Samuel Richardson's PAMELA

Today’s readership is as likely to be divided in its view of Pamela and its eponymous heroine as the literary audience was in the 1740s.  The work can be viewed as revolutionary in that it heralds a new era of famial relations that has a direct impact on how society is to be organized and governed.  Put simply, the story is about a young women’s coming-of-age as she traverses class structure through her own virtue, wit, and stoic grace.  In laborious detail, Pamela describes her experiences, actions, and thoughts at the hands of her nefarious master through her letters to her parents.  Of course, the reader is fully aware that these are solely her interpretations, and it is perhaps Richardson’s own narrative device to have her write so many detailed letters exemplifying her virtue, as if Richardson himself were anticipating any doubt on the reader’s part.  Would an artful liar be capable of such exacting detail?  Would not the reader, at some point, put aside doubts and believe Pamela, if only for her thoroughness, consistency, and lack of contradictory evidence (i.e., the non-existence of an Editor’s correction)? 

This is the gamble Richardson, in using this form, seems prepared to make, although serious criticism can be made in the heroine’s decision-making.  If the revolutionary implications of lower-born women marrying up are to be accepted, one has to first flesh out the terms under which this change of custom is to happen.  In order for the work to not be merely an apology for the trophy wife, Richardson has to establish Pamela, a prototype, as morally acceptable.  Therefore, the first questions is, if Pamela is as virtuous and humble as he would have us believe, why does she return to Mr. B.?  Having refused his bald proposal to be a kept woman is hardly the clearcut evidence of virtue many of us would demand of a heroine, especially since Mr. B’s change is so sudden and briefly introduced.  We are to believe that Pamela’s forgiveness of Mr. B. is nearly instantaneous, and such a turnabout could be understood, in part, by the rather clumsy mechanics of the plot itself.  Since Mr. B. is largely absent (an invisible hand and eye, as it were), he is exempt from direct action that would have made it highly improbable for the reader to accept Pamela’s forgiveness.  As pointed out by Christopher Flint, “female surrogates … enact the more alarming depravities of Mr. B’s ‘plot” while preserving a semblance of ‘decency’ for him” (p. 502).  This distancing of responsibility serves as a very limited mitigating factor, at least by today’s standards, although perhaps this was more than enough for Richardson’s 18^th century readership.  Nevertheless, there is always the lingering doubt that she could be, as Henry Fielding points out in his biting parody, Shamela, a particularly determined and greedy seductress, aiming much higher than the station of a kept woman. 

On the other hand, if Pamela is, indeed, this disingenuous, there is never any direct evidence to it, and Richardson expects his readership to accept her characterization.  There is, after all, nothing else to go on, and independent analysis must therefore rest on the heroine’s actions:  Given freedom, she returns to Mr. B. on her own accord.  This is problematic for the reasons stated above, and is curious because the plot could have gone in so many other directions so as not to leave into question this character’s motivations.  For example, could Pamela not have returned to her parents and eventually gotten another position for another (non-Libertine) aristocrat (to whom she could eventually marry)?  Virtue then, would still be rewarded, without the moral ambiguity haunting the work.

Is she really this naïve to think Mr. B. could change so suddenly and dramatically, as if her writings had the redemptive power of the Bible itself?  Apparently, she is, and we as readers are expected to follow suit.  For Richardson, reading is a transformative process for its characters and for us as a society.  It’s no accident that Pamela’s Biblical knowledge runs throughout her correspondence, particularly in times of greatest distress (such as when she rewrites a Proverbs passage and likens herself to persecuted Jews in captivity), as well as less trying moments when she is grateful to Providence.  Pamela may read a lot, but the literature that informs her writing more than any other is the Bible.  Her reality, in this sense, if very flat, literal, and dichotomous:  despondency/rejoicing, lost/found, shame/delight, poverty/riches, etcetera.  There is very little middle ground, so that when Mr. B sees the errors of his ways (he is saved!) and importunes her return, that is all she needs.  “How Times are alter’d!” she exclaims (Richardson, p. 276) not longer after that moment. 

Her reactions are not entirely bipolar, however, because they do indeed reflect a dramatic godlike intervention – Mr. B’s total character reformation and subsequent marriage proposal – so that within weeks of contemplating suicide, Pamela is instead proclaiming, “… when I see that God has brought about my Happiness by the very Means that I thought then my great Grievance; I ought to bless those Means, and forgive all that was disagreeable to me at the time, for the great Good that has issued from it” (Richardson, p. 301).  In other words, everything happens for a reason, and Pamela is not one to squabble over the details or hold resentments.  Hardships brought by Mr. B were necessary for her writing which, in turn, changed Mr. B to someone who not only would ask her to marry him, but, more importantly (if we are to believe Pamela’s professed beliefs about love and marriage) changed Mr. B into someone she would now want to marry because he is now converted.  She may also be someone Mr. B would love even more for her easy forgiveness of him is an attribute for a future wife.  She does not hold grudges as do so many upperclass women Pamela’s kind threaten to replace.

