A Room of Pamela's Own

The question of women's liberation does not exist for Samuel Richardson, but the problem of woman's self-determination is central to his work. Richardson's views, as has been generally recognized, are essentially conservative, despite the upward mobility of his heroine. The world that Pamela takes as normative is highly stratified. She knows her place (her own phrase), and Mr. B.'s as well. Therefore she sees his attempts to seduce her in terms of his invading a place where he does not belong, and she searches throughout the first half of the novel for a space she can call her own. There are three kinds of spatialization in the book: social hierarchy seen in terms of distance, the actual layout of the house, and Pamela's body, divided into discrete portions which have varying amounts of value. The invasion of one spatial order involves the perversion of all, and Pamela's problem is to create an interior space through the private consciousness constituted by her writings. In this society, Pamela as a servant girl is totally contingent. Mr. B. is a magistrate, and all authority is either locked in his hands or his by default. The ineffectuality of Parson Williams suggests the subordination of religion to the whim of power. Sir Simon Darnford's answer to his wife when informed of Pamela's plight indicates how little she has to hope for from the gentry

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