep" (237). Later, though, he tells the neighbor that "Indians would be as peaceable as anybody else if they were let alone. On the other hand, they had been moved west so many times that naturally they hated white folks" (284). Even after he finds out later that they had been in some danger from these understandably aggrieved tribes, the narrative explicitly states that "Pa did not believe that the only good Indian was a dead Indian" (301). So, not perfect, but it could be worse.

In the end, of course, the Ingalls family is moved on by the same government, and after a few detours, will end up on the famous Plum Creek.

Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Little House on the Prairie. Revised edition. New York: HarperCollins, 1953.

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, by Pu Songling

"A lonely soul in a strange land dreads the desolation of the grave."
-- One of the many attractive ghosts in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (178)

This Penguin edition collects 104 of the short tales of odd and frequently supernatural occurrences written by Pu Songling, who died in 1715, but whose work wasn't published until 1766. Just like the people in these stories, we're living, 250 years later, in a time full of soul-crushing bureaucracy, only without the consolations of shrines, ghosts, and fox spirits. Personally, I'd love to visit the Island of Antiquities (185), or be able to believe that grievances against the dead could be settled in the courts of the Nether World (147), although I wouldn't be too thrilled to have a miniature person come out of my ear.

I was surprised by the number of tiny people in these stories, as well the often-sympathetic view taken toward the spirit world. The presence of ghosts may often be harmful to the living, and the fox spirits may be known for their seductive and otherwise trickstery ways, but the individuals of their -- species?, particularly women, are shown in many of the tales to be loving and essentially decent.

Also, there is a tale about a giant turtle, about whom the nearby monks proclaim "All we can do is worship it and pray to it not to fly into a rage" (194): the original Gamera? It doesn't fly, or breathe fire, but frankly, that wouldn't be at all out of place here.

Editor and translator John Minford provides so much in the way of fascinating backstory and detailed footnotes, I wish I could fake-drink that cup of oblivion offered by Yama in the afterlife, and be reborn to study Chinese literature in more depth. Clearly, it would take me a lifetime to read through all the relevant texts mentioned. Especially since there are whole genres of stories called "Weird Accounts" and "Strange Stories," the former being shorter records of peculiar events, and the latter more fleshed-out short stories on similar themes. (Both styles represented here).

Highly recommended, particularly for a time when you don't have a lot of time, or attention span, to devote to reading. Some of the tales are only half a page long, and even the longer narratives fly by quickly.

Pu Songling. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Translated and edited by John Minford.  London: Penguin, 2006.

Venus in the Cloister, or, The Nun in a Chemise, by Abbe du Prat

"Look, here is a book that I will lend you; make good use of it; it will instruct you of many things."

"There is no book that of its nature bears a forbidden title; only the use we make of it means that is good, bad, or neither."

-- from Venus in the Cloister, or, The Nun in a Chemise (34, 81)

This short collection of dialogues, subtitled "Curious Conversations," was originally published in 1683, with later editions that continued to add new material to what is, essentially, 17th century soft porn. Pretty soft, and surprisingly philosophical, by porn standards, although it does start off with one pretty nun interrupting another (in, you guessed it, her chemise), who is pretty obviously masturbating.

In the non-linear series of anecdotes that follows, mostly about the love lives of the characters' fellow nuns, we learn that the French apparently once called French kisses "Florentine" kisses (79), and that communities of nuns and monks were originally connected so they could ease each others' tensions -- making it infidelity if they strayed with partners who belonged to different religious orders. Which did make me laugh.There's an ongoing thread about how some physical pleasures are natural and right, but the characters still judge some others for debauchery. As Sister Angelique says, "All extremes are dangerous" (82).

Just to prove, again, that some things never change, and human inconsistency is one of those things. "There is nothing certain or assured in this world; there is no point of view that can be sustained, and ... we we have merely false and confused ideas of the things that we think we know most perfectly" (77).

Along the way, there are some jabs at the church as an institution, and particularly at the ascetics and, well, the uptight. "What you call 'the contemplation of diving things' is at bottom merely a soft and cowardly sloth, incapable of any action," Angelique declares. The book doesn't get too heavy about this, keeping its tone fairly light, because while it assumes religion and belief in God to be true, its main interest is in everyday human life, accepting sexuality as a part of that. "You know well that our hearts cannot get by without a little amusement ... nature allows these hearts of ours to seek out objects that will fulfil them" (95).

