影響亦或「傳染病」？《帕梅拉》、《反帕梅拉》與女性情愛小說傳統

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(1)NTU Studies in Language and Literature Number 21 (June 2009), 107-144. 107. Influence or “Influenza”? Pamela, Anti-Pamela, and the Tradition of Women’s Amatory Fiction Jing-fen Su Ph. D. Student, Graduate Institute of Foreign Languages and Literatures National Taiwan University ABSTRACT The publication of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela in November 1740 was an immediate success, and the frenzy over the immensely popular novel quickly developed into an unprecedented sensational event commonly called “the Pamela controversy.” Among the very first literary responses to the Pamela vogue are Henry Fielding’s Shamela (April 1741) and Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela (June 1741), published within less than two months from each other. A closer look at the three novels, however, reveals that Haywood’s Anti-Pamela is curiously closer in style to Richardson’s Pamela than to Fielding’s Shamela, despite the fact that both Fielding and Haywood aim at attacking Richardson with their parodic novels. As one of the first attempts to deal with the intertextual influences between Richardson’s Pamela and Haywood’s much neglected work Anti-Pamela, in this essay I argue that the similarity in style between the two texts comes not from Haywood’s imitating Richardson, but rather from Richardson’s incorporating elements from the tradition of women’s amatory fiction, of which Haywood’s works in the 1720s constitute a significant part. In other words, despite his consistent disparagement of such writings by women as “influenza,” Richardson’s text betrays his indebtedness to Haywood, and in composing Anti-Pamela, Haywood does not depart much from her earlier novelistic style, thus leading to the false impression that Haywood is following Richardson in style. The analysis in the essay shows that the textual exchanges between Richardson and Haywood are never one-directional but intricately multi-directional, reflecting the complicated situation one encounters.

(2) 108. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. when trying to reconstruct the “true” history of the rise and development of the English novel. Keywords : Samuel Richardson, Eliza Haywood, Pamela, Anti-Pamela,. women’s amatory fiction.

(3) Influence or “Influenza”?. 109. 影響亦或「傳染病」？《帕梅拉》、《反帕梅拉》與女性情愛小說傳統蘇靖棻國立臺灣大學外國語文學研究所博士生摘要撒姆耳‧理查生（Samuel Richardson）的《帕梅拉》（Pamela）甫自 1740 年 11 月一出版即大受歡迎，對此暢銷書的瘋狂熱潮很快發展成史無前例、轟動社會的事件，通常稱之為「《帕梅拉》爭議」（the Pamela controversy）。亨利‧費爾汀（Henry Fielding）1741 年 4 月出版的《羞梅拉》（Shamela）和伊萊莎‧海鄔德（Eliza Haywood）1741 年 6 月出版的《反帕梅拉》（Anti-Pamela）為眾多回應《帕梅拉》風潮的文學作品中之兩部，彼此出版日期相距未及兩個月。然而，若更近一步檢視這三部小說，則可發現雖然費爾汀和海鄔德同樣以其仿擬小說攻擊理查生，海鄔德的《反帕梅拉》卻比費爾汀的《羞梅拉》在風格上更接近理查生的《帕梅拉》。本文旨在探討理查生的《帕梅拉》和海鄔德常被忽略的作品《反帕梅拉》之間的互文影響。筆者認為兩者風格之相似性並非來自海鄔德之模仿理查生，而是源自理查生融合了女性情愛小說傳統之元素於其自身小說中，在該傳統中海鄔德 1720 年代作品佔據相當重要的地位。換句話說，儘管理查生一貫地譴責女性情愛小說就像「傳染病」般，他的文本卻透露其事實上受惠於海鄔德早期小說；而海鄔德在創作《反怕梅拉》時，並未離棄其 1720 年代小說創作之風格，因此造成海鄔德似乎在風格上仿效理查生之假象。本研究分析顯示理查生和海鄔德之間的文本交流影響絕非單一方向，而是多重方向，亦反映出在企圖重建英國小說文類興起與發展之「真實」歷史時所面臨的複雜情境。關鍵詞：撒姆耳‧理查生、《帕梅拉》、伊萊莎‧海鄔德、《反怕梅拉》、女性情愛小說.

(4) 110. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. Influence or “Influenza”?1 Pamela, Anti-Pamela, and the Tradition of Women’s Amatory Fiction* Jing-fen Su On 6 November 1740, a novel entitled Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded appeared anonymously on the London book market. It was immediately received with great enthusiasm and praise among the reading public in England. The second edition quickly came out about three months later on 14 February 1741, with the author Samuel Richardson reluctantly announcing his authorship in the extended front matter of that edition. Capitalizing on the tremendous popularity of Pamela, many writers published unauthorized imitations, adaptations, continuations, parodies, or pirated editions of the novel. Commodities like fans and tea cups decorated with pictures of the virtuous servant girl Pamela, or even life-like wax figures of the main characters all helped contribute to the unprecedented “Pamela media event,” to use WilliamWarner’s term (1998: 176). Among the anti-Pamelist camp of the controversy are two novelists who play a crucial role in the rise and development of the English novel: Henry Fielding and Eliza Haywood. Fielding’s short but vigorous parody An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews was published anonymously on 4 April 1741, and Haywood’s Anti-Pamela: or, Feign’d Innocence Detected appeared on 20 June 1741, only less than two months after Shamela’s publication.2 A closer look at the three novels deeply involved in * This essay was revised from a research project I conducted for a course offered by Professor Claude Rawson in Spring 2008 at the Graduate Program of English Language and Literature, Yale University. I am much indebted to the insightful comments and generous revision suggestions provided by Professor Rawson, my dissertation adviser Professor Michael Keevak at National Taiwan University, and the anonymous reviewers of my essay. 1 In choosing the title for this essay, I take hints from William Warner’s essay “The Elevation of the Novel in England: Hegemony and Literary History” (1992). Warner contends that the popularity of early women’s amatory novels “functions less as an ‘influence’ upon Richardson and Fielding than a plague-like ‘influenza,’ against the uncontrolled spread of which Richardson and Fielding produce their novels as warning, antidote and cure” (581). 2 It is not unlikely that Haywood may have started writing, or contemplating on writing, an attack on Richardson’s Pamela before Fielding’s Shamela came out. If that is the case, it may also be possible that after Shamela appeared, Haywood may have incorporated into her work in process some insight she gained from reading Fielding’s work. In this way, the two parodic texts are.

(5) Influence or “Influenza”?. 111. the “Pamela controversy” reveals that Haywood’s Anti-Pamela is curiously closer in style to Richardson’s Pamela than to Fielding’s Shamela, despite the fact that both Fielding and Haywood aim at attacking Richardson when writing their parodic novels. This observation induces me to ask the following question: In writing Anti-Pamela, is Haywood imitating Richardson’s style and merely reversing the ending as a means of critique, i.e. the reward of virtue ironically changed into exposure and punishment of vices? Since Haywood’s Anti-Pamela is a response to Richardson’s Pamela, one would expect to find shadows of Pamela in Haywood’s anti-novel, no matter to what extent. However, I argue that the similarity in style between the two texts comes not from Haywood’s imitating Richardson’s style, but rather from Richardson’s incorporating elements from the tradition of women’s amatory fiction, 3 of which Haywood’s works in the 1720s constitute a significant part. Therefore, instead of claiming that Haywood copies Richardson, I contend that it is actually Richardson who is influenced by early women writers of the amatory fiction such as Aphra Behn, Delariviere Manley, and Eliza Haywood, in spite of his constant disparagement of these women writers. Although some critics, including Margaret Anne Doody (1974), Jane Spencer (1986), William Warner (1992, 1994, 1998), Paula R. Backscheider (1998), and Kate Williams (2004), have started to pay attention to the possible connections between Richardson and early women writers of the amatory fiction, it is surprising that no study, so far as I know, has been wholly devoted to exploring the relationship between Richardson’s Pamela and Haywood’s Anti-Pamela. Such negligence may result partly from the obscurity of Haywood’s Anti-Pamela itself, 4 which has been so much outshone by Fielding’s brilliantly hilarious and immensely popular Shamela that Haywood’s work was often dismissed as nothing more than one of the numerous Grub-street productions cashing in upon the Pamela controversy.. 3. 4. involved in a complicated relationship rather than the case that the later one, i.e. Anti-Pamela, is entirely imitative of the previously published one, i.e. Shamela, as some critics assume. The terms referring to the early popular amatory fictions by women vary among critics. Margaret Anne Doody (1974) uses “the female novel of love,” which comprises two types, “the seduction/rape tale” and “the courtship novel” (18); Ros Ballaster (1992) uses “women’s amatory fiction”; and Warner (1992) uses the term “the novel of amorous intrigue.” As Christine Blouch points out, Haywood’s authorship of Anti-Pamela “was not generally known [to her contemporaries and to modern critics]…until recently” when in 1936 Alan D. McKillop discovered the work “by Mrs. Haywood” in Cogan’s 1746 catalogue, and thus settled the attribution of Anti-Pamela to Haywood (McKillop 80, qtd. in Blouch lxv-lxvi)..

