History Notes: Dissenters and Atheists in the Eighteenth Century

Non-Conformists

In 1700s England/Britain (the terms were often conflated), religious conflicts were less between Protestants and Catholics and more between established Protestants--Anglicans--and Dissenters/Non-conformists, i.e. Puritans and Evangelicals.

Pamela from Richardson's Pamela is a non-conformist in spirit although she attends/supports the Anglican Church. Her religious feelings/convictions are crucial to the story since they motivate her continual resistance of Mr. B. She does not resist him because she is revolted by sex or afraid of disobeying her parish priest. She resists him because she believes that her status before God is not contingent on her status as a servant. Her master may appoint clergymen; that doesn't give him rights to her soul.

In my novel Mr. B Speaks! Pamela's gainsayers entirely fail to understand the nature and reality of her religious attitudes, falling back instead on cliches about "religious people"; I based these scenes on my own experience in  academe. Academic critics quite often fail to appreciate non-political/non-sociological factors in general, resulting in the rather bizarre black-hole that dogs much literary criticism.

William Wilberforce

Aristocratic gainsayers of Richardson's novel at the time felt the same way. During the 1700s, becoming an Evangelical or Dissenter or Methodist was most common amongst the rising merchant class. In response, the wealthy intelligentsia/upper-classes considered so much religious enthusiasm rather crass and embarrassing. When William Wilberforce converted to evangelicalism in the 1780s, he was (initially) extremely careful not to make his interests widely known and even wondered if a Parliamentary career was out of the question. He was convinced by friends that he would do more good in Parliament than out of it, and of course, he was hugely instrumental in the abolition of the slave-trade by British merchants.

As a member of the wealthy upper-class--though not the intelligentsia--Mr. B has little interest in personal conversion (at least in the first book). However, he would not have endorsed atheism. Although atheism was bandied about eighteenth century English literary circles, belief in the supernatural was too strong for atheism to have any lasting impact. (I am referring specifically to atheism as the deliberate proposal that there is no god or gods rather than as a challenge to orthodoxy/state religion; the second was common in the eighteenth century while the first was practically unheard of; the term "atheist" was sometimes applied to both positions.) The average intellectual was more likely to be a deist than an atheist. It would take another 100 years for atheism to become "cool."

Sir Humphrey laying down the

unwritten rules of society.

In general, Mr. B's attitude can be summed up by a quote from BBC's Yes, Prime Minister. When funds to the arts are challenged, Sir Humphrey is scandalized. When Bernard points out that nobody actually listens to government-funded radio, Sir Humphrey replies, "Well, neither do I! But it's vital to know that it's there!"

This pretty much encapsulates the eighteenth-century, upper-class attitude towards the Church of England: "I may not believe or go or care, but it's vital to know that it's there! (Now please stop harping on and on about it.)"

Girls in School in the Eighteenth Century

In the 19th installment of Mr. B Speaks! Mr. B discusses visiting his natural daughter at her school.

Mr. B's daughter, Sally, is about six years old which, from a modern viewpoint, seems rather young to be away at school. Remember, Three Men and a Little Lady, where Tom Selleck rescues his soon-to-be-stepdaughter from being packed off to boarding school? The idea of sending a child under twelve away from home for weeks at a time is uncomfortable to modern sensibilities. (Though after age twelve, parents often start hunting up ways and means to send the child into someone else's care for a time!)

Pamela actually never does this with her children; in fact, not all middle-class parents did (middle-class families and members of the gentry were more likely to use an outside school system than aristocratic families who would have governesses/tutors). Like teen marriage, sending small children off to school--while openly debated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--bore no stigma. Jane Austen was sent to school at age 8 and later at age 10 to the Reading Ladies' Boarding School (see below). In her book Jane Austen: A Life, Claire Tomlin makes a strong Freudian argument that these events, combined with Jane being nursed outside the home for the first eighteen months of her life, weakened the bond between mother and child.

The Reading Ladies Boarding School was situated IN the gateway

The current Abbey School for girls refers to this landmark.

Check out this wonderful site about places in Jane Austen's life:

A Jane Austen Gazetteer.

While Jane and her mother didn't have the closest of relationships, Mrs. Austen would not have been criticized for sending her daughter away from home, and Jane herself seems to have accepted her treatment as within the norm (the number of writers whose great works might never have been if they'd ever received solid therapy is truly staggering).

Likewise, Mr. B and Lady Davers (who is the child's legal guardian at this point in the narrative) would never be criticized for sending a 6-year-old to boarding school, especially since Mr. B has gone out of his way to ensure that the school is a good one.  Just like schools and day-cares today,  girls' (and boys') schools ran the gamut from Jane Eyre's dreary life at Lowood to, well, Sally Godwin's stay with a pleasant woman who takes her girls on outings to the local farmhouse for a good breakfast and a fun romp around the grounds.

The Woman's House

In the 18th installment of Mr. B Speaks! Pamela and Mr. B's sister battle over the family home. Until Mr. B married, his sister would have acted as his hostess, especially at the family home. However, once Mr. B married, his wife gained precedence. Although not a "lady" like Lady Danvers, Pamela will now rule her husband's home.

This issue of power and precedence did not occur just in upper-class households. Although it is now customary to picture all women of the past as house-bound, put-upon, dominated, one-dimensional housewives, the truth is that housewifery has a long and noble pedigree filled with strong, independent-minded women. In medieval England, and early colonial life, the housewife was part of the daily operation of the farm/business since the house WAS the farm/business. Many of these housewives--specifically housewives of traders--managed the family business while their husbands were away.