Any perceived naiveté on Pamela’s part is put aside during the second part of the novel because Mr. B holds true to his change of ways.  There is, however, an exchange to be made, and Richardson, through Mr. B, is quite forthright as to what those terms shall be.  Pamela is in no way to shame or overshadow her husband, is to follow his expected schedule, and, in general, is to “stick to these old-fashion’d Rules” (Richardson, p. 369).  His injunctions and, later, a laundry list of rules, are to be happily obeyed as if by divine rule, for he is “Master of his House” and therefore she is to be “facetious, kind, obliging to all” (Richardson p. 371).  Pamela seems perfectly content with these conditions, and many would argue, somewhat erroneously, that the perky “saucebox” domestic servant seems all but replaced by a domesticated wife, seamlessly transitioning into her new role.  The transformation is not nearly as dramatic as the one Mr. B has undergone, but is nonetheless striking and coincides with the practical, social imperatives of the novel’s second half:  protocol, legality, and civil rules of marriage (in contrast to the protocol and rules for a servant lady – Pamela – of the first half). 

During the second half of the novel, the directives are much more concrete and to the point, as opposed to the implied expectations of the exemplar Pamela in the first half.  While Mr. B had previously indicated, somewhat cryptically, his distaste for the institution of marriage, much is revealed in the second half to explain Mr. B’s (and the novel’s) gender politics.  We learn through the confrontation scene with Lady Davers and her letter to her brother of the characteristics of women of Mr. B’s world, characteristics he cannot bear:  outspokenness, quarrelsomeness, boldness, and disrespect.  Moreover, his history with his sister is conflicted, at best, and Mr. B later reveals that she was a domineering older sister who regularly vexed and teased him.  This personality type coincides with his indirect description of aristocratic women in his “list of injunctions” speech to Pamela shortly after their marriage.  Simply put, Mr. B finds aristocratic women too “uppity” and challenging. 

That Mr. B would find a welcome companion in Pamela is only too evident in this context for as much as he was previously vexed by her rebellious behavior, Pamela’s rebellion was always only in response to infringements of her sexual (i.e., womanly Christian) virtue:  “Her Meekness, in every Circumstance where her Virtue was not concern’d” (Richardson, emphasis added, p. 503).  She had otherwise always been a dutiful servant.  This is key because claims that Pamela was once a sort of outspoken feminist prototype in Part I do not hold water in light of this point.  It’s indicative that once Mr. B realized the “correct formula” (“… I should have melted her by Love, instead of freezing her by Fear” Richardson, p. 209), he would have considerably less difficulty in finding a dutiful wife.  It’s also very telling that Pamela continues of refer to him as “Master” long after their marriage for she is to be, literally, his servant wife, never able to muster “the Presumption to call him by a more tender Epithet” (Richardson, p. 348).

If Pamela’s previous rebellion can largely be seen as primarily in relation to her virginal Christian virtue (thereby making her rebellion limited), there are still hints that broader secular themes of the Enlightenment (such as dignity, freedom, protofeminism) are bubbling underneath.  On a few occasions, she has quite a bit to say about status and place, not bothering to mince her words as to the folly of the rich and their twisted logic.  Her vantage point is that of someone not of the aristocracy, although the novel can be described as suspiciously ambiguous regarding her birth status.  Pamela is constantly describing herself as humble and undeserving (“I don’t serve these Things, I know I don’t” Richardson, p. 80), yet there are occasional hints of a “better birth” such as when Lady Brooks comments, “I never saw such a Face and Shape in my Life; why she must be better descended than you have told me!” (Richardson, p. 53).  She has culture and wit, but this is largely attributed to the three years under governance of the Lady of the house.  The most we know of her birth status is that she comes from “honest, industrious Parents, who lived tho’ the greatest Trials, without being beholden to anything but God’s Blessing, and their own hard Labour” (Richardson, p. 395).  Tellingly, this point is repeated with great emphasis after the marriage, to Lady Davers, and then, not many pages after that, to Mr. B’s social circle. 

Pamela, then, is of “fallen” stock, and yet her middle-class roots shine through and are even resurrected under the nurturing tutoring of the Lady of the house, Mr. B’s mother.  This makes her total identity something of a patchwork anomaly:  part luck (Providence granted her tutoring), part intrinsic beauty and wit (“quality” and natural talent), and part class origin.  This trio of characteristics makes it difficult to put together a simple roadmap for Pamela’s ascent; there is no “one thing” that explains her ability to marry Mr. B in a socially acceptable way.  Pamela may be a model, but not one too easily followed by others; it is as though Richardson himself were aware of the need for “quality” control.  Certain unlikely circumstances have to come into play first for this is to be a quieter kind of revolution. 