(6) 112. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. However, just as Pamela is significant as Richardson the printer’s first novel, Shamela as Fielding’s first prose fiction, 5 each work marking its author’s new career as a successful novelist, so Anti-Pamela is an important text marking a turning point in Haywood’s literary career: it was the first work Haywood published after about four years’ silence either on the stage and in the book market,6 and it also marks Haywood’s sudden shift from her earlier licentious amatory fiction to apparently more didactic writings. Moreover, reading Pamela alongside Anti-Pamela is especially valuable in that both texts are thematically related—the latter represents Haywood’s critique of Richardson’s work, as evidenced from its title. The present essay is therefore among the first attempts to deal with the intertextual relationship between Richardson’s Pamela and Haywood’s much neglected Anti-Pamela. After briefly reviewing the conventions of the tradition of women’s amatory fiction, I will go on to demonstrate, first, how Richardson’s Pamela shows traces of influence from that female tradition, though he never acknowledged such indebtedness;7 second, how Haywood, in creating Anti-Pamela as a response to the Pamela vogue, takes hints from Richardson’s Pamela and Fielding’s Shamela but at the same time does not depart too far from her earlier novelistic style; and third, how all these factors 5. 6. 7. Before he launched into writing novels with Shamela, Fielding had dominated the English theater for decades as a popular playwright and successful theater manager in London (Battestin 216-31). The exceptional popularity of Pamela lured Fielding to try his hand at novel-writing, which turned out to be equally successful. Following the short parody Shamela, Fielding abandoned the epistolary form which he considered too much restricted, and went on to publish a full-length anti-Pamelist novel Joseph Andrews on 22 February 1742. According to Patrick Spedding’s authoritative bibliography of Haywood (2004), the period of silence for Haywood is “four years and one month between her appearance in her own benefit performance of Henry Fielding’s Historical Register on 23 May 1737 and the publication of Ab.54 AP [Anti-Pamela] on 20 June 1741” (349, n.857). Critics disagree on what actually made Haywood stop publishing. Jerry C. Beasley (1985) and Mary Anne Schofield (1985) attribute Haywood’s silence to her being ruthlessly satirized in Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad (Beasley 257; Schofield 82). Spedding, however, refutes such speculation and brings forth evidence indicating that such “temporary retirement” more likely results from Haywood’s ill health (348-49). Richardson never mentioned Haywood’s name either in his correspondence or in literary works except for a single reference, and that only obliquely. However, Richardson and Haywood might have met each other through their connection with the significant literary figure Aaron Hill, who had for some time included Haywood in his circle and later on became intimately associated with Richardson; Richardson inserted many excerpts of Hill’s letters in the prefaces to Pamela (see Peter Sabor, “Introduction” to vol. 3, Pamela Controversy, viii; Christine Blouch, “Eliza Haywood” xxxii-xxxvii). If so, considering the immense popularity of Haywood’s novels in the 1720s, which Richardson as a prospering printer should have noted, it seems that Richardson consciously avoided mentioning Haywood or her works, probably to avoid being associated with her notoriety..

(7) Influence or “Influenza”?. 113. contribute to the similarity in style between Richardson’s and Haywood’s texts. In the last section I will explore the reasons why Richardson would employ elements from women’s amatory fiction which he had relentlessly condemned. I will also reconsider the problematics of influence in the case of Richardson and Haywood, which is not and cannot be simplified as one-directional, but is rather intricately multi-directional, reflecting the complicated situation we encounters when trying to reconstruct the “true” history of the rise and development of the English novel. The Tradition of Women’s Amatory Fiction: Behn, Manley, and Haywood As Toni O’Shaughnessy Bowers (1994) indicates, amatory fictions in early-eighteenth-century England constitute a mixed genre. Their ancestors can be traced back to Italian novelle, Spanish novels by Cervantes, and French romances in the seventeenth century such as those by Guithier de Costes de la Calprenède (1614-1663), Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701), and Madame de La Fayette (1634-1693) (51). The Portuguese Letters,8 a set of five letters allegedly written by an Italian nun to the cavalier who seduced and abandoned her, was so prodigiously popular that many authors of both genders were allured to try their hand at such scandalous fictions. Prominent among those aspiring writers are Aphra Behn (1640-1689), Delariviere Manley (c. 1670-1724), and Eliza Haywood (1693-1756)—“the fair Triumvirate of wit,”9 often grouped together as being notorious for their scandalous, licentious writings immensely popular during the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The fictions by early women writers established certain conventions that later novelists drew on: the epistolary form (e.g. the love letters between noble men and women); scenes of seduction and vivid descriptions of sex, which are titillating, lightly pornographic, and intended to be sexually arousing to the reader; and the devices of amorous intrigues (e.g. doors, keys, gardens, back stairs, secret passages, and the like). In addition, these women writers of amatory fiction often claim that their licentious stories contain morals intended for instructing young, inexperienced women. 8. 9. The English edition of the novel entitled Five Letters from a Nun to a Cavalier, translated by Sir Roger L’Estrange, first appeared in 1677. From “To Mrs. Eliza Haywood, on her Writings,” a prefatory poem written by Richard Savage to congratulate Haywood’s publication of her collection of works entitled Secret Histories, Novels and Poems (1725)..

(8) 114. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. Bowers observes that the novels by Behn, Manley and Haywood frequently involve courtship, love (especially forbidden love), passion, seduction, disguise, and intrigues with explicit descriptions of sex. The fundamental assumptions underlying these amatory fictions can be best exemplified by Haywood’s words in Reflections on the Various Effects of Love (1726): “Love is […] dangerous to the softer Sex; they cannot arm themselves too much against it, and for whatever Delights it affords to the Successful few, it pays a double Portion of Wretchedness to the numerous Unfortunate” (Fantomina and Other Works 139). The power of love, or passion, is irresistible to both men and women, yet while men, driven by love, indulge themselves with fleeting sexual pleasures in their pursuit of women, women who fail to curb their own passions but yield to men’s usually end up in shame and long-lasting misery. A typical amorous intrigue involves the seduction of an innocent, pretty young girl by a sexually experienced, older man, who vows eternal devotion to her but heartlessly deserts her after his physical desire is gratified. The treacherous hero is usually a married, high-born gentleman, sometimes the innocent heroine’s guardian or relative—a situation which makes his behavior more shocking to the common reader and “allows for titillating suggestions of incest” (Bowers 52). Moreover, the rake-hero usually excels at disguise, deception and intrigue to win over his beloved. For example, in Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684-1687), Behn depicts the illicit love affairs among a group of young men and women who are relatives to one another through marriage or birth. Besides the routine amatory narrative of the seduction of an innocent girl, Behn focuses particularly on the “sexual exploits” of characters, male and female, who are heartless, unfaithful, morally depraved and dexterous in plotting schemes. One central theme persistently explored in earlier women’s amatory fictions is the inevitable inconstancy of men and the relative constancy of women. In Reflections on the Various Effects of Love (1726), Haywood’s narrator comments on the different capacities of men and women in experiencing love: a man “may love with Vehemence, but then it is neither so tender nor so lasting a Flame,” and by keeping “a Part of his for other views,” “still has an Eye to Interest and Ambition”; in contrast, a woman in love “has no Reserve; she profusely gives her all, has no Regard for any Thing, but obliging the Person she affects, and lavishes her whole Soul” (Fantomina and Other Works 115). As Catherine Ingrassia observes in her “Introduction” to Anti-Pamela and Shamela (2004), the seducer in Haywood’s amatory fiction.