Several books are mentioned in the text, which interested me, since I came to this book because of its mention in Henry Fielding's Shamela. A few of them are particularly intriguing: "A Plain and Pleasant Path for Preventing a Problematic Plumpness," and "Collection of Remedies against Perilous Plumpness, composed for the commodity of the religious ladies of Saint-Georges" (44, 51). I doubt those are specific real books, but they seem clearly based on real ones, and I'd love to see their suggestions!

du Prat, Abbe. Venus in the Cloister, or, The Nun in a Chemise: Curious Conversations. Translated by Andrew Brown. London: Hesperus Press, 2012.

Florence Nightingale in Egypt and Greece: Her Diary and "Visions"

"I did not think it worth while to get up in the morning. What could I do but offend God?"
-- from Florence Nightingale in Egypt and Greece: Her Diary and "Visions"

Influenced by PBS's Mercy Street, I first intended to read Florence Nightingale's "Cassandra," but then realized it was just an essay, so not really Classics Club material. That led me to this curious volume,credited to Michael D. Calabria, who edited the material, and contextualizes Nightinale's diary with historical and biographical information, along with plenty of excerpts from her letters from Egypt, Greece, and parts of Europe. Those are much more descriptive, and I almost thought I should be reading them instead, but they apparently don't do much to illuminate her inner feelings, which are the focus of her more personal writing.

In 1850, the time of the travels recorded here, she had not definitively embarked on her famous nursing career, and she struggles both with obvious depression over her life, and with determining the will of God for her future. Although she seems to have a mystical temperament, it's still balanced by an unflaggingly practical side: she makes notes about the cook and a tour guide, and then adds "Settled the question with God," as if it's something on her to-do list (46).

It's delightful to see her quick entries about her "dreadful fights with Trout" (25). Trout was her servant on the trip, with whom Nightingale did NOT seem to get along; later though, when Trout has been ill, she'll say she "found the prospect of having that wretched woman ... to nurse cheer me up suddenly" (31) -- probably proving how close she was to finding her permanent vocation.

The diary entries are appended by two pieces of fanciful philosophical writing, a brief "Greek Vision," and the "Vision of Temples," in which she imagines the creation of six real Egyptian temples, and the reaction of an immortal God-figure to them. Each temple represents a different way of approaching God, or a different theological style (one more dedicated to a show of wealth and magnificence, for example, and one to the worship of Nature).

There's a lot of interesting material in this short piece. For example, she says that God "has given them (humanity) to create with toil and trouble, that they might have the satisfaction of thinking, 'I have done this,' " (125) -- an explanation for the hardship of life with roots in psychology. And the poetic reverie that "Night is the genesis of all things; primeval darkness is the mother of the world, for darkness is more ancient than light, and day was born of night" (126). I'll be quoting that, somewhere.

Nightingale posits the correct approach as one that accepts the existence of evil, with "the two spirits of God, Good and Evil" (129), and sees her God as "the great Unknown, the Unutterable, the Infinite Himself ... I will build a temple ... mysterious as the future, and vast as the past; yet it shall be the symbol of a day ... that my people may know that upon the hours of a day are laid the destinies of man" (128). After all her spiritual angst, she comes to a place that combines the Infinite with the small measures of human time, where she'd find the work she believed in.

Calabria, Michael D.  Florence Nightingale in Egypt and Greece: Her Diary and "Visions." Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997.

Adventures of Eovaai, Princess of Ijaveeo: A Pre-Adamitical History, by Eliza Haywood

“Why must our Pains alone be Virtue, and all our Pleasures Vice?”

“It is not given us Mortals to fathom the deep Mysteries of Futurity.”
-- from Adventures of Eovaai, p. 97, 102

One of the notes I tend to write in the margins of books, particularly those from previous centuries, is “Nihil novum” – a relic of my bygone Latin studies, meaning “Nothing new,” as in “under the sun.” Well, this whole 1741 novel is one of the nihil novumest things I’ve ever read. It was written, largely, as a specific satire against then-Prime Minister Robert Walpole (whose stranglehold on the British government was discussed in Geoffrey Ashe's excellent history The Hell-Fire Clubs), and it seems logical that would make a book’s subject matter dated. But no!

This short novel, a faux history of ancient times, filtered through a series of supposed translators and commentators, is a fanciful fable, almost a work of early fantasy, which allows the author to indulge her imagination, and revel in bizarre names and  magical incidents. I've only read more realistic "amatory" fiction by Eliza Haywood, my prolific fave, but the editor of this edition includes excerpts from some of her similarly oddly-genred other works.

The princess Eovaai has been raised to be utterly virtuous and a wise ruler, in ignorance both of her own beauty and the sins of the world (thus, in a way, in an Edenic state). In a Pandora's Box-like turn, her curiosity, about a royal jewel that causes the kingdom to run smoothly, leads to her dropping and losing it. Her subjects turn against her, and she eventually ends up magically exiled in the kingdom of Hypotofa.

