Oh brave new world, that has such Wretches in't!

And here cometh Pamela, in all her unparalleled virtue. Pamela who has the strength to overcome all. Pamela who remains constant in her devotion to her honor. Pamela, who seems to float above the world—

Well, in a way. Maybe. Because while she begins the novel on almost a cloud of her own, fully trusting and blinded to the harder realities before her eyes, Pamela is eventually forced to recognize the world and its wickedness. And as soon as she has seen the world’s uglier face, she must reorder her notions of innocence and change tactics in order to safeguard her virtue.

Through the opening sections of the novel, Pamela appears naïve indeed, unable to think ill of the world. In a vague sense she almost resembles The Tempest’s Miranda (this is not to claim any direct link between the two, but there seems an interesting connection in their seeming purity and confrontation with humanity; not overwhelming, but something that came to mind). Consider Miranda’s response upon first seeing the gaggle of treacherous men who have—courtesy of her truly not-so-sainted father—been wrecked and washed ashore. Having lived long from the sight of men, Miranda is awed by their appearance: “How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! Oh, brave new world / That has such people in it!” (5.1.184-6) After what we have seen and heard throughout the play—the tale of Prospero’s exile, Sebastian and Antonio’s plot to murder the king, and so forth—this impression may strike as rather misplaced. But Miranda has known nothing beyond the island and her father’s close care. She (and perhaps, to some extent, Ferdinand) is an innocent voice among those sullied by experience.

So too Pamela, when we first encounter her voice. Having for so long believed in virtue alone, protected by her parents and then by her kind Lady, she cannot initially (or even for quite some time) recognize vice or ill-intent, thinking the best of all people and situations. Thus, through the early sections of the novel, Pamela speaks in a voice blithe as Miranda’s, her mind shedding a positive light on all actions, her trust ever-strong. (As a side note, while we’re talking about over-trusting characters, we might just give a nod back to Oroonoko….)

While we see Miranda first encounter humanity, period, Pamela has seen and lived among others before the novel’s opening. Her awakening is to something a bit more particular: Pamela runs headlong into the wicked face of humanity. Recognition comes slowly at first, punctuated by ravish-attempts and betrayals until she is prodded into suspicion and sees that not all motives are pure, and that many people are not to be trusted. The world is no longer so beauteous or brave as she once thought, its people are scarcely laudable, and the awakened Pamela cries, “O the Deceitfulness of the Heart of Man!” (120).

Indeed, by the time she finds herself spirited away to the care of Mrs. Jewkes, Pamela seems quite attuned to deception and begins both to suspect plots and create schemes of her own (all in the name of virtue, of course, but are such schemes ever held laudable?). Perhaps she must don some of its trickery, for while innocence may live long on an island, even the chastest Pamela cannot retain full purity of thought when acting in the world. And, who can say, perhaps a similar discovery awaits Miranda.

Pamela’s introduction to the world shakes some of her innocence, and allows her to recognize the particular blindness in others. This becomes particularly clear through her observations of Williams*, as in noting, “his honest Heart could keep nothing, believing every one as undesigning as himself” (155). A fair observation, and one that might—a hundred pages or so earlier—have suited Pamela herself, non? By the time of her captivity, she has come to recognize what it is to be naïve, and of how poorly naïveté serves in the world.

A few final remarks for the time being. First, virtuous as Pamela may be, it seems a bit of a self-focused virtue, n’est pas vrai? To give another glance at Williams’ case, it seems that Pamela values the man chiefly so far as he might prove useful to her. After writing that Williams has been arrested, she notes, “So there is an End of all my Hopes in him” (167). She is not without pity—calling him in the following sentences a “Poor Gentleman” and noting that “both” of them have been “ruin’d”—but seems less concerned for the man that over the ways in which he has further complicated her life. Perhaps an all-too-human attitude, but is this self-focus a particular virtue? Pamela certainly does seem concerned with herself, with her trials as the most sorrowful, with “me” and “my” and personal terms swelling the pages.

Of course, this may be a hard way to treat Pamela, who after all does generally save some consideration for those around, and who wishes to make her parents proud. She lives in a slippery world governed by unknown rules, and has little guidance on which to act. Then, too, it may be that in a corrupt world, an individual can be virtuous only through such inward-turning concentration. No one else is going to save Pamela, after all; in order to maintain virtue, she must tend first and foremost to herself.

But. What has she given up in entering this not-so-brave (but more, shall we say, real, or commonly observed) new world? What does it mean to give up total trust? And what does it mean that whole-hearted trust tends to be considered foolish? Questions, questions, and more questions in a not-so-shining world.


*Feel I should note that Pamela does evince further and less self-focused concern for Williams later in the novel. This doesn't necessarily much lessen the effect of the observations noted here, but she does come to see his case in something more like, shall we say, its own light.



Works Cited
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela. Ed. Thomas Keymour and Alice Wakely. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.
Shakespeare, William. "The Tempest." The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 5th ed. Ed. David Bevington. New York: Pearson Education, 2004. 1570-1603.