(9) Influence or “Influenza”?. 115. is usually “sustained by the arousal and then deferral of desire, yet, once sated, it disappears completely” (31). Thus in Fantomina; Or, Love in a Maze (1725), Haywood reveals her belief in male mutability through the heroine’s voice: “the most violent Passion, if it does not change its Object, in Time will wither: Possession naturally abates the Vigour of Desire, and I should have had, at best, but a cold, insipid, husband-like Lover in my Arms” (Fantomina and Other Works 65). Despite the risqué stories in their works, women writers of amatory fiction often claim moral purpose of writing them to warn the innocent women. They achieve this by announcing a moral intent in prefaces or through authorial interjection in the narrative, or by having evil characters punished as required by poetic justice. For example, in defending the titillating, scandalous aspect of her amatory fictions, Haywood asserts that the “misfortunes” and “miseries” ensuing the heroines’ submission to worldly temptation can serve as useful lessons to caution other young women. Thus in The Tea-Table: or, A Conversation between Some Polite Persons of Both Sexes (1725), through a male character Philetus, presumably her mouthpiece, Haywood expresses her view that novels are designed not “for Amusement only, but Instruction also,” insisting that they contain “Morals, which if well observed would be of no small Service to those that read ‘em—Certainly if the Passions are well represented, and the Frailties to which Humane Nature is incident […] it cannot fail to rouze the sleeping Conscience of the guilty Reader”10 (Fantomina and Other Works 104-5). However, William Warner suggests that such gestures appear “dubious,” probably made in order to “evade censure or censorship,” since in writing the licentious fictions, “the basic exchange is entertainment for money” (1998: 115). To ensure the marketability of their works, scenes of sex were described with vivid details to arouse erotic fantasy in the reader just like “light pornography” (Doody 19). Bowers similarly observes that “while moralizing increasingly permeates these texts, the sexual exploits that provoke it are always represented with lingering delight” (1994: 53). Like pornography, amatory fictions associate sexuality with “voyeurism, exploitation, and violence”; picturesque, sexually arousing female bodies are portrayed in “slow detail […] detail obviously mean to arouse the reader” as it does the desiring hero (Bowers 54). For example, in Part I of Love in Excess; or, The 10. Haywood’s argument and phrasing here is highly reminiscent of Richardson’s justification of the “Tender Scenes” in his Pamela..

(10) 116. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. Fatal Enquiry (1719-20), Haywood’s first and immensely popular novel,11 the rake-hero Count D’Elmont takes advantage of a young virgin Amena’s hopeless passion for him. The physical response of the heroine’s body to her would-be seducer’s caresses are depicted with minute details: …she had only a thin Silk night gown on, which flying open as he caught her in his arms, he found her panting heart beat measures of consent, her heaving breast swell to be pressed by his, and every pulse confess a wish to yield; her spirits all dissolved sunk in a lethargy of love; her snowy arms unknowing grasped his neck, her lips met his half way, and trembled at the touch; … (Love in Excess 58) These vivid descriptions are sexually suggestive and pulse-quickening; the alluring image of the vulnerable female body may serve as a means to arouse erotic desires in the male reader. Accompanying the amorous scenes are images of locked doors, keys, secret passages, back stairs, and secluded gardens, of which early women writers of amatory fiction make profuse use.12 In Love in Excess, Haywood carefully relates how D’Elmont executes his amorous intrigue against the virtue of Melliora. Taunted and prodded by his friend Baron D’Espernay,13 11. 12. 13. According to William H. McBurney (1957), Love in Excess is ranked with Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) as one of the three best-sellers of English fictions before Richardson’s Pamela (1740) (250). John J. Richetti (1969) regards this as “one of the more appalling and therefore interesting facts of literary history” (179). However, Patrick Spedding (2004) contends that the success of Love in Excess “has been somewhat exaggerated” (88). My discussions on this topic are indebted to Doody’s analysis of Richardson’s Clarissa. In her pioneering study A Natural Passion: A Study of the Novels of Samuel Richardson (1974), Doody argues that “[t]he locked doors, passages, back stairs, walls, and keys which Richardson uses so effectively were already a traditional part of the amatory tale” and that Richardson transforms and incorporates these “hackneyed devices” in his own novel but increases “their suggestive power” (150). The Baron’s ridicule at D’Elmont recalls Mrs. Jewkes’ scorn at Mr. B.’s ineptness in his sexual assault at Pamela in Richardson’s Pamela and in Fielding’s Shamela: “What,” said he [the Baron], “a man of wit, and pleasure like Count D’elmont, a man knows the sex so well, could he let slip so favourable an opportunity with the finest woman in the world; one for whose enjoyment he would die,—Could a frown, or a little angry coiness (which ten to one was but affected) have power to freeze such fierce desires. (Love in Excess 113) Said she [Mrs. Jewkes], […] What you do, Sir, do; don’t stand dilly-dallying. She cannot exclaim worse than she has done. And she’ll be quieter when she knows the worse. (Pamela 203) …Mrs. Jewkes crying why don’t you do it? I have one Arm secure, if you can’t deal with the rest I am sorry for you…O Sir, I see you know very little of our Sect, by parting so.

(11) Influence or “Influenza”?. 117. D’Elmont finally resolves to contrive a design to sneak into Melliora’s chamber at night. As the narrator describes, “[i]n Melliora’s chamber there was a little door that opened to a pair of back stairs, for the convenience of the servants coming to clean the room, and at the bottom to that descent, a gate into the garden” (114). Knowing this, D’Elmont “set his wits to work to get the keys of those two doors […] he carefully took the impression in wax, and had one made exactly like it” (114-15). The other key the resolute hero also manages to obtain by pretending to fetch some papers of importance in Melliora’s room, being “dextrous enough to slip the key out of the door, unperceived by either of them [Melliora and D’Elmont’s wife Alovysa]” (115). At the very night D’Elmont gets over the hedge which encompasses the garden, opens the garden door, and comes up the back stairs which leads to the little door to his victim’s chamber (115-16). Such scenario is later to be employed by Richardson, who embarks on his novelistic career in the early 1740s, following the publication of Pamela and its sensational reception. Pamela and the Conventions of Women’s Amatory Fiction Richardson’s Pamela contains the apparently incompatible weaving of the conduct book and the early women’s novel of amorous intrigue (Warner 1998: 192).14 The two traditions point to divergent directions for the plot to develop and conclude: the novel of amorous intrigue routinely stipulates that the innocent, pretty young woman (in Richardson’s case Pamela) must be seduced and ruined by the rake-hero (Mr. B.), while the convention of conduct book might lead to the dull conclusion that Pamela will recognize the threats of her master’s wicked design, quit her service and return to her parents’ house (Warner 1998: 192). In order to reconcile the two opposite undercurrents, Richardson makes his hero attempt countless sexual assaults at the unfailingly resisting heroine, but perpetually frustrates and delays his coveted gratification of physical desire until after he marries Pamela, and that entirely depends on the reformation in the mind and conduct of the rake-hero. In this way, Richardson is able to furtively incorporate such “risqué” but evidently marketable scenes of amorous intrigues into his “pious” book. easily from the Blessing when you was so near it. 14. (Shamela 328-29) Doody also demonstrates the “modes of narration, novelistic devices” in women’s novel of love (seduction/rape and courtship) as an important source of Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa; see her A Natural Passion (1974), esp. ch.2 on Pamela and ch.7 on Clarissa..