This realm is ruled by the the plots of Ochihatou (Walpole’s stand-in), who is not the king, but manipulates the people for his own benefit. “Every body wears what he thinks will best become him, and professes that Worship which is either most agreeable to his own Opinions, or most consistent with his Interest: All that is required from the People, is to be satisfied with whatever is done by the Government … and never to enquire into the Actions of the Ministers” (74). As long as they ignore the political sphere, the people have all the liberty they want in a choice of consumer luxuries and frivolous entertainments … hey, wait a minute!

Not only that, but their “private Luxury” is (a trade-off) for “publick Misery,” in a place and time in which “nothing was to be seen but excessive Grandeur or extreme Wretchedness” (108). At the same time, the people are seriously burdened with taxes on those very luxuries. How did this all come to pass? Because: “Which of you has not, for a shew of private Advantage, consented to give up Publick-Good?” (105) Eovaii wonders to see “so fatal a Negligence in a whole People” (100).

Tweak the language, and all this could be ripped from today’s editorial pages. It’s kind of a downer to think that so little has changed in almost 300 years, but on the other hand, it's also nice to know that civilization has survived similar problems.

A few other stories are embedded in the tale, with female protagonists who are like alternate versions of Eovaai: there’s the unlucky Yximilla, another princess, but one who ends up forced into marriage at the end of a bloody war, and the cautionary tale of another woman who was smitten by Ochihatou, who had come this-close to seducing Eovaii while using magic to cover up his ugliness. The satire, doubtless, comes from his ability to convince others of his non-existent virtues, and to prevent them from seeing his unpleasant qualities, while he seduces them in the arena of politics and public opinion.

Since Haywood was known for being relatively frank about sexuality, however, this allows her to have some fun with the metaphorical acting-out of a politician screwing other people over. For example, when Eovaii's "Extasies" are interrupted at the crucial moment by affairs of state, she finds that "the warm Inclinations which the Behaviour of Ochihatou had raised, demanded Gratification ." Haywood's footnote from the book's fictional editor drily notes that commentators are "at a loss for the Author's Meaning," since they've been assured by various "Ladies" that their gender "is wholly free from any Inquietudes of that nature" (92). LOL. 

Note on Walpole: he may have basically ruled England, but yes, his son was THE Horace Walpole (a much bigger name in my world), author of The Castle of Otranto, among other important works in the Gothic revival. 

Haywood, Eliza. Adventures of Eovaai, Princess of Ijaveeo: A Pre-Adamitical History. Edited by Earla Wilputte. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press: 1999.

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson

"She may be turned loose to her evil destiny, and echo to the woods and groves her piteous lamentations for the loss of her fantastical innocence."
-- the still-plotting Mr. B. about Pamela (p. 170)

"What is left me but words?"
-- Pamela herself (p. 220)

In 1740, 51-year-old English printer Samuel Richardson published a story in letter form that was meant to illustrate moral principles.  It highlighted the temptations and outright dangers that attractive young women of lower social classes would meet with from gentlemen in high society, when they went out to work. This novel, Pamela, became a huge sensation, and led him to a career that would find him often designated, when I was an undergraduate, as the Father of the English Novel.

Of course, later reading shows there were plenty of other novels before Richardson. But although the style often seems far from what we find on the best-seller lists today, he popularized the use of the form to probe the psychological dimensions of a character, and what we'd call a "narrative arc," in contrast to writers like Sterne and Smollett. Of course, my old friend Eliza Haywood was already writing best-sellers like that, but for whatever fluke of zeitgeist, Pamela -- like a Jaws or a Star Wars -- was the one that really set the world on fire.

Haywood, in her response novel Anti-Pamela, and Henry Fielding in Shamela, both addressed something that struck me the first time I attempted to read it, long ago, which is that the story plays outs in a way that works against its attempted moral theme. Pamela's employer, Mr. B., trying to get her to sleep with him, attempts seduction, offers financial rewards, kidnaps her, and threatens her with rape. In the face of all, she remains so steadfast in defense of  her virtue that she inspires him to reform. When he finally offers her real marriage, the girl who thought he was stooping to even acknowledge her finally admits that, yup, she really was in love with him, and is rewarded with an elevation into wealth and high society.

In the first place, it's obvious that Mr. B.'s earlier behavior is a problem for a romantic hero, although plenty of explanation is offered later for why he might have been such a jerk. And it does seem, with the reactions of other high-born characters to her plight, that he's meant to be a pattern of the age: behaving like any man of his class might have, feeling themselves entitled to sex with any woman over whom they have authority, and we're meant to believe that his experience with Pamela has truly shown him the error of those ways.

