Pamela (novel)
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (Eng. Pamela or the rewarded virtue ) is a letter novel by the English writer Samuel Richardson , which was first published in 1740 .
The novel tells the story of a beautiful but penniless 15-year-old servant named Pamela Andrews. Her master, the noble Mr. B., makes her undesirable advances after the death of his mother, as her maid she had worked from the age of twelve. Mr. B. is entranced by her sight, her innocence and intelligence, but his social position initially prevents him from proposing a marriage to her. He kidnaps her to one of his estates, where he tries to seduce and rape her. She resists his temptations and refuses to become his mistress , but gradually becomes aware of the fact that she is falling in love with him. After intercepting and reading her letters to her parents, he falls even more in love with her innocent intelligence and her constant attempts to escape. Her virtue is ultimately rewarded when he proves his honesty and proposes marriage to her . In the second part of the novel, Pamela tries to adapt to the behavior of the upper classes and to build a successful relationship with her husband.
The book, originally designed as an educational novel, became an extremely popular bestseller soon after its publication , although some passages were criticized as suggestive. It was translated into French by Abbé Prévost and adapted for the Italian stage by Carlo Goldoni . In England it sparked numerous parodies, including Shamela and Joseph Andrews of Richardson's rival Henry Fielding and anti-Pamela by Eliza Haywood .
expenditure
- English: Samuel Richardson: Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded. Penguin Classic, 1980. ISBN 978-0-14-043140-7
literature
- Hans-Peter Mai: Samuel Richardson's "Pamela". Character, rhetoric and narrative structure . Steiner, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-515-04626-7 (also dissertation, University of Mainz 1984)
- Svenja Weidinger: “Narrative strategies of sensitivity. Paralinguistic sign systems in Samuel Richardson's Pamela ”, in: Enlightenment Volume 17, year 2005, pp. 155–172