(12) 118. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. However, while Richardson constantly asserts to instruct and entertain the readers with his novels, the trade-off of such a gesture of compromise between “entertainment” and “instruction” is that the dangerous but fascinating aristocratic villain-rake, who roams in early women’s amatory fiction, is pitifully degraded into the vulgar, ungentlemanlike gentleman in Richardson’s Mr. B. Richardson claims to derive his idea of Pamela “naturally” out of his effort in writing a collection of letters modeled on laboring-class correspondence (Ingrassia 1998: 149). However, the epistolary form that Richardson adopts for Pamela, as shown in its subtitle “In a Series of Familiar Letters from a Beautiful Young Damsel, to her Parents,” has long been established in the tradition of women’s amatory fiction. In addition to the immensely popular Portuguese Letters, Behn’s Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684-1687), Haywood’s Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier (1724) and Love-Letters on All Occasions (1730) are also exemplars as novels written in letters.15 As Doody argues, Richardson’s epistolary mode of narration draws on the techniques and conventions which had been developed by minor English women novelists earlier in the century,” but he perfects the technique much more fully than his female predecessors (129). Richardson later relates the phrase “writing, to the moment” to this technique, with which “in the minutiae lie often the unfoldings of the Story, as well as of the heart; & judges of an action undecided, as if it were absolutely decided” (Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh, 14 February 1754, Selected Letters, 289). As Keymer and Sabor (2001) succinctly describe, the epistolary narrative in Pamela seems to “offer intimate access to the ebb and flow of consciousness, unhindered by the distancing or flattening effects of retrospection,” and that this technique shows “its capacity to register the flux of consciousness over time” and “its dramatic synchronizations of narration and crisis” (“General Introduction” to Pamela Controversy, vol. 1, xiv). Though painstakingly defended as a “pious” book by its author, Pamela nevertheless betrays its illicit allegiance with the tradition of amatory fiction with its frequent vividly detailed “warm” scenes of sexual assaults. For example, in recounting one of Mr. B.’s sexual attacks on her, Pamela writes in her letter how her master “by Force kissed my Neck and Lips […] then put his Hand in my Bosom” (Pamela 32). The second major assault takes place 15. For development of epistolary fictions by early women writers, see Robert Adams Day’s Told in Letters: Epistolary Fiction Before Richardson (1966)..

(13) Influence or “Influenza”?. 119. when Pamela lies with Mrs. Jervis, the good house-keeper. After the heroine “pulled off [her] Stays, and Stockens, and Gown, all to an Under-petticoat,” Mr. B. springs from his hiding place in the closet and scares the heroine into bed, and then, she continues in her letter: “I found his Hand in my Bosom, and when my Fright let me know it, I was ready to die; and I sighed, and scream’d, and fainted away. And still he had his Arms about my Neck” (63-64). In the final attempt at rape, Mr. B. disguises himself as another maid Nan, and comes into bed with Pamela and Mrs. Jewkes. Pamela narrates, again, that “he put his Hand in my Bosom” (204). Compared with the intensely passionate and sexually arousing love scenes in the novels by Behn, Manley or Haywood, Richardson’s descriptions in the passages above seem rather farcical and puerile, since his sexual scenes involves an oafish, uncouth country squire rather than a witty, charismatic rake that dominates women’s amatory fictions. Almost all the sexual attacks which threaten to violate the heroine’s virtue are thwarted by the heroine’s lucky, timely faintings and fits, the stock responses of the heroine in distress in early women’s amatory fiction. For instance, after Mr. B.’s first major sexual assault, Pamela describes her reaction to the shocking incident in a letter to her mother: “I just remember I got into the Room; for I knew nothing further of the Matter till afterwards; for I fell into a Fit with my Fright and Terror, and there I lay”; in the second scene of Mr. B’s rape-attempt she narrates: “all in a cold, clammy Sweat was I […] I knew nothing more of the Matter, one Fit following another, till about three Hours after”; and in the third scene, “[w]ith Struggling, Fright, Terror, I fainted away quite, and did not come to myself soon; so that they both, from the cold Sweats that I was in, thought me dying—And I remember no more than that” (32, 63, 204). Richardson has been attacked for this forced way of delivering his heroine from ruin. Indeed, even if the heroine’s well-timed fits can be explained away by the social, cultural circumstances surrounding women at that time (e.g., wearing too tight stays that cause breathing difficulty), it still appears unnatural and improbable that the sexually aroused hero should invariably cease to make further effort in completing his longed-for seduction. Sometimes through Pamela’s voice Richardson expresses his view on male “changeableness” after their base, physical desire is satisfied, which recalls many of Haywood’s statements about the same male failing. After Pamela informs Mr. B. of her determination not to stay for another fortnight, Mr. B. is “ horrid cross” to her (53). Pamela is extremely vexed and writes in her letter: “If ever he had any Kindness towards me, I believe he now hates.

(14) 120. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. me heartily,” and then she begins to wonder about love and hate: “Is it not strange, that Love borders so much upon Hate? […] And how must this Hate have been increased, if he had met with a base Compliance, after his wicked Will had been gratify’d?” (53). Pamela finally settles her inner debates by comforting herself that “if Innocence cannot attract common Civility, what must Guilt expect, when Novelty had ceas’d to have its Charms, and Changeableness had taken place of it?” (53). In other words, Richardson seems to suggest that if innocent women yield to seduction and fall into guilty love affairs with men, once men get tired of old love and begin to seek new conquest, these abandoned women might expect worse treatment than mere incivility as when they virtuously resist. Richardson’s observation of male conduct in love are reminiscent of many Haywoodian heroes, whose inconstancy and unfaithfulness ruin countless imprudent young women. The last sentence quoted from Pamela above may well be transplanted into Haywood’s novels to be expressed by her heroines without appearing at odd with the messages she tries to convey through her writings. Two disguise scenes in Pamela—one done by Pamela in a country dress and the other by Mr. B. as Nan—can be traced back to the persistent use of disguises, masks, and masquerades in early women’s amatory fiction. While disguise by a rake-hero is a common device in early women’s amatory fiction,16 Pamela’s “metamorphosis,” as Mrs. Jervis calls it (55), especially recalls one disguise scene in Haywood’s Fantomina (1724), where Haywood has used the same word (Fantomina and Other Works 52). In Fantomina, Haywood creates a high-class heroine who, driven first by “an innocent Curiosity” and then by overwhelming passion, ingeniously assumes various disguises to engage the hero Beauplaisir, a handsome, accomplished rake (42). First posing as a prostitute, Fantomina lost her virginity for her failure in trying to overcome her adoration for Beauplaisir and the desires he arouses in her. Perceiving her lover’s passion slackening, Fantomina consecutively takes up the roles of a serving maid, “Widow Bloomer,” and “Incognita” by changing her dresses, hair color, accessories, and even accents, in order to enjoy fresh, fervent love from Beauplaisir. Disguised as a serving maid—“[n]otwithstanding this Metamorphosis she was still extremely pretty,” the narrator comments (52, emphasis added)—at the hotel where Beauplaisir 16. As Doody points out, Haywood’s heroes excel in using disguise and intrigue to win over the favor of their beloved ones (144). For example, “Lysander” in The British Recluse (1722) strolls by Cleomira’s house in disguise, and he also takes on a disguise in courting Belinda..

