The Epistolary Narrative of Pamela: Richardson's Novel Approach

As evidenced by my previous blogs, I have become increasingly intrigued by the narrative modes employed by early authors of the novel.  As such, I was of course immediately taken by the many narrative twist and turns of Richardson’s Pamela.  Much of its complications may be readily attributed to the novel’s epistolary form, which interests me in that it seems this style was newly and uniquely available to the novelist.  The seemingly faithful reproduction of a letter in works of poetry or drama would necessitate a break from their structures and would, therefore, be outside the logic of these literary forms.  That the epistolary was a new method of narration, then, speaks to the challenges Richardson faced in employing it in Pamela and renders me even more interested in his missteps, as they perhaps helped to shape what would be later novelists’ more polished attempts.

Having read Behn’s Oronooko and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, we have, in the past few weeks, discussed the efforts of the authors and publishers of these works to present them to their audience as though they were non-fiction accounts of true events.  It is not surprising, then, that Richardson often seems intent on producing the same effect with Pamela; what is puzzling, however, is how inconsistent his efforts appear.  A narrative offered in epistolary form seems, logically, one most apropos to ostensibly faithful reproductions, as it could be imagined to quite literally be a bound collection of a series of letters.  At times, in the novel, Richardson seems determined that his audience believe Pamela to be just such a collection, yet even the novel’s preface, which references specifically the drawing of characters, belies such a reading (3).  Were Richardson more consistent in his efforts, such a preface could, like that written by Defoe as an introduction to Robinson Crusoe’s “autobiography,” have made claims to its veracity by, for instance, explaining how it was that the editor came about this series of letters concerning Pamela.  Of course, my concern with this aspect of the novel is entirely predicated on the idea that Richardson had as a goal verisimilitude.  This may very well not be the case, yet throughout the novel there is evidence of Richardson’s creative efforts to suspend the disbelief of his readers and aid in their imaginative experience of reading the actual letters of Pamela and other characters.

Perhaps the most striking of such efforts is Pamela’s recurring explanation that those letters not written by her are available to her parents by means of her copying them verbatim in some usually frenzied moment.  This makes sense in that it is unlikely that those letters that are taken from her would be later available to her for presentation to her parents.  Yet, as we learn throughout the narrative that her letters and writings are consistently stolen from her, it is difficult to understand the logic that allows for some of these writings to be recovered and later reproduced and others not, particularly when we have little doubt as to who is behind the seizure of them all.  A moment in which Richardson does seem greatly concerned with maintaining the realism of the epistolary form occurs when Mrs. Jewkes discovers and removes Pamela’s journal and Pamela, believing her recent account of her troubles to be gone from her forever, provides her parents a briefer summary of them in a new entry (236).  This, of course, like Defoe’s presenting aspects of Crusoe’s story in both autobiographical and epistolary form, gives the effect that the person who offers Pamela’s writings is so committed to their honest reproduction as to prefer tedious redundancy to the omission of any of its parts.  This leads me to question, then, why none of the letters that Pamela copied down for her parents is also represented as an original, as surely, in keeping with the logic of the narrative, at least a few of them would have been retrieved with the other, greater parts of her letters and journal entries. 

Then, of course, there is the no small matter of the novel’s temporary break from the epistolary form in which, suddenly and, as far as I can tell, inexplicably, an omniscient narrator is introduced (92-98).  (Say what?) 

Perhaps I am being presumptuous in my questioning of Pamela’s narration, as I have yet to even finish the novel.  I am hard put to imagine, however, what new element Richardson could later introduce that would account for the inconsistences aforementioned.  Certainly, however, my attention to these matters should not be viewed as indicative of a doubt regarding Richardson’s talent and skill.  Rather, I am simply intrigued by the idea that Richardson was, in writing an epistolary novel, experimenting with an innovative new technique, one that was not without its difficulties.