Check it Out: This satire's no sham
Not spent from skimming saucy
fiction over Reading Week?
Looking for a quickie to liven up
the daily grind? Look no further
than Fielding's Shamela. This
satire's got it all: burlesque
humour, a big Booby and a censored
author, with the added distinction
of parodying the popular
chick lit of the time, Pamela. Now,
wtf was Pamela?
Cringes.
In the roughest terms, Pamela was Twilight for the 18th century. In Pamela, a serving-girl attracts the unwanted attention of a man of higher social status who wants to get into her drawers. In our 21st century world, though most class differences are eradicated, there still exists a kind of hierarchy based on looks and intellect. Ergo, Bella attracts the attention of a super-smart, century-old vampire (the lucky bitch!). Pamela features a girl of such dubious attraction as to make a rich and powerful man abduct her (seriously, would he really need to go to all the trouble?), and Bella, though presented as the girl-next-door, manages to lead on both a vamp and a werewolf. Pamela is angst-ridden over the inequalities present in her relationship with her master, Bella... ah, need I say more?
But if Pamela was Twilight, Shamela was Vampires Suck.
If no one actually has conclusive proof of who wrote Shamela, it's in the way that no one 'knows' who knocked over the trashcan when the family dog is giving you big, soulful eyes with the lid hanging round his neck. There was really only one culprit: Henry Fielding.
Richardson, the author of Pamela, despised Fielding. The feeling was mutual. Richardson was a political brown-noser. He published his writing at his own expense and pompously added 'letters of commendation' from 'anonymous writers' (i.e. his friends, his wife, himself) to the beginning of his works. It's a bit like giving your telephone number as a reference for a job, then pretending to be your former boss when a potential employer calls. Don't try this at home, kids.
Richardson's resume also distinguished him as a writer of love letters for girls in his neighbourhood, and the hand behind numerous anonymous letters used to upbraid the women in his community of immoral conduct, from gossip to giddiness. Scary as this might sound, he had grounds for bragging. In lower-class communities, most people were illiterate and wrote out model letters from 'copybooks' for long-distance communication. So imagine your old lady spends most of her time in brawls and brothels (actually, don't imagine that, eww). She scribbles out a random letter she herself can't read, enduring you to be polite and mannerly, and attend to the preservation of your eternal soul, yada, yada. You open it, and... what the h--
Control the copybooks, and you controlled the moral education of their readers. Richardson himself wrote such copybooks and acted on their ethical potential, a move that was not at all resented by his purchasers. A moral education was a social education, and lower class women who wanted to advance via the marriage market exploited copybooks and tales such as Pamela as how-to guides for catching and keeping the perfect moneyman. And if Richardson was blind to this aspect of his work, well, Fielding was all too happy to point it out.
If Richardson was an effeminate, pompous git, Fielding was a toughtalking smartass who couldn't keep his mouth shut. His plays pissed off the government of his time so much that he was singlehandedly responsible for The Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737; any plays had to gain the Lord Chamberlain's approval. Given the backlog of bureaucratic B.S. the Chamberlain had to wallow through, not many plays got approval, condemning the public to watching reruns of Shakespeare for the next half-century and putting Fielding out of a job. Happily for us, he turned to satirizing Pamela.
Did the original Pamela faint upon being kissed? Seriously, she was just faking it. Did she really leave her doors unlocked and dress half-naked while in fear of deflowering? It was really just a plot between her and her mother's friend so that the rich Squire Booby could see her "pretty, little, white, round, panting -----." (Eighteenth century censorship turns every bawdy book into fillin- the-blanks, so you don't even need to buy crosswords for the next roadtrip! How cool is that?) Did Booby really not back off after she clawed him up for catching her in bed? Yeah, well, their hands, "on neither side, were idle in the scuffle."
As for the ludicrous stratagems Booby resorts to for stalking Pamela, well, he was an idiot after all, and Pamela's willing to go along with it to get him to the altar. Why else wouldn't she recognize him cross-dressing as the maid to get in her bed? Sex is a marketable commodity. Prostitution is a shortterm cash exchange, while the longer courtship of Booby and Pamela/Shamela constitutes the negotiation of a business agreement. Marriage is a long-term investment, wherein children and advanced social status represent dividends.
Have we really changed since the 1700s? Control over mutual finances is generally more of an equitable arrangement than when women weren't allowed to own property. Our relatively comfortable financial situations in Canada, coupled with the rising global population, enable us to view marriage more as a romantic act than as a financial partnership or an agreement on reproduction. The advances in women's rights and law enforcement enable more personal freedoms for both genders to seek out companionship without the formalized agreements of marriage.