(15) Influence or “Influenza”?. 121. temporarily resides, Fantomina takes advantage of her service to approach the amorous lover. Beauplaisir is immediately “fir’d with the first Sight of her […] giving her two or three hearty Kisses” (52), and the next morning at the excuse of ordering chocolate, “he catch’d her by the pretty Leg, which the Shortness of her Petticoat did not in the least oppose” (53).17 With her “seeming Innocence” and “blushing Beauties” in her “rural Dress,” Fantomina successfully enflames the amorous heart of her unknowing lover and passes many pleasurable nights with him (53). Richardson creates a similar disguise scene in Pamela. Writing to her parents just before she is ready to quit her service at Mr. B.’s house, Pamela reveals (to the reader): “Unknown to Mrs. Jervis, I put a Project, as I may call it, in Practice,” that is, to make new country clothes suitable to her circumstances when she returns to her parents’ house (45). Pamela rattles on at length listing the items her deceased lady has given her, which she is determined to leave behind, and those she needs for her new dresses. 18 Although Pamela claims that she is “obliged” to make new rural dresses to avoid people’s talk which might arise if she appears in “tawdry” dresses unfit for her poor condition, her decision is, however, not without vanity and artfulness. She is conscious of her own beauty (“People indeed say I am handsome” 121), and she knows how to “make a smartish Appearance” with her new dress. Having “trick’d [herself] up as well as [she] could in [her] new Garb,” Pamela delights in looking at herself in the glass, “as proud as any thing,” feeling that “[she] never lik’d [her]self so well in [her] Life” (55). The effects of her wearing the new rural dress come exactly as what Pamela expects: Mrs. Jervis is amazed at her charming disguise (“what! Pamela! Thus metaphorphos’d!” 55), and Mr. B. cannot help but force kisses from her, calling her “Pamela’s Sister” whom he “may be innocently free” with (56-57). As a “Lady of distinguished Birth,” Haywood’s Fantomina is a genuine high-class court lady awed and respected by others, yet by whimsically choosing to imitate the fashion of cheap prostitutes or serving maids, she degrades herself to a lower social position. Like Fantomina, with her 17. 18. A similar phrase is picked up later when Haywood describes Vardine’s seduction of Syrena in Anti-Pamela, which will be discussed later in this essay. Pamela’s list is as follows: “a good [homespun] sad-colour’d Stuff…a pretty Bit of printed Calicoe…a pretty good Camle quilted Coat…two Flannel Under-coats…some pretty good Scots Cloth…a Pedlar, two pretty enough round-ear’d Caps, a little Straw Hat, and a Pair of knit Mittens, turn’d up with white Calicoe; and two Pair of ordinary blue Worsted Hose” (45)..

(16) 122. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. “metamorphosis” Pamela seems to descend from a higher status to a lower one. In her lady’s cast-off fine clothes, Pamela may pretend to look like a gentlewoman;19 in her new “homespun” country clothes, Pamela will not appear out of place among her fellow milkmaids and farmers. Warner contends that both Pamela’s and Fantomina’s disguise “functions in the same way—it stimulates a male desire that is in danger of fading, and carries the narrative forward to a new phase,” and relates their disguise to masquerades in which the “pleasure and freedom” are maximized and “legal or moral constraints” are temporarily eluded (1998: 195-96). As Alexander Pettit observes, “[t]he mutuality that Fantomina wants is attainable only sexually, only fleetingly, and only through artifice and through her apparent abdication of the social status” (151). Through disguise, Fantomina paradoxically obtains freedom to indulge her fantasy and gratify her sexual desires in her love affairs with Beauplaisir, whom “her Quality and reputed Virtue [as a high-born lady] kept from using her with that Freedom she now expected he wou’d do” (42). For Pamela, the disguise as a country maid suits her proclaimed purpose of fitting into the poorer, humbler condition, while at the same time it also offers her surreptitious pleasure, as implied in her exclamation: “O the Pleasure of descending with Ease, Innocence and Resignation!” (55). Passages like these clearly illustrate that Pamela’s behavior is not very different from Fantomina’s with her lover. Such overtones of Pamela’s narcissistic obsession with her own beauty and surreptitious pleasure in disguise, other than her modesty and virtue, may not be the impression that Richardson originally intended to create on his readers. This curious conduct of Pamela, like her continuous delay of her actual departure from Mr. B.’s household later in the novel, entices the reader to wonder what, other than studied art and deceitfulness, would motivate Pamela to perform the acts similar to those by the heroines in scandalous amatory fictions 20 and, furthermore, what would prompt the moralistic author Richardson to contrive such incidents in his self-proclaimed “pious” novel.. 19. 20. In fact Pamela’s prudent conduct already wins her such a name, as Mrs. Jervis once says, addressing Mr. B., that Pamela “behaves so prudently, that they [the servants] all esteem her, and shew her as great Respect as if she was a Gentlewoman born” (28). I am indebted to one of the two anonymous reviewers for his/her valuable comments and suggestions on my discussions of Richardson’s treatment of the scenes involving Pamela’s disguise..

(17) Influence or “Influenza”?. 123. Conventional devices of amorous intrigue involving locked doors, walls, keys, gardens, back stairs, closets as hiding places can be easily found in Richardson’s Pamela. For example, while detained in the Summer-House in Lincolnshire, Pamela invents a “stratagem” of escape from the house, which in a crude way mimics the intrigues in early women’s amatory fiction. Pamela writes in her letter: My Strategem is this: I will endeavour to get Mrs. Jewkes to-bed without me, as she often does, while I sit lock’d up in my Closet; and as she sleeps very sound in her first Sleep […] if I can then but get out between the two Bars of the Window […] then I can drop upon the Leads underneath, which are little more than my Height, and which Leads are over a little Summer-parlour, that juts out towards the Garden, and which, as I am light, I can easily drop from; for they are not high from the Ground: Then I shall get into the Garden; and then, as I have the Key of the Back-door, I will get out. (Pamela 168) This passage recalls one amorous intrigue in Haywood’s Love in Excess, in which Count D’Elmont endeavours to reach the chamber of the confined Amena, who is locked up by her father to prevent her from seeing her lover. Amena’s “cunning wench” Anaret instructs D’Elmont how to execute the design: Your lordship knows we have a little door at the farther end of the garden, that opens into the Tuillerys […] that it shall be the scene this night of a most happy meeting. My lady unknown to her father has the key of it, she can throw it to me from her window, and I can open it to you, who must be walking near it, about twelve or one a clock, for by that time every body will be in bed. (Love in Excess 52) The resemblance between Pamela’s escape scene in Richardson and D’Elmont’s amorous intrigue in Haywood is highly remarkable. The plot in Love in Excess involves a hero with the help from the heroine’s corrupt serving maid, trying to sneak into the chamber where the heroine is confined, whereas in Pamela it focuses on the attempt by the imprisoned heroine, without any external help except for her spiritual fortitude, to escape out of the house she has been detained. Despite the ostensibly reverse situation in terms of gender and escape direction, both Haywood and Richardson nevertheless resort to surprisingly similar clichéd devices in the tradition of amatory fiction..

