Class and Social Mobility in Pamela: A Critique of 18th-Century British Class Structures

Author(s): Dr. Laxmi Pandey

Abstract:

Indeed, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) is a text that can help understand the phenomenon of class relations and social climbing in the context of British 18th-century society. This paper seeks to discuss Richardson’s portrayal of the society especially in the manner in which he portrays the growth of the protagonist, Pamela from a maidservant to a gentlewoman in the society of the time as a critique of the still emerging and entrenched class system. Through understanding the conflict between Pamela’s low birth and her high status the study reveals the relationship between virtue, education and conformity as the factors that define one’s status in society. In its turn, the research explores how the character of Pamela embodies both the possibility of social climb and the impossibility of the latter. The role of power in the novel is one of the main aspects focused on the novel and especially on the relationship between Pamela and her employer Mr. B. This paper thus seeks to unravel how Richardson’s works both conforms and subverts the cultural expectations of the middle-class Englishwomen and the fluidity of the class-status. Moreover, the paper analyses the responses of the society to the new position of Pamela, as the characters’ attitude to her new position is described. These interactions represent a form of a much larger cultural uncertainty of social mobility in Britain during 18th century. Thus, this paper contends that if Pamela is read as a novel produced and set in its historical and cultural context, then this means that the novel is not only a piece of fiction, but also a social commentary on the opportunities of social mobility in a rigidly tiered society. Therefore, this research seeks to establish the manner in which Richardson’s Pamela depicts and deconstructs the class systems in Britain in the eighteenth century and the changing relationship between merit, virtue, and status as the determinants of social position.

Keywords: Social mobility, class structure, virtue, education, gentility, marriage.

Pages: 34-37      |       220 View       |       36 Download