For example, a neighboring lord famously remarks "What is all this ... but that our neighbor has a mind to his mother's waiting-maid! And if takes care she wants for nothing, I don't see any great injury will be done her ... 'tis what all young gentlemen will do" (138, 139).

Still, it's awfully unsavory, especially when she's gushing later about how wonderful he is.

The fact that Pamela is rewarded so much for standing her ground provides a pretty standard happy ending. It's kind of like Cinderella (minus wicked stepfamily) meets Beauty and the Beast. But the reward muddies the water of her exemplary behavior, and opens her up to the suspicion of hypocrisy, and of holding out for a better deal. After all, what happens when people hold fast to what they think is right, and they aren't rewarded for it? In the end, the work fits the mode of romance, but it's hard to put aside a more realistic perspective on what would really happen to a woman in a similar bind.

Another problematic element crops up early on, which is that everyone loves her! Everyone is praising her all the time, and she calmly repeats all their praise. "Don't think me presumptuous and conceited" (50), she says, but many readers have found her so.

Richardson, either because of some of that critical reaction, or from a recognition of the troublesome elements in the book, later embarked on Clarissa, which explicitly addresses a lot of these issues.

So, where to even begin talking about the specifics? I should have blogged as I went!

Pamela is a young woman from a poor background, working as a serving-maid for a wealthy woman who taught her all sorts of more refined accomplishments. When her employer dies, she catches the eye of the woman's son. Because there are no laws against sexual harassment, and little social disapproval for it, she finds herself at his mercy, but ultimately prevails, even winning over the members of the upper classes who are originally horrified at her elevation.

Along the way, there are detailed conversations, escape attempts, times when she could escape, but doesn't, and lots and lots and lots of philosophical pontificating from our heroine, who, on the verge of a kidnapping, secured plenty of paper and ink to continue her journal to her parents, and keeps the papers sewn into her "under-coat, next to my linen" to hide them: "I begin to be afraid my writings may be discovered; for they grow large" (134). There's a delightfully meta touch when her parents "wonder how you could find time and opportunity" for all this detailed writing (165).

Right off the bat, Pamela's poor but honest parents are concerned about her. "Our chief trouble is, and indeed a very great one, for fear you should be brought to anything honest or wicked, by being set so above yourself ... what avails all this, if you are to be ruined and undone!" (5) They're concerned that becoming educated and "a genteel girl" is likely to give her airs, and they immediately suspect that her new master's kindness can only be motivated by bad intentions, especially since Pamela is "so taken with his kind expressions." They remind her that "we had rather see you all covered with rags, and even follow you to the churchyard, than have it said, a child of ours preferred any worldly conveniences to her virtue" (6, 6-7).

Yup, they'd rather see her dead! "Arm yourself, my dear child, for the worst; and resolve to lose your life sooner than your virtue" (13).

Once Mr. B. proves her parents right, grabbing and kissing her, she insists "You have taught me to forget myself and what belongs to me, and have lessened the distance that fortune has made between us, by demeaning yourself, to be so free to a poor servant" (17). She seems more bothered that he isn't acting according to his station, than she is by his abuse of his position.

In turn, he assumes (like Fielding will) that her resistance is all part of a strategy, and she responds, Clarissa-like, "I had better be thought artful and subtle, than be so" (23). Early on, her thoughts seem clearer on the subject: "He may condescend, perhaps, to think I may be good enough for his harlot; and these things don't disgrace men that ruin poor women, as the world goes" (37). At this point, I can't help thinking that, whatever the plot will bring, Richardson's popularity with women readers may have had something to do with these kinds of asides from Pamela's first-person perspective. Sometimes it's enough just to see a viewpoint articulated, and while she eventually succumbs to happiness with her moody persecutor, Pamela does rail against the double standards of her time. Similarly, she points out that "if you was not rich and great, and I poor and little, you would not insult me thus" (67), and that's true.

It does remain consistent throughout the book that Pamela, despite her personal virtuousness, refuses to condemn other women who've been "ruined," and she mentions this early on: "it is grown more a wonder that the men are resisted, than that the women comply ... one don't know what arts and stratagems men may devise to gain their vile ends; and so I will think as well as I can of those poor undone creatures and pity them" (68). Pity may not be ideal, but still, this was fairly progressive of Richardson.