(18) 124. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. D’Elmont and Pamela make different arguments inwardly to justify their resort to the “stratagem” as unavoidable. D’Elmont apparently aims at rescuing his beloved Amena but is in fact driven by his own sexual desire to ravish the innocent virgin in the name of love. Pamela, in contrast, excuses her “dangerous, but innocent Devices” with the extraordinary circumstances she finds herself in: she “cannot be in more Danger than [she] is,” which is even worse than being threatened by “Bulls, and Bears, and Lions, and Tygers, and […] false, treacherous, deceitful Men” (Pamela 168). While D’Elmont’s motive of the intrigue is self-centered and pleasure-seeking, Pamela’s resort to the scheme is termed “virtuous” and “honorable.” Although Richardson apparently aims at inspiring “religion and virtue” with his writing, this example shows how he depends on the conventions of the amorous intrigue to illustrate his heroine’s scheme of escape. Furthermore, though at first going smoothly with their well-contrived stratagem, both Richardson’s exceptionally courageous heroine and Haywood’s impatient, unstoppable hero encounter insurmountable obstacles at the very last step just before their desired success, as is often the case with many other characters involved in the amorous intrigue. The thwarted amorous intrigues in women’s amatory fiction serve to create anxiety and suspension in the reader in order to sustain their attention. In contrast, Richardson designs such an intrigue of escape by the heroine in order to demonstrate his imagined version of how a virtuous, pious young woman in face with those extremely adverse circumstances can still react properly. Using his Pamela as an antidote to the “inflaming” amatory fiction by early women, Richardson is in fact “rewriting” the licentious love intrigues commonly found in such novels: Richardson creates a beautiful, virtuous servant maid who miraculously survives all these dangerous and extraordinary incidents without losing her virginity, so that she can be exalted as an exemplary Christian who has complete trust in the Providence and holds virtue as her highest behavioral principle. Eventually Richardson rewards this commendable model by granting her upward social mobility through marriage with her master. The internal evidence as discussed above demonstrate that Richardson’s Pamela incorporates quite a few plot designs, narrative strategies, and devices of the amorous intrigue from the tradition of women’s amatory fiction. For external evidence, it is noteworthy that eight years before he published Pamela, Richardson in fact had printed two of the four volumes of Haywood’s Secret Histories, Novels and Poems (which contain Love in.

(19) Influence or “Influenza”?. 125. Excess and Fantomina) for its third printing in 1732 (Maslen 90). Richardson had also printed Haywood’s play A Wife to be Lett in 1735 (Sale 173). Although Richardson never offered direct critical appraisal of Haywood’s literary achievement in public or in personal correspondence, the very fact of publishing Haywood’s works points to the possibility that Richardson, as an established publisher with professional acumen, very likely had read some of Haywood’s works and considered them marketable. Moreover, in his own correspondence Richardson admitted that Pamela does contain some “warm scenes.” In a letter of 31 August 1741 to Dr. George Cheyne, who had previously advised Richardson to “avoid Fondling—and Gallantry” in his two-volume sequel to Pamela, Richardson first declared that he wrote the story in order to instruct “young and airy Minds” and “to decry such Novels and Romances, as have a Tendency to inflame and corrupt,” emphasizing that in writing his own novel he “[had] in View […] to avoid inflaming Descriptions” (Selected Letters 46n, 46-47). The inflaming “Novels and Romances,” whose authors Richardson did not explicitly identify here or elsewhere,21 are commonly understood as referring to the early scandalous or amatory fictions produced by Behn, Manley, and Haywood. As for the “Tender Scenes” between Pamela and Mr. B. which Richardson confessed did exist in his novel, Richardson explained that the “Fondness of ye Pair”22 is 21. 22. In his letter to Aaron Hill, Richardson mentions “the pomp and parade of romance-writing […] the improbable and marvellous, with which novels generally abound” (between 15 January and 9 February 1741; Peter Sabor dates this letter as “c. 1 February 1741”; see Pamela Controversy, “Introduction” to vol. 3, ix, n. 1) (Selected Letters 41). On the title-page of Pamela (1740) Richardson puts: “…all those Images, which, in too many Pieces calculated for Amusement only, tend to inflame the Minds they should instruct.” In Clarissa (1747-48), Lovelace quotes Colonel Morden’s opinions on novels and romances: “That their early Learning, which chiefly consisted in inflaming Novels, and idle and improbable Romances, contributed to enervate and weaken their minds…” (Clarissa vol. 7, 283, qtd. in Doody 128). In John Carroll ed. Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson (1964), there is only one single instance where Richardson explicitly names the three women writers: in a letter of 6 December 1750 to Sarah Chapone, Richardson reviles against Laetitia Pilkington, Constantia Phillips and Lady Vane as “Set of Wretches […] to make the Behn’s, the Manley’s, and the Heywood’s, look white” (Selected Letters 173n). It should be noted that while mentioning their names here, Richardson does not connect them with novels and romances; such connection is only hinted at, as if their writings can be easily dismissed as a whole. In an informal conversation (8 May 2008), Professor Peter Sabor, editor of the rest of Richardson’s correspondence that has not been published (forthcoming), informs me that so far as his editing goes, the name of Eliza Haywood does not occur in any other place in Richardson’s letters. It is noteworthy that while Cheyne used the word “Fondling,” in his reply Richardson chose to employ another word—“Fondness”—instead. According to OED, “fondling” as a noun means “[t]he action of the vb. FONDLE; an affectionate handling; a fond gesture,” and the verb “fondle” means “1. trans. To treat with fond indulgence; to cocker, pamper. Also, to bring to (a state or.

(20) 126. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. purely “intellectual,” growing out of “Benevolence on his Side” and “Gratitude on her’s” (Selected Letters 49, 47). Richardson went on to claim that these apparently inflaming scenes in Pamela are “necessary” and in fact should be “described” rather than simply “suppos’d,” because they are intended “for a first Attractive [sic]” and that “Instruction lies in them” (Selected Letters 50, 47, 49). In his correspondence and prefaces Richardson repeatedly stresses that a good novel should “entertain” and at the same time “instruct” the readers. Aside from the passages cited above from Richardson’s private letters, in an anonymous preface to Penelope Aubin’s posthumous Collection of Entertaining Histories and Novels (1739), which is now largely accepted as being written by Richardson,23 the author of the preface lists five rules as “indispensible Requisites of a good Novel” (“Preface” to Aubin 2). First, good novels, as those by Aubin, should have a “Purity of Style and Manners,” and contain nothing that “has the least Tendency to pollute or corrupt the unexperienced Minds.” Second, their subjects should “naturally recommend all the Duties of social Life, and inforce an universal Benevolence to Mankind.” Third, “a guilty Character” should in the end “be signally punished or distressed, that others may be deterred from the Pursuits of those Follies, or Mistakes.” Fourth, a virtuous or innocent character should not be “finally permitted to suffer; but that a Prospect at least should be opened, either here or hereafter, for its Reward, in order to encourage every one who reads it to Imitation.” And lastly, they should have “an Air of Probability, that the Example may have the greater Force upon the Minds it is intended to inform” (“Preface” to Aubin 1-2). If we measure Haywood’s early amatory fictions against Richardson’s criteria, we will see how much Haywood’s works violate almost all these rules prescribed by Richardson. First, their style and manners are not pure but. 23. condition) by indulgence. 2. To handle or treat with fondness; to caress. 3. intr. To behave, play or speak fondly; to toy; also to bestow caresses on.” In contrast, the noun “fondness” means “1. Foolishness, folly; ‘weakness; want of sense or judgement.’ 2. Foolish affection; unreasoning tenderness. 3. Affectionateness, tenderness.” If we assume that Cheyne’s and Richardson’s usage of these words does not deviate too much from these definitions in OED, Cheyne’s word choice seems to imply “indulgence” to excessiveness and physical contact (caressing), while Richardson’s term refers to the mental state. In fact, Richardson’s pairing the noun “fondness” with the adjective “intellectual” accentuates its incorporeal aspect (Selected Letters 47). For the preface’s attribution to Richardson, see Wolfgang Zach, “Mrs. Aubin and Richardson’s Earliest Literary Manifesto (1739),” and also Thomas Keymer, Pamela Controversy, “Introduction” to vol. 1, xlv-xlvi..

