Moralagendaand Anti-feminist Stance Of Samuel Richardson In Pamela,or Virtue Rewarded

The economic prosperity in the eighteenth century exerted much influence on the English society,including the moral decay of the middle classes and the awakening of women.Many,however,regarded the fact that women were becoming each day freer as a symbol of moral decline.Samuel Richardson as a prominent publisher with a stupendous moral vision felt keenly within his responsibility to curb the moral degeneration of his society and to promote a wholesome set of values to sustain high morality.His Pamela,or Virtue Rewarded was motivated by the desire to establish a proper behavioral and spiritual guidance for young,impressionable girls so that they can be virtuous and better serve the patriarchal society.This thesis aims to unveil the moral agenda behind this novel and the author’s anti-feminist stance manifested via the execution of this agenda.Chapter one points out how the economic growth engendered “problems” such as moral decay and the rise of female power in the society.As a printer and a moralist,Richardson dedicated himself to the service of moral resuscitation,which formed his moral agenda in the creation of his first book Pamela.By aid of the relationship between discourse and power,chapter two illustrates how Richardson employs textual and verbal oppression and castration,which at length disintegrates Pamela’s own female power and her will to fight for gender equality.The surrender of Pamela to the total dominance of Mr.B in turn facilitates the implementation of Richardson’s agenda.Chapter three elaborates how Richardson furnishes Pamela with incomparable innocence and virtue through the rigorous upbringing by her father,and how she is chiseled into the ideal gentlemen’s wife and subjected absolutely to the authority and dominance of her husband.Pamela’s abdication of power highlights another win for the patriarchal system and the full execution of Richardson’s moral agenda.After a thorough analysis of the text,this thesis argues that the “virtue” commended by Richardson is a set of behavioral code dominated by male discourse and applied for the better fortification of male power.It is a virtue that was come up by men,approved by men,and that can be degraded to such anti-feminist clichés of “chastity”,“loyalty”,“submission”,etc.Pamela’s marriage to Mr.B,he oppressor and violator,is the act of abdication of female power yielding to the patriarchy society.Ergo we see clearly the moral agenda of Richardson in composing this novel: for men to create an ideal woman that perfectly fits the criterion of male society as the behavioral and ideological model for all women;an agenda that is fundamentally dedicated to the preservation and sustenance of male dominance and ergo anti-feminist.