Most notable in this trilogy of prerequisites are repeated hints of her parent’s fallen station, so that there’s less of a distance between her and the aristocracy than there normally would be between servants and masters.  Pamela is just different from Mrs. Jervis, Mrs. Jewkes, and Mr. Longman, et al., and this was not lost on the original Lady of the house who then provided her with the accoutrements of culture.  This last development is a subtle hint that some people were just meant to rise above their station so long as their station is not too low to begin with.  Certain hardworking, middle-class people are teachable and therefore mobile.  It is almost accidental that Pamela is a servant in the first place; the majority of the novel, in the form of arguments and negotiation between her and Mr. B and, later, diplomatic actions toward a potentially censorious society, serves to correct this. 

Pamela’s story is nevertheless revolutionary for it sets up the parameters for upward mobility through marriage via a set of rationales that author Samuel Richardson presents in direct challenge to his era’s mores and values.  There’s no denying that “marrying up” was a radical, controversial concept then, however benign it may seem to modern readers.  This change, however, is not as simple as one would think because it involves compromises not only between Pamela and Mr. B, but also between the interests of class and gender.  Richardson, through his characters and the social experiment of their situation, presents a (somewhat) palatable remedy for a decadent, dissolute aristocracy in dire need of some edification (in the form of Pamela and the bourgeoisie).  If we were initially bothered by her rationale for returning to Mr. B and her motives in general, we eventually come to realize that this character curiosity is less of a concern for the story’s real purpose in Part II.  Pamela is a tool to demonstrate and remind the aristocracy of virtue so that they may be saved from themselves.  She is more of an exemplar to them than she is to would-be handmaidens across the land (hence the backtracking discussed ahead). 

By the novel’s second half, this becomes increasingly clear as we go through various explanations of Mr. B’s world.  The folly of the aristocracy is detailed in a straightforward psychological explanation:  “We People of Fortune, or such as are born to large Expectations, of both Sexes, are generally educated wrong” (Richardson, p. 443).  Mr. B then explains the situation of his class, in particular their irreconcilable differences and inherent dysfunctions, so that we come to view Pamela as necessary to a revolution that is inherently reactionary:  the upper classes have strayed too far, indulging in Libertinism and internal squabbling, as well as poor, misguided parenting.  As thoroughly explained by Christopher Flint, “the plot really addresses the failure of the upper class to meet its own ethical standards … Pamela appears to urge the lower class to seek Elevation; but beneath the dramatic disguises and verbal role-playing she suppresses such instincts … [so that] the novel’s “revolutionary” import gradually dissipates” (Flint, p. 497).   The political direction must go back, to those “old-fashion’d” ways Mr. B implores Pamela to follow, for the sake of society (how convenient for Mr. B!).  Fittingly, the final pages are directed first to Libertines and Gentlemen as “an edifying Lesson may be drawn from it” (Richardson, p. 500). 

If we are to accept Flint’s assertion that this work’s plot and motivations are reactionary and directed mainly to the aristocracy, that the promised revolution “dissipates,” the fact remains that the novel implies a tiny but significant crack left open for lesser-born women seeking upward mobility.  It may not be quite the revolution originally anticipated, fraught as it is with compromise and uneasy exchanges of values, but it is one nonetheless.  The revolution is within the confines of the aristocracy, with less immediate effect on everyone else, all the while benefiting aristocratic men, suppressing aristocratic women, and permitting the possibility of mobility for certain lesser-born women.  Yes, Pamela shuts up significantly after the marriage and appears less self-possessed.  Nevertheless, Pamela is not only her writing, even if that is the only window into her soul that we are privy to.  Just as we are never really sure of her sincerity in Part I, we cannot say with absolute certainty that she reneges her revolutionary views simply because of literary omission.  It is quite possible that Pamela, like Mr. B, is very aware of public scrutiny by the novel’s second half, and that this very consciousness contributes to her own self-censorship.  Self-censorship is not the same thing as not being self-possessed, however, and in this sense freedom of speech may be overrated. 

Her role as an “elevator,” moreover, gives her incredible power because the title itself indicates a kind of superiority not previously acknowledged by society (although this had never been lost to her).  Pamela, when compared to all women of her time, is not terribly disenfranchised – at least no more than before.  In one conversation, she accedes the power to vote, but since women couldn’t even vote then anyway, the point is almost moot.  There is a temptation to compare her to women’s situation today, but one cannot deny she has at least as many freedoms as a lady of her time as she did when she was a servant.  (It would be even easier to argue that she has more.  After all, she’s no longer being held against her will.)  She also has different responsibilities, although not necessarily more. 