(21) Influence or “Influenza”?. 127. have the potential to “pollute” and “corrupt” young readers. Second, their subjects do not recommend social duties but stresses forbidden love and transgressive behavior. Third, the guilty characters, such as debauching rake, infidels, adulterous men and women, are not always punished with misfortunes in the end. Fourth, the virtuous characters might not be rewarded with happiness in this life or peace in afterlife. And finally, Haywood’s amatory fictions fail to create “an Air of Probability,” that is, the adventures are usually fantastic and unrealistic, not to be found in the reader’s daily life. Richardson thus wrote Pamela with an eye to demonstrating what a good novel should do. First, Richardson claims that his style is pure and not intended to corrupt. Second, his subjects recommend “Social Duties, and that from low to high Life” (“Preface” to Pamela 3), such as that between master and servant or between daughter and parents. Third, the guilty characters like Mr. B. and Mrs. Jewkes are eventually reformed, though not explicitly punished. Fourth, the virtuous Pamela is rewarded with elevated status in high society. And lastly, in his effort to create “an air of probability,” Richardson has the story take place within a domestic sphere instead of fantastic outdoor adventures, and he also chooses a master and a servant girl to be his protagonists, who are figures easily found in the readers’ daily life, instead of those remote and unreachable aristocrats as in earlier women’s amatory fiction. It is interesting that although Haywood claims in many places that her novels are not “for Amusement only, but Instruction also,” critics like Richardson still denounce them as immoral and scandalous. There seems to be a discrepancy between the subject of the text itself and the authorial claims for moral purpose, the latter being viewed as merely nominal pretension cloaking the licentious content of the work. In Richardson’s case, like Haywood he declares the moral intention of his novel, even listing five prescriptive rules for a good novel. However, does Richardson really achieve all the noble goals he sets forth? The detailed analysis of Pamela in previous sections suggests that the realization of the first rule—“purity in style and manners”—is questionable, and so is the fifth one concerning “probability.” In fact, while Richardson wrote Pamela as his antidote to the pernicious “influenza” spread by women’s amatory fictions, his novel nevertheless “caught the flu,” infected with and.

(22) 128. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. carrying the virus, i.e. the unsought-for “lightly pornographic” elements from the very works he aims to combat against.24 Why then does Richardson employ what he calls “warm scenes” if he has so persistently decried similar things in women’s amatory fiction? I would argue that Richardson criticizes early women’s amatory fictions not because they contain improper, fanciful scenes themselves, but because they employ such licentious plots, descriptions and images to attract the readers without at the same time counterpoising them with “imitable” models of virtue for these readers. Those women writers fill their works with disguises, rape attempts, adultery, and amorous intrigues among charming but licentious coquettes and rakes, which strategies indeed successfully attract readers’ attention and augment their novels’ popularity; yet in Richardson’s view, they lack the function of instructing the inexperienced, youthful minds. And the scenes and episodes these women present are fanciful and unrealistic, too remote from the readers’ daily life to have positive impact on them. To amend these faults, Richardson in his own revision adds many moral, instructive elements, and sets the story in a domestic environment between a master and a servant maid with an attempt to create “an Air of Probability.” Richardson nevertheless also knows well that mere moral teaching, however beneficial to the readers in theory, in practice will never retain the readers’ interest throughout the whole book, or even allure the readers to pick up the book for reading. “For such is the Nature of the human Mind,” Richardson explains, “that it cannot be satisfied without Variety, and religious Subjects themselves, though the noblest Entertainments of all others, will sometimes lose their Force and Efficacy, even on serious Minds, when too strictly imposed or pursued and if nothing be admitted to diversify and amuse” (“Preface” to Aubin 1). Accordingly, as Richardson declares in his preface to Pamela, “to Divert and Entertain,” “to inculcate Religion and Morality” in the “younger Class of Readers,” it is needful to present “the edifying story” “in so easy and agreeable a manner, as shall render them equally delightful and profitable,” by “embellish[ing]” the story “with a great Variety of entertaining Incidents,” so that it will “strongly interest” the readers and keep them always attentive (3).25 24. 25. For the metaphoric use of “influenza,” “virus,” and “catching the flu” in the case of Pamela and women’s amatory fiction, I am much indebted to one of the two reviewers who kindly offers his/her insightful observations on the title of this essay. Similar ideas and phrasing can be found in the preface to Aubin’s 1739 Collection: “Subjects of Diversion be needful to regale the gay and sprightly Fancies of the Youth of both Sexes, the Vivacity of whose Tempers, so natural to their Time of Life, require somewhat to allure, to amuse, and to entertain, and who cannot be long kept to any one Subject, though ever so noble or important in.

(23) Influence or “Influenza”?. 129. In this way, while being entertained, the young readers would have a chance to be instructed and encouraged to imitate the virtuous characters. In Pamela, Richardson adopts amorous intrigues from Haywood and at the same time presents an entirely virtuous and pious heroine very much unlike Haywood’s, imagining how such a heroine may survive in a similar seduction scene and still retain her superior virtue. Or to put it in scientific terms, Richardson is experimenting with transplanting a virtuous heroine from moral stories to the settings involving various alarming plots simulated from women’s amatory fictions. One unique parameter Richardson sets for his experiment is that no matter how desperate the situations go or how alluring the temptations grow, the heroine shall never fail. In order to encourage his readers to imitate the virtuous characters, Richardson even has the virtuous Pamela rewarded with a big prize—marriage with her master and the ensued affluent life. Similarly, as a model for some young impetuous gentlemen in the readership, the rakish Mr. B. eventually reforms and learns to control his impulsive desires by obeying social moral standards. Mr. B. is, again to strengthen the effects of the moral lesson, also rewarded with the virtuous, beautiful Pamela as his wife. Anti-Pamela and Haywood’s Earlier Amatory Fictions of the 1720s As a preeminent figure standing in the tradition of women’s amatory fiction, Haywood’s novels dealing with love and passion were prodigiously popular in England in the 1720s. While the title of Haywood’s Anti-Pamela suggests its involvement in the Pamela debate,26 its language, style, character types, and plot structures are much more indebted to her own earlier amatory fictions than to Richardson’s novel. Unlike Pamela, which is written almost entirely in the epistolary form, Anti-Pamela unfolds and develops its plots by combining two different narrative modes: Haywood’s characteristic third-person omnipresent narrator and the narrative told in letters.27 Paralleling. 26. 27. itself” (“Preface” to Aubin 1). Eaves and Kimpel (1971) claim that Haywood’s Anti-Pamela was “evidently trying to capitalize on Pamela’s popularity, since it has little connection beyond the title” (130); Richard Gooding (1995), while acknowledging that Haywood’s novel does “treat questions of sexual hypocrisy and the problem of being educated above one’s degree,” basically follows Eaves and Kimpel in asserting that Anti-Pamela “bears only a tenuous connection to Pamela, since it presents a character unlike Richardson’s” (110, n. 2). The letters in Anti-Pamela are mainly written by the heroine Syrena and her mother, which shows its indebtedness to Fielding’s Shamela..

(24) 130. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. and parodying Pamela, the title-page of Anti-Pamela reads “Feign’d Innocence Detected; In a Series of Syrena’s Adventures” (Anti-Pamela 51). The term “adventure,” with its heavily sexual connotations, is not one that many eighteenth-century male authors would like to associate with their heroines. However, this word is very common in Haywood’s earlier amatory fictions. Resembling the leading characters in Haywood’s earlier fictions, Syrena Tricksy, the (anti-)heroine in Anti-Pamela, is engaged in one love affair (or “adventure”) after another, and like the chameleonic Fantomina, Syrena is adept at assuming innumerable disguises according to the circumstances and the material goals she intends to achieve on her chosen victims. As Keymer and Sabor point out, instead of centering on one single hero like Richardson’s Mr. B., in Anti-Pamela Haywood “fragments” the original master-seducer into several male characters who are, one by one, allured by Syrena’s beauty and feigned innocence and then powerlessly fall into her carefully set-up snares (2005: 87). Syrena is a typical Haywoodian heroine—artful, deceitful, headstrong and crafty. Her marvelous skills at dissembling emotions and facial expressions can be traced back to the aristocratic characters of both sexes with incredible artfulness in early women’s amatory fiction. Noteworthy female characters who excel in disguise, dissimulation and intrigue to pursue their frequently immoral goals include Behn’s predatory and sexually insatiable Sylvia (Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister), Manley’s perfect coquet Berintha (The New Atalantis), and Haywood’s restless, domineering Alovysa, the over-passionate Italian temptress Ciamara (both in Love in Excess), the ingenious, chameleon-like Fantomina (Fantomina), and the hypocritical, corrupt Baroness de Tortillée (The Injur’d Husband).28 For example, Haywood’s narrator in Fantomina relates how the heroine was so admirably skill’d in the Art of feigning, that she had the Power of putting on almost what Face she pleas’d, and knew so exactly how to form her Behaviour to the Character she represented, that all the Comedians at both Playhouses are infinitely short of her Performances: She could vary her very Glances, tune her voice to Accents the most different imaginable. 28. In her work Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684-1740 (1992), Ros Ballaster offers insightful analyses of these “mistresses of artifice” in Haywood’s earlier amatory fictions (175-79)..

