I liked how Richardson wrote Pamela because it helps you get personal with the character. By writing in the forms letters you can see the emotion and thoughts she is going through during this novel. Although some of the letters are kind of dull and boring you can't help wonder what this girl is going to do next. When you read the letters you are put in that moment at that exact time which i think is pretty amazing. To be able to be put in a certain time frame and a different time in life where women did not have many choices helps you understand that lifestyle. The only bad thing about this is that you only see what Pamela wants you to see and nothing else. You do not get an idea of what the other characters are until she talks about them and descibes them how she sees them.
Pamela's letters are written to her parents at first and i feel bad that she can't talk to them everyday or even see them. But when she moves to the country house she feels like her parents aren't getting them and then she keeps them as a diary. I tired writing a diary once and it never worked out, plus my brother would have found it and that would have been the end of my life. I feel that Pamela had to write to someone who she knew would listen. When she got caught with the letters and was demanded to give them to her master she couldn't give them up. She put her heart and soul into them, just imagine being ripped apart by someone in a million pieces because thats what she would of felt like.
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Because her letters were so much a piece of her I found it so bothersome that throughout the tail end of the book she was so willing to show her letters to Mr. B and on top of that Lady Davers.
Christina, you bring up a few key points: I think you give an excellent description of the novel's experiment with what I will call narrative time. The form allows for a real sense of suspense, because the narrator does not know what will happen next; we also get access to her thoughts and feelings to a degree unobtainable in other narrative forms. You also note the problem, that Fielding will exploit, that we are only given Pamela's perspective: "you only see what Pamela wants you to see and nothing else." I am very interested in what you and Jessica say about the privacy and personal aspect of letters/diaries. on the one had, readers were entranced with how personal and intimate the stories were; on the other hand, there are real questions about whether this depicts an invasion of privacy; or whether it is simply distasteful to read or publish something so private. Are there limits to what we consider acceptable to be made known to others: this question is still debated across our society. Just watch an episode of a show like Jerry Springer and think about what value we should place on privacy and what motivates people to expose their most intimate secrets. the example of your brother is also on point: what happens when the reader is not sympathetic? Richardson would face this problem quite painfully during the controversy surrounding Pamela, with the popularity of rip-offs like Shamela.
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