Finally, it cannot be ignored that Pamela is so frequently referred to as an exemplar and model throughout the novel, and it is understood that there will be others to follow in her footsteps.  This is a logical necessity – exemplars are, by definition, intended to be followed.  However, lest lower-born reader entertain unrealistic hopes and quit their day jobs in droves – as Fielding would suggest – Richardson later inserted in a revised edition the following backtracking quote:  “I don’t mean that [gentlemen] should all take raw, uncouth, unbred, lowly girls, as I was, from the cottage, and destroying all distinction, make such their wives; for there is a far greater likelihood, that such a one, when she comes to be lifted up into so dazzling a sphere, would have her head made giddy with her exaltation, than that she would balance herself well in it.”  (emphasis added) (Williams, p. 422).

                                                                                      Discreetly, Pamela appears to shut the door behind her, in direct opposition to her premarital view of class equality:  “… how poor People are despised by the Proud and the Rich; and yet we were all on a foot originally” (Richardson, p. 258).  The Pamela we knew then (before being in the public eye, before the marriage) could afford to express such views in a private letter, even going so far as to question the accuracy of lineage and imply a revolutionary possibility in the future when “some of those despised upstart Families may not revel in their Estates, while their Descendants may be reduced to the other’s Dunhils?” (Richardson p. 258).  That this one-page pondering is buried in the middle of the text never to be echoed so outspokenly again does little to reduce its potency:  somehow, we know what Pamela and Richardson really think because, backtracking side, the story speaks for itself.  She gets her man and is perfectly willing to abide by the conditions of an aristocratic marriage.  Where there is one, there are bound to be others, although it is no by no means an easy journey. 

REFERENCES

Flint, Christopher.  “The Anxiety of Affluence:  Family and Class (Dis)order in Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded.”  Studies in English Literature 29 (1989): 489-515.

Richardson, Samuel.  Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2001.

Williams, Carolyn D.  “Pamela and the Case of the Slandered Duchess.”  Studies in English Literature 29 (1989); 515-536.

Aphra Behn's Portrayal of Slavery in OROONOKO

            Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is often viewed as one of the earliest forms of literature to take issue with slavery.  This view, however, can be tempered somewhat if one more closely examines the narrator’s rationale and reasoning in her criticism of the slave trade.  The word trade, moreover, is key, since it is not completely clear that the narrator is against slavery per se, so much as the methods and customs of the trade itself.

            More than midway through this work, we learn from the narrator that she is the daughter of a high-ranking Englishman who was to be, before his untimely death, the “Lieutenant-General of six and thirty islands, besides the continent of Surinam” (p. 48).  Clearly, the narrator herself is of a certain class and therefore possesses certain values.  Nowhere is this clearer than in the narrator’s own description of the work’s central character, Oroonoko, a man whom the narrator holds in the highest regard.  She is quick to add that this Prince Oroonoko was educated formally by a Frenchman “of Wit and Learning” such that his training in “Morals, Language and Science” makes him an equal among the Englishmen and Spaniards traders (p.7).  Lest the reader view him as a barbarian, the narrator further informs us that Oroonoko is an equal Prince among European nobility, as someone who has “all the Civility of a well-bred great Man … as if his Education has been in some European Court” (p.7).  In short, she is impressed by his title (he is, as we say, “of the manor born,” albeit in some exotic place) and he is learned by European standards.  He is not as unlike the narrator as one would expect.

            Suspicions that that the narrator may be taking exception to Oroonoko because of his rank and European education are further underscored by the way she physically describes him in comparison to his people.  Oroonoko’s grandfather himself as “adorn’d with a native Beauty, so transcending all those of his gloomy Race” (p. 6), while Oroonoko is described as nearly perfect, “bating his Colour” (p.8).  She pointedly notes his European-shaped nose and lips that, inexplicably (yet naturally, according to the narrator’s hierarchy construct), differ from the rest of the Negroes.  Not surprisingly, Imoinda, as the daughter of a highly respected General, is also beautiful by European standards, “the beautiful Black Venus to our young Mars” (p. 9).   

            The hierarchy of beauty as a mirror to the hierarchy of status in the first half of the novel may seem nonsensical to the modern reader, although perhaps it shouldn’t.  Lookism still exists today in popular culture, and the assumed correlation between inner and outer beauty is consistently evident in children’s Disney animation, televised Miss America Pageants, and big budget Hollywood films.  One could argue that these modern-day examples are vestiges of a bygone fairytale era closer to Aphra Behn’s literary world.  In any event, the narrator establishes to the readers that certain foreign people -- Oroonoko, Imoinda, and the King of Cormantien – are special examples of their race and this specialness is most evident in their very appearance (the truth is literally self-evident, God’s favor is physically manifest).  One could argue that in so doing, Aphra Behn succeeds in making these characters separate from a vast continent of Negroes while making them familiar (and more accessible) to most non-Negro readers:  These are the good guys, the ones were are supposed to be rooting for, who are almost like us. 