(25) Influence or “Influenza”?. 131. from those in which she spoke when she appear’d herself.—These Aids from Nature, join’d to the Wiles of Art… (Fantomina and Other Works 57) Also, in a passage in The Injur’d Husband (1725) where Haywood describes the extraordinary artfulness of Baroness de Tortillée,29 the tone and phrasing are highly reminiscent of those she would later use to describe Syrena in Anti-Pamela: No Woman that ever liv’d was Mistress of more Artifice, nor had less the Appearance of being so: Nature had given her a Countenance extremely favourable for her Purpose; and whenever she was pleas’d to join those Looks of Sincerity and Innocence any Asseverations that she was so, it was hardly possible to believe her otherwise. (Secret Histories, Novels and Poems, vol. 2, 125) Under her mother’s instruction, Syrena prepares herself to be a seductress by practicing to create bodily “Agitations” so that her “Colour would come and go, her Eyes sparkle, grow Languid, or overflow with Tears,” just as a heroine in earlier amatory fictions blushes, sparkles, sinks into languor and weeps (Anti-Pamela 54). She makes her bosom heave as her limbs tremble, she faints and appears “transported” in an entirely “natural” manner; she is as skilled as the “most experience’d Actresses” at “assuming all the different Passions that find Entrance in a Female Mind” (54). However, being naturally obstinate and willful like Fantomina, Syrena has a tendency to go her own way as she pleases, especially when driven by her overpowering passion for certain men she doats on: “Thus did Vanity, Self-Conceit and Avarice, tempt her to despise the Admonitions of her crafty Mother, and make her resolve to act henceforward of herself” (71). As the hallmark of Haywood’s 1720s novels, amorous scenes with explicit descriptions of sex also abound in Anti-Pamela. For example, a nameless elderly gentleman, in whose house Syrena works as a housekeeper, is eventually overcome with desire by her charms: in one letter to her mother Syrena describes how the gentleman exclaims, “Good God! what a Neck, what Breasts are here!” and, “putting [her] Handkerchief back with one Hand,. 29. Haywood’s device of pairing two contrasting female rivals—the hypocritical, active Baroness and the virtuous, passive Montamour—in The Injur’d Husband, is used again in Anti-Pamela, where Haywood contrasts the artful, active Syrena with the virtuous, passive Maria, Mr. D—’s wronged fiancée..

(26) 132. NTU Studies in Language and Literature. and laying the other upon [her] Breast […] kiss’d [her] till [her] Breast was almost gone” (179). Syrena, imitating the virtuous Pamela, “struggled, and begg’d him to desist […] fell a weeping,” crying “O, Sir, […] I am unhappy, it is true; but I am virtuous, and will always be so,” and thus succeeds in obtaining her lover’s stammering vows of eternal devotion (179). Moreover, in a passage which recalls another one in Fantomina cited above, Syrena narrates how Vardine, her first lover and seducer, pretends to measure his presents of stockings on Syrena’s legs “by grasping [her] pretty Leg” (75). Passages like these are highly reminiscent of Haywood’s early amatory fiction, revealing that the language and style of Anti-Pamela do not depart too much from her previous work. Anti-Pamela does not resort to detailed descriptions of amorous intrigue involving devices of keys, walls, doors, or secret passages, since these things exist only in such aristocratic estates as Mr. B.’s Lincolnshire summer house in Pamela. The men Syrena encounters are not aristocratic or upper-class gentlemen rich enough to possess grand houses, but middle- or lower-class merchants, officers, and penniless gallants. The only exceptions are Sir Thomas (a Baronet), his son Mr. L—, and Lord R—. With the scenes involving Sir Thomas and Mr. L— that take place at L— Hall, Haywood aims at mimicking Richardson’s plots in order to offer her own interpretation and critique of Pamela. Thus in Anti-Pamela we have a scene when Mr. L— lurks in the closet waiting to attack his “innocent” pretty victim. As to Lord R—, a man “well versed in this Artifice of the [female] Sex” (150) and not deceived in the slightest by Syrena’s trick or artful dissembling, Haywood only uses him as an effective means to expose Syrena’s hypocritical pretension to virtue and modesty of a gentlewoman. Since Lord R— is not enamored by Syrena to the point of wishing to contrive a sexual scheme against her, there is no occasion for Haywood to employ these devices related to conventional amorous intrigues that have permeated the pages in her earlier amatory fictions. Moreover, instead of being restricted to the domestic scenes as those in Pamela, in Anti-Pamela many of the incidents take place in public places, especially after Syrena is dismissed from the respectable families when her vileness and depravity are uncovered. Like a voracious tigress hunting for whom she might devour, Syrena tirelessly walks on the streets or loiters in the parks in search of potential targets to deceive and make profit from. Lord R—, who is as crafty as Syrena, bears much resemblance to such rake-heroes as Count D’Elmont and Beauplaisir in Haywood’s earlier works. Yet it is worth noting that while the hypocritical and artful characters abound.

(27) Influence or “Influenza”?. 133. in her earlier fictions, Haywood did not punish them then for their hypocrisy as she does now with Syrena. In fact, far from opposing artfulness in upper-class characters of both sexes in her earlier works, Haywood seems to have believed that the art to dissemble one’s true emotions and the ability to see through others’ are indispensable to survival in high society. For example, in depicting the innocent, artless, but ruined Amena, Haywood puts the words suggesting similar ideas in parentheses: “for the young Amena (little versed in the art of dissimulation, so necessary to her sex,) could not conceal the pleasure she took in his addresses…” (Love in Excess 46). Moreover, Haywood’s narrator comments on a complex triangular relationship among D’Elmont, his jealous wife Alovysa, and his ward Melliora (whom he loves passionately and who adores him inwardly): …certainly never did people disguise the sentiments of their souls more artfully than did these three—Melliora vailed her secret languishments, under the covert of her grief for her father [who died not long ago], the Count his burning anguish, in a gloomy melancholy for the loss of his friend; but Alovysa’s task was much the hardest, who had no pretence for grief (raging, and bleeding with neglected love, and stifled pride) to frame her temper to a seeming tranquility—And all made it their whole study to deceive each other. (Love in Excess 97) This passage indicates Haywood’s implicit sanction of such attributes as disguise, artfulness and pretense found in these characters, especially when we consider the fact that D’Elmont and Melliora are intended by Haywood for the reader to identify with. In contrast, in Anti-Pamela not only does Haywood relentlessly expose and condemn Syrena’s hypocrisy and mercenary motives through her characteristic authorial interjection, but Haywood also severely punishes her criminal behavior at the end of the novel by confining her to an estate of Syrena’s relation in Wales, where she will be deprived of “all Conversation with Mankind” (227). Haywood’s harsh treatment of Syrena suggests that Haywood opposes such attributes to be cultivated in lower-class women. This gesture, furthermore, reveals Haywood’s classist attitude by insisting on different standards of conduct and motives between upper- and lower-class women. Belonging to the camp of anti-Pamelists in the sensational Pamela controversy, Haywood objects to the literary and social messages implied in Richardson’s Pamela. First, by creating a servant girl as a celebrated heroine.