Still, in a way, all social interaction constitutes an exchange of expectations and acts, of pleasure given and received, an ongoing intercourse in goods, or signs, or words. Touching, huh? So take out a book and a date, and give tongue to Shamela.
Just don't forget to tell me what happens next.
Cringes.
In the roughest terms, Pamela was Twilight for the 18th century. In Pamela, a serving-girl attracts the unwanted attention of a man of higher social status who wants to get into her drawers. In our 21st century world, though most class differences are eradicated, there still exists a kind of hierarchy based on looks and intellect. Ergo, Bella attracts the attention of a super-smart, century-old vampire (the lucky bitch!). Pamela features a girl of such dubious attraction as to make a rich and powerful man abduct her (seriously, would he really need to go to all the trouble?), and Bella, though presented as the girl-next-door, manages to lead on both a vamp and a werewolf. Pamela is angst-ridden over the inequalities present in her relationship with her master, Bella... ah, need I say more?
But if Pamela was Twilight, Shamela was Vampires Suck.
If no one actually has conclusive proof of who wrote Shamela, it's in the way that no one 'knows' who knocked over the trashcan when the family dog is giving you big, soulful eyes with the lid hanging round his neck. There was really only one culprit: Henry Fielding.
Richardson, the author of Pamela, despised Fielding. The feeling was mutual. Richardson was a political brown-noser. He published his writing at his own expense and pompously added 'letters of commendation' from 'anonymous writers' (i.e. his friends, his wife, himself) to the beginning of his works. It's a bit like giving your telephone number as a reference for a job, then pretending to be your former boss when a potential employer calls. Don't try this at home, kids.
Richardson's resume also distinguished him as a writer of love letters for girls in his neighbourhood, and the hand behind numerous anonymous letters used to upbraid the women in his community of immoral conduct, from gossip to giddiness. Scary as this might sound, he had grounds for bragging. In lower-class communities, most people were illiterate and wrote out model letters from 'copybooks' for long-distance communication. So imagine your old lady spends most of her time in brawls and brothels (actually, don't imagine that, eww). She scribbles out a random letter she herself can't read, enduring you to be polite and mannerly, and attend to the preservation of your eternal soul, yada, yada. You open it, and... what the h--
Control the copybooks, and you controlled the moral education of their readers. Richardson himself wrote such copybooks and acted on their ethical potential, a move that was not at all resented by his purchasers. A moral education was a social education, and lower class women who wanted to advance via the marriage market exploited copybooks and tales such as Pamela as how-to guides for catching and keeping the perfect moneyman. And if Richardson was blind to this aspect of his work, well, Fielding was all too happy to point it out.
If Richardson was an effeminate, pompous git, Fielding was a toughtalking smartass who couldn't keep his mouth shut. His plays pissed off the government of his time so much that he was singlehandedly responsible for The Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737; any plays had to gain the Lord Chamberlain's approval. Given the backlog of bureaucratic B.S. the Chamberlain had to wallow through, not many plays got approval, condemning the public to watching reruns of Shakespeare for the next half-century and putting Fielding out of a job. Happily for us, he turned to satirizing Pamela.
Did the original Pamela faint upon being kissed? Seriously, she was just faking it. Did she really leave her doors unlocked and dress half-naked while in fear of deflowering? It was really just a plot between her and her mother's friend so that the rich Squire Booby could see her "pretty, little, white, round, panting -----." (Eighteenth century censorship turns every bawdy book into fillin- the-blanks, so you don't even need to buy crosswords for the next roadtrip! How cool is that?) Did Booby really not back off after she clawed him up for catching her in bed? Yeah, well, their hands, "on neither side, were idle in the scuffle."
As for the ludicrous stratagems Booby resorts to for stalking Pamela, well, he was an idiot after all, and Pamela's willing to go along with it to get him to the altar. Why else wouldn't she recognize him cross-dressing as the maid to get in her bed? Sex is a marketable commodity. Prostitution is a shortterm cash exchange, while the longer courtship of Booby and Pamela/Shamela constitutes the negotiation of a business agreement. Marriage is a long-term investment, wherein children and advanced social status represent dividends.
Have we really changed since the 1700s? Control over mutual finances is generally more of an equitable arrangement than when women weren't allowed to own property. Our relatively comfortable financial situations in Canada, coupled with the rising global population, enable us to view marriage more as a romantic act than as a financial partnership or an agreement on reproduction. The advances in women's rights and law enforcement enable more personal freedoms for both genders to seek out companionship without the formalized agreements of marriage.
Still, in a way, all social interaction constitutes an exchange of expectations and acts, of pleasure given and received, an ongoing intercourse in goods, or signs, or words. Touching, huh? So take out a book and a date, and give tongue to Shamela.
Just don't forget to tell me what happens next.