            This becomes problematic in analyzing the work’s position on slavery, however, because of the continual “separateness” of these characters.  Through the narrator’s eyes, we feel sympathy for Oroonoko and Imoinda, but since they don’t seem to have much in common with their own people and are indeed separate and above them in status (and, hence, possess more beauty, wit, experience, values, intelligence, etc.), they are always treated as exceptions.  One wonders if Aphra Behn wrote the first half in the romance tradition to capture, in ways familiar to her time, the hearts and minds of her readers, causing an affection and empathy for these two “exotic royals.” 

If the “exotic royal” approach succeeds in raising questions about slavery in the first part of the story, this would later prove to be problematic, because by the second, more “realistic” half of the novel, there is little evidence presented by the narrator that she feels the majority of the Negro race is worthy of Oroonoko.  By the narrator’s own account, the Negroes are not only less physically attractive and commanding than their own Oroonoko, they are slavish and without dignity.  For example, upon seeing Oroonoko/Caesar in Surinam, the Negroes prostrate themselves before the very man who “sold most of ‘em to these parts” and pay him “Divine Homage” (p. 41).  Instantaneously, a relentless will for hierarchy persists even in Surinam.  The scene is also a convenient rationalization for slavery, as if to suggest that certain people are inherently passive and unable to self-govern.

Furthermore, the Negroes are vast in numbers but lack quality and therefore description.  The word quality is particularly notable because it appears continually throughout the work, but is used specifically for Oroonoko, Imoinda (“We took her to be of quality” p. 45), Jamoan, and Tuscan, a “tall Negroe of some more Quality than the rest” (p. 61).  It is as though the narrator is constantly searching for a parallel universe, some sort of hierarchical order through which she can translate her experiences vis-à-vis the exotic.  Wherever she goes, she takes special note of titles and rank (as if seeking her exotic yet familiar counterpart), always being sure to accord to them the attributes most desirable. 

This is actually very logical because in her worldview, there is still strict hierarchical structure that the then-emerging mercantilism system was only beginning to threaten (and overtake by the novel’s end).  The narrator is a citizen of the late 17^th century world of master/servant dichotomies and hierarchy; it can be presumed that she is of the monied classes, although not necessary of the emerging middle class.  In this context, it is hard to imagine that such a person would be capable of recognizing the “quality” of all – much less the concept of equality among all.  The matter-of-fact manner in which the narrator continually separates and categorizes the individuals she encounters attests to this persistent mental and cultural construct.  She is continually very astute to the details and clues of hierarchy, such as the body carvings of those with rank.   Because there is no evidence that she believes in equality of “quality,” it is all the more challenging to the reader that she would believe in equal rights, self-determination, and self-rule for all (the very issues of slavery). 

Similarly, Oroonoko also does not have a problem with slavery per se.  He himself was a participant in the slave trade as a member of a country that the narrator’s people “found the most advantageous Trading for these Slaves” (p. 5).  It was through his country’s never-ending conquests and battles that captives were taken and later sold.  Oroonoko’s role is clear here; he did business regularly with those European generals and ship captains, and this is something clearly not lost on the narrator:  she admits that even before meeting him, she had “an extreme Curiosity to see him, especially when I knew he spoke French and English” (p. 7).  Like the narrator, Oroonoko abhors the Civil Wars in England and the downfall of their monarch, he being a man coming from a place where “the Obedience the People pay their King was not at all inferiour to what they paid their Gods” (p. 12).  Like the narrator, he too is a loyalist.

For both Oroonoko and the narrator, the real obscenity is in the dishonorable (deceptive) practices of the trade, not slavery itself.  In a way, they are both becoming “old school” even for their times.  The narrator finds repellant the hypocrisy that is done in the name of Christianity by her countrymen, but this hypocrisy is in the sense of lying:  the Captain uses treachery to capture Oroonoko and his men.  There is no evidence that her definition of hypocrisy has anything to do with brotherly love or other Christian values; she never questions if slavery breaks the Christian commandment that no man can serve two masters.  Thus, she appears to be in perfect understanding with the non-Christian Oroonoko in her disgust and dismay of his capture – a capture that contrasts sharply with the more “honorable” conquest of battle that is Oroonoko’s way of capturing slaves.  “Have they vanquished us nobly in Fight?  Have they won us in Honourable Battle?  And are we by the Chance of War become their Slaves?” Oroonoko asks the fellow slaves, many of whom he himself had captured (p. 61). 

This is striking because what both the narrator and Oroonoko mainly take issue with is a lack of “fair play.” and forthrightness (the very noble qualities), as well as the wholesale disregard for rank.  It is as if some kind of primordial rule of nature has been broken that a Prince should be taken into slavery – “the greatest Revenge and the most disgraceful of any” fate to befall persons of a certain stature (p. 27).  However, this hardly matters to either of them when it happens to “those common Men who cou’d not ransom themselves” (p. 5). 