Throughout the book, Mr. B. (along with his accomplice, Mrs. Jewkes, and his sister, Lady Davers) will call her all kinds of names: mostly "creature," but also "hussy" and "slut." My favorite is when he calls Pamela "the amiable gewgaw" (169), which sounds like a title for an old-school Regency romance: The Amiable Gewgaw.

 Whisked off to a country house where she's kept under guard, she comes up with various escape plans, but she begins to ruminate on the fact that "with all his ill usage of me, I cannot hate him" (187). When he begins to be jealous of a clergyman who tried to help her by offering marriage, she insists that she doesn't want to be married, adding in her journal "the only one I could honour more than another, is the gentleman who, of all others, seeks my everlasting dishonour" (198), and  "What pity his heart is not as good as his appearance" (206). It isn't much longer before she admits "I begin to be afraid I know too well the reason" why she couldn't hate him (224).

The situation resolves rather anti-climactically, with Mr. B. finally sending her to her parents to be rid of her, then calling her back and promising he'll treat her honorably. She takes him at his word, and (Stockholm Syndrome?) goes back of her own free will, leading to a happy ending which will take Richardson another couple hundred pages to describe.

Once he clears up her doubts and they get engaged, then married, Pamela has to come to terms with "the weight of the obligations you oppress me with" (325) -- very interesting language. Then they'll have to win over Lord B.'s snobby sister, who called his wife "the dirt you seem so fond of" (270). Ouch! And who will for a long time refuse to believe they're really married, claiming that Pamela is just one more girl "in the list of his credulous harlots" (413).

One detail I quite liked is that, after all that emphasis on guarding her virginity, Pamela has some trepidation about the wedding night. She wishes she had a "kind friend of one's own sex, to communicate one's foolish thoughts to" (353); of the marriage ceremony, she says "O sir, 'tis very awful, and makes one shudder, to reflect upon it!" (359). Even though she's married to "her beloved, gracious master! the lord of her wishes!" (364) (eww, right?), their sharing a bed is "yet dreadful to me to think of" (367).

For Clarissa fans, it's relevant to note that she muses here on the lot of women like herself married against their will, to their parents' choices, and how they'd have to face the reality of sex with those men: "what do not such poor innocent victims suffer!" (367) So that theme of women's powerlessness over their own bodies (and lack of "agency," as people might say in our day) was already on Richardson's mind in this novel as well.

Pamela's journal takes us practically to the moment itself, with an entry dated 11:00 pm on her wedding night, "to this happy, yet awful moment," and then picks up the next day with her in transports of oddly-phrased happiness."His words are so pure, his ideas so chaste, and his whole behavior so sweetly decent" (372). As many words as we have in this book, I could stand a little more detail at this point, because, what exactly is she talking about?

The story carries on a great deal after the wedding, depicting a lot of confrontations with the outraged Lady Davers, which remind us that, with the difference in their social classes, Mr. B. couldn't have honorably courted Pamela from the beginning even if he'd really wanted to, and that marrying her is more shocking to people than if he'd actually raped her. Which does make him look more honorable, in the end, than most of the people around him, although I still wish she'd gone back to her parents and refused to marry him.

Her compassion for women who fell like she didn't comes around again when she feels deeply empathetic toward a former mistress of Mr. B.'s who had a daughter out of wedlock, and promises to not only accept the little girl, but shower her with love.

As the narrative trickles off to a conclusion, there are some more mixed messages about a woman's place in society. Lady Davers points out the double standard that she wouldn't be forgiven for marrying her groom, and while Mr. B. counters that with the conventional idea that it's totally different, because the man has to be the head of the household, she's allowed to make an articulate case. Then Pamela, getting to know how ill-tempered he can be when angry, sounds her husband out for all his philosophies on married life. Although she seems to accept the loose rules he sets out for marital happiness, she points out that it's "a little hard" if, for example, she's supposed to "bear with him, even when I find him in the wrong" (476).

However, one of his ideas is "that the words COMMAND and OBEY shall be blotted out of the Vocabulary," to which she adds, "Very good!" (477)

So, in summary (whew!), while its problematic qualities are still problematic, I didn't hate Pamela in the way I expected to. It comes across as a work that's struggling to be progressive, but is still bogged down in its refusal to rock the boat of convention too much. I did find the character of Pamela somewhat conceited, but since she was supposed to be a very young woman left to defend herself with her wit, I couldn't dislike her the way I did when I was younger myself. And it's a fascinating portrait of its age.

The sequel, (Pamela's Conduct in High Life), has been so forgotten that it's often not even listed as one of his novels, but it's available, under the title Pamela Vol. II, at Project Gutenberg.

Richardson, Samuel. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1958.