Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
Samuel Richardson
1689 – 1761
ENPublic Domain
Summary
"Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded" by Samuel Richardson is an epistolary novel published in 1740. Through letters and journal entries, fifteen-year-old maidservant Pamela Andrews recounts her employer Mr. B's persistent unwanted advances after his mother's death. Torn between her religious principles and desire for approval, Pamela faces seduction attempts, assaults, and kidnapping as the wealthy landowner pursues her. This groundbreaking work explores virtue, class barriers, and the troubling boundaries between aggression and courtship in eighteenth-century England. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Subjects
- Didactic fiction
- England — Fiction
- Epistolary fiction
- Kidnapping victims — Fiction
- Master and servant — Fiction
- Virtue — Fiction
- Women household employees — Fiction