Both the narrator and Oroonoko are confounded by a new breed of men, “Rogues and Runagades that have abandoned their Own Countries for Rapine, Murders, Theft and Villanies” (p. 61).  Who are these men?  They could be seen as latter-day mercenaries, free agents, rugged individualists, and self-interested entrepreneurs.  Many of them may have sympathies for the Whigs (perhaps the narrator is a Tory, favoring a strong hereditary king?).  At any rate, they are a new breed of Europeans, clever in ways the loyalist-oriented narrator and Oroonoko could never be, and, more importantly, beholden to no one but themselves and their profit interests (the emerging middle class).  They have left a country in political turmoil and are spreading political turmoil abroad.

            In the final pages, Oroonoko/Caesar’s end is preceded symbolically by the encroaching powers of the new order.  The Governor sends the honorable Trefry up the river under pretenses of business, while the Banister, “a wild Irishman … of absolute Barbarity, and fit to execute any Villainy but rich” arrives to send Caesar off to his fate (p. 76).  The narrator herself is conveniently removed from the situation; while Tuscan becomes aligned with Byam.  Meanwhile, a Council is convened, consisting of “such notorious Villains … who understood neither the Law of God or Man, and had no sort of Principles to make them worthy the Name of Men” (p. 69).  A palpable sense of physical and moral disorder pervades the last pages, with an uncontrolled rabble of spectators and justices around the funeral pyre of “the mangled King” (p. 77). 

            It would appear, then, that a moral and political order promoted by the narrator would still include slavery, but with the strong recognition of each country’s internal hierarchy.  Slavery is all right if capture is done forthrightly in battle only and if the native nobles are spared (those of discernible quality).  In her view, there is an almost comforting (yet endangered) consistency of hierarchy:  Kings, princes, and that small number of “quality” people can be found everywhere, as if there were an umbrella of divine right covering the globe.  To see someone of Oroonoko’s stature betrayed and humiliated is, to the narrator, a gross misconduct, as abhorrent as the “deplorable Death of our great Monarch” and the political turmoils of her homeland (p. 7).  Such happenings would also have been symbolically ominous to the narrator who, given the times, would have been particularly sensitive to any challenge to kingly power, whether at home or abroad. 

Bibliography

Behn, Aphra.  Oroonoko.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973.

The above essay was written by Patty K., published inwww.urgentexplanations.blogspot.com, written in 2004 and posted on August 17, 2014. URL is www.urgentexplanations.blogspot.com/2014/08/aphra-behns-portrayal-of-slavery-in.html.

Laurence Sterne's A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY

NOTE: If you're going to use any of this for a term paper or whatnot (I'm referring to you "Birth of the Novel" English Lit students who come by at the end of every quarter -- like right about now), please be sure to credit me. The bibliography/source information is at the bottom of this entry, along with internal quote information. ALSO: COMMENTS would be nice. Thanks.

Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey literally hits the ground running, with its main character, Yorick, packing off to France, presumably at the mere indirect dare of his manservant. Yorick himself is the first to admit that he “generally act(s) from the first impulse” (Sterne, p. 22) and this quality is well demonstrated as we observe him indulge in a variety of whims and fancies through a series of French towns and cities. His adventure, as the title states, is a sentimental one, eschewing the usual gothic cathedrals and monuments for what amounts, in the end, to a search for the self in various locales that defy rational prediction.

Because Yorick is a “sentimental traveler,” the reader is treated to a quixotic ride of imagination, fancy, empathy, benevolence, wonder, and love. These internal workings are constantly juxtaposed against the fashionable theories of the day, particularly the mechanical nature of man and man as machine. Yorick’s own fascination with the pulse and involuntary blushes reveals a learned man’s understanding of the circulatory system by itself and vis-à-vis the emotions. Like the author, Yorick does not deny the mechanistic aspects of the human body, but there is an insistence that these are manifestations of the emotions. Martin Battestin makes a good case that Sterne was not only a great admirer of the French philosophes, but that he was also quite able to synthesize their views rather than reject them outright. “In these early sections of the novel – and in his emphasis throughout on the physiology of sentiment, on the innumerable ways in which our bodies serve as inlets to the soul – Stern pays tribute to the philosophes… Sterne … meant to reconcile body and soul, the laws of physiology and the freedom of the will.” (Battestin, p. 30, emphasis added)

The body can reveal emotions, betray the emotions, reflect the emotions and so on; the body in this respect serves emotion and is secondary to it. Yorick may be fascinated with the mechanics, but it is even more likely he is fascinated by the fact that the body does not lie. After all, there’s no such thing as a “fake” blush or a deceptively rapid heartbeat. The physical manifestation of something so invisible and potentially unknowable is of particular interest to Yorick, a man forever seeking emotional connection with women, their deepest internal states, and “the nakedness of their hearts” (Sterne, p. 84).

The novel’s preoccupation with emotion and sensory perception is key to understanding Yorick, a man not quite convinced, just as Sterne was not quite so convinced, that he is a mere automaton set in motion by some unknown and distant god. Indeed, Yorick seems to revel in his whimsy and flights of fancy that contrast the clocklike workings of man the machine. Emotion and sensory perceptions not only propel action and prompt body reactions, they are direct evidence of consciousness, what separates a man from, say, a garden hoe or spinning wheel. For Yorick, one need only insert “feel” or “sense” into Descartes’ “I think therefore I am.”

If Yorick’s stubborn independence to be his own free agent (not an automaton) is sustained primarily from his ungovernable feelings and often-inaccurate perceptions (and how he chooses by his own free will to act on them), there is the inevitable problem of a single, stable identity because perceptions and feelings themselves are unstable, unreliable, and fleeting. If one is one’s perceptions and/or feelings, one is in constant flux and indefinable. Yorick is painfully aware of this when he states: “There is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am – for there is scarce any body I cannot give a better account of than of myself; and I have often wish’d I could do it in a single word – and have an end of it.” (Sterne, p. 85).

Furthermore, any kind of apt definition is impossible because his own solipsism bears an insurmountable complexity. He knows himself only too well and finds himself in a journey to the self that is like Chinese boxes. Extreme self-consciousness only muddies the definition. His search for “himself” has painted him into a corner, and this conundrum is compounded by the fact that he has become a nationless man abroad without a passport.

There are other traits to Yorick that hinder easy definition. His highly refined sensibility renders him effeminate while his status abroad (and perhaps at home) is not concrete. He is a part of an ambiguous, not fully formed bourgeoisie without the full credentials and authority of the established aristocracy. As Judith Frank points out, “Yorick’s journey in search of human nature – his journey of self-constitution as a benevolist – is undertaken as a response to a challenge from a servant” (Frank, p. 109). This is at odds with the Yorick at the beginning of the journey who so confidently defined himself to be the “Sentimental Traveler” (read: a latter day “sensitive man” who listens to his own drummer). The Yorick in Versailles, when actually put to the test, is at a loss for words and must resort to a clumsy reference to Hamlet’s court jester. This only adds to the confusion, however, and Yorick is doomed to be henceforth misconstrued by the French. His identity is further decimated in Paris when, amidst the philosophes and intellectuals of the day, he finds himself “of every man’s opinion” (Sterne, p. 112). Unable to be himself (i.e., express his own thoughts), he finds himself a slave to others’ au courant opinions; he is wildly popular (and well-fed) at the price of free will. Finally, it is probably no accident that those who misconstrue him the most are these French society people, peopled as they are by philosophes and “mechanists” overly beholden to sensory perception and reason, in direct contrast to the intuitive, irrational, emotional Yorick (who in some ways may be viewed as a prototype of the Romantic Movement’s dandy in the coming decades). Furthermore because Yorick “cannot take for granted his difference from the lower classes” and must “live by his wits,” he symbolically and literally becomes Yorick, “the character of a virtual slave in a feudal system … a laughing man … too servile to pose a danger to the (French) state” (Frank, p. 119). In the company of French aristocracy, Yorick becomes the emasculated company man, an experience which he likens to prostitution (so much for free will).

In many ways Yorick’s predicament is familiar to 20th and 21st century readers, and to many male readers in particular. What does it mean to be a “man” then and today? It would seem we’re still trying to figure that out, with our recent conversations about the New Man, the Metrosexual, and so on: he’s sensitive, in touch with his feelings, self-aware, in possession of taste, and monied. These last two qualities are no accident: money creates taste, and those who have money, via their heightened sensitivity, redefine quality. For example, if Yorick can sense and appreciate, say, a rustic vase with all its imperfections and clumsiness, valuing it instead for a feeling it evokes in him, he can pay for it handsomely. Hence the self-serving label we see frequently see today on various merchandise: This product you have just bought is handmade and may contain natural imperfections unique to its craftsmanship. When you buy that “imperfect” product, you’re buying a feeling that that product evokes (rustic simplicity, contentment, coziness, oneness-with-nature, and etcetera). And if there are enough Yoricks of the same sensibility (and there are), the price of such vases would be expected to increase, not unlike Amish furniture or otherwise useless Arizonian tumbleweeds.

But sensibility and its resultant taste have limited currency abroad, and it does not appear that Yorick will be raising the price of rustic vases any time soon in Versailles or Paris. Yorick cannot be the man he wants to be (and be seen as) because of his ambiguous status as an expatriate in Parisian society, but, upon fleeing to Moulines, he rediscovers his best self that fits his original label of the Sensitive Traveller. His self-image (today we would say self-esteem) is resurrected; he becomes like a father to Maria and speaks in almost paternalistic terms (he’s re-masculinated). It is in Moulines, where, upon consoling a deeply depressed Maria, that Yorick rediscovers the transcendent gift of a visceral emotion, empathy: “[S]uch undescribable emotions within me, as I am sure could not be accounted for from any combinations of matter and motion. I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pester’d the world ever convince me of the contrary.” (Sterne, p. 114)

With this confirmation that he has a soul, Yorick is unburdened of his own dead-end self-absorption that does little to make himself concrete to himself in any event. He also becomes strikingly aware that knowing – real knowing – is aided by the senses, his imagination, and his feelings of empathy which combine toward a higher purpose. When he experiences empathy, he is finally projecting outward, away from the self, and the experience is not only intense, but liberating (from the prison of one’s mind). Liberation does not come from an endless self-reference, a self-denying and unsatisfying purely mechanistic view, or even the imagination alone; these are all elements that, while necessary, are meant to lead to something greater. This something greater Yorick calls the “great SENSORIUM of the world” (Sterne, p. 117). Today we might call this any number of things, such as the Universe, the collective mind, the infinite, or the light. It is generally that which is “beyond myself” and typifies an interconnectedness of all things (Sterne, p. 117).

From here on, it would appear that Yorick is on a sort of roll of ecstatic bliss that is comical and, in a sense, dubious. He is clearly romanticizing the peasantry from a bourgeoisie point of view during “The Supper” and one can interpret this scene as Sterne’s own gentle reminder that, yet again, perceptions are not trustworthy, tainted as they can be with one’s own “state of mind,” biases, and emotional state. The scene may also illustrate how tourists, in their quest for culture and refinement, generally have come to be viewed in the pejorative. Nevertheless, the scene holds intense meaning for Yorick – never mind what the peasants think of him – and this intense meaning (via a previous visceral emotional experience) has a value unique to him. Who are we to say that it is wholly superficial, even if it is transitory? Isn’t this a judgment reserved for God himself, and isn’t this a private conversation between Yorick and God that we just happen to be privy to? “The inflated rhetoric Sterne uses here, however, as well as the utter conventionality of the pastoral vignette that follows, suggest that his tone is as much satirical as celebratory. The element in this passage that survives the satire is the direct link Yorick makes between sense and sentiment, his recognition of the human ability to endow objective phenomena with personal meaning.” (Chadwick, p. 198) The experience is real for Yorick and is beyond our limited judgment, different as we our in our own perceptions, imagination, point of reference, emotions, etcetera.

Thus, Yorick’s search for himself through self-definition (a man of taste, a sensitive traveler) becomes a discovery of God, however short the actual experience. We might assume that Yorick will have other transcendent experiences between his fascination with pulses and blushes, dalliances with chambermaids, fetishes, and off-kilter first impressions. Because spiritual bliss is transitory and difficult to sustain, it would not have been realistic for Sterne to end with “The Grace.” Instead, Yorick’s journey is open-ended and unpredictable, just as his personality is, and the novel ends with an implication that Yorick continues in his idiosyncratic, delicate, mannered sensibility to find connections with others.

REFERENCES:

Battestin, Martin C. “Sterne among the Philosophes: Body and Soul in A Sentimental Journey.” Eighteenth Century Fiction 7(1) (1994): 17-36.

Chadwick, Joseph. “Infinite Jest: Interpretation in Sterne’s A Sentmental Journey.” Eighteen Century Studies 12 (1978-1979): 190-205.

Frank, Judith. “A Man Who Laughs Is Never Dangerous”: Character and Class in Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey. ELH 56(1) (1989): 97-124.

Sterne, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey. New York: Oxford University Press. 1984.

The above essay was written by Patty K., published in www.urgentexplanations.blogspot.com, written in 2004 and posted on August 2, 2014. URL is http://urgentexplanations.blogspot.com/2014/08/laurence-sternes-sentimental-journey.html.

How Tanning Became Popular

Back in the day, in America and various European countries, being light-skinned was valued aesthetically (as opposed to being tan and sun-burnt) because it signified being aristocratic, or at least upper-middle-class. It meant you could afford to be indoors as a true blue-blood/WASP (so white you were almost blue) and did not have to do manual labor outdoors (hence, the derogatory term "redneck.")

The invention of the airplane reversed this. Because in the early days of flight, only the very wealthiest people could afford to fly … which they did frequently as tax exiles seeking tax havens in warmer climates such as the south of France, etc. After many months abroad, these wealthy, once-pale Americans/Europeans returned home and were noticeably tan.

It wasn’t long before being tan signified something else entirely. This was bolstered by the fact that so much of what the wealthy do and experience — play tennis and golf outdoors, sit by the pool drinking margaritas, etc. — causes tanning. By the second half of the 20th century, being tan was an indicator of higher social status and this continues today with tanning salons, etc.

This is how the beauty standard developped in the West. For some reason or other, however, it did not develop this way in many Asian countries, so that in certain Asian countries (South Korea comes to mind), it is still viewed as preferable to be as light-skinned as possible. Asians wanting to be pale has no more to do with wanting to be “white” than White people wanting to be tanned to look “Black.”

It’s a socio-economic perception, not a race thing.