An updated pantry--but note the door.

In a house as large as Mr. B's, the pantry

would be kept locked. Can't have

servants sneaking food!

Not only did the housewife help run the business, she held the keys to the larder and pantry. In Ellis Peters' novel The Sanctuary Sparrow, there is a power struggle between the spinster sister--who has held the keys to the larder for years--and the new bride who wants the responsibility and the power that comes with the keys; just like Pamela, the new bride ultimately wins. (Though Pamela will share the literal "keys" with the butler and housekeeper.)

This power-struggle may seem petty until one watches shows like Big Brother and realizes that control over the refrigerator is not only a lot of control but arouses fairly primitive emotions in the human breast.

This power dynamic would alter in the 19th century when businesses left the household (people went to work)--it is not that the household became less important in terms of necessary services but, rather, that the seat of power changed. People like Harriet Beecher Stowe tried desperately to revitalize the concept of the noble housewife by basically inventing Martha Stewart (and causing far more work to an entire generation of housewives than is actually necessary). But the concept of the housewife as power-base languished for many years.

It has revitalized in the 21st century, mostly because we now live in a society where service ain't cheap. Back in Pamela (and Jane Austen)'s day, and even up through the early 20th century, being a servant (nanny, governess, maid, cook, accountant)* was . . . there's no modern equivalent. People at McDonald's and migrant workers earn more money. And this lack of pay extended beyond servants. It is easy to get ecstatic about the "quality of work in the past" when you ignored that a carpenter of the past would be producing work that now-a-days would earn that carpenter several thousand dollars, not a few pennies.

*As Mr. B's wife, Pamela does not cook or clean. Instead, she supervises several dozen servants who cook and clean. She does keep the household accounts. And she spends a large amount of her time administering and supervising various charities, including a school and the equivalent of a health clinic. Taken altogether, Pamela is the equivalent of an administrative manager.

Being Pamela, she also wants to raise her own kids. So she keeps herself busy.

Dining Eighteenth-Century Style

Eighteenth-century novels are full of visits and dining amongst the gentry. For those of us who still have trouble distinguishing supper from dinner, it is helpful to note that the full meal of the day--dinner--would have been served in the mid-afternoon. A much lighter repast would have been served much later in the evening.

In the 17th installment of Mr. B Speaks! Pamela arrives late to dinner with the Darnfords. "Dinner" involved more than just the meal, however. It was meant to be a full-day affair. Pamela's schedule for that day would go something like this:

Learn more about English dinners at

the Maxwell House website.

11:00--Leave home
12:00--Arrive at Darnfords
2:00--Eat dinner
Afternoon--Discussion and walks
Evening--Cards
9:00--Supper
10:00--Dancing
11:00--Leave for home

This type of schedule would change in the nineteenth schedule as dinner moved later, to 5:00 or 6:00, leading to the introduction of "luncheon" at noon.

Because Pamela is trapped at home by Mr. B's sister, her new schedule becomes as follows:

11:00--Prepares to leave, sister arrives
5:00--Escapes
6:00--Arrives at Darnfords
7:00--Cards
8:00--Early supper for Pamela's benefit
9:00--Dancing
11:00--Leave for home

Both meals--dinner and supper--would have included mostly meat, soup, pudding, wine, possibly a vegetable, likely no fruit. From a modern perspective--despite Dr. Atkins--this is a rather appalling diet, explaining why the "master" in Manor House tried to get the resident chef to cook meals more in line with a late-twentieth-century diet than a still-meat-heavy late-nineteenth-century diet. The chef was rather annoyed at the lack of historical accuracy. But hey, a person's digestive system is a person's digestive system.

What Did They Know About Babies?

In the 15th installment of Mr. B Speaks! Mr. B reluctantly admits that Pamela had to get married without the-night-before-the-wedding "talk" with her mother. Instead this talk is provided by the loud, crass, somewhat obnoxious Mrs. Jewkes.

A wonderful Victorian postcard from Wikipedia,

depicting an aggressive form of birth control.

Since Pamela is a country-bred girl, she wouldn't be completely unprepared for the concept of sexual congress though she did spend her teen years in a more sheltered environment than that experienced by lower-class women of the time. Still, this was not yet the age of Victoria; in even upper-class houses, close living would make ignorance of bodily functions a complete impossibility.

As I mention in a far earlier post, even for Jane Austen (who was perceived as embarrassingly earthly by her refined nieces and nephews), the acts of the flesh would have been commonalities of life. In comparison, our modern era often delivers a bizarre combination of prudish prurient permissiveness whereby a partially clad body is instantly sexualized by those who take offense and by those who take an interest while both the offended and the interested are scandalized at the idea of having to share a bedroom or bathroom.

But what would Pamela know about how babies are made?

The equating of sex with conception happened as early as the Bible: just think of all those "begats." What exactly happened at the point of conception was not understand fully until the 19th century. One idea put forward by scientists in the 1700s was that the male or female carried the preformed baby (homunculus) within either the sperm or the egg; the sexual act triggered the baby's growth. The idea of shared traits/genetic material is a relatively recent development. (Mendel's pea experiments took place in the mid-1800s.)

Whatever the prevailing theories, Pamela would have been as prepared and unprepared as new, blushing, virginal brides have ever been with the caveat (considering her time period and personality) that she would have been somewhat less coy than her blushing creator, Samuel Richardson.

Easter in the Eighteenth Century

Like many holidays in the post-Reformation world, Easter in England in the 1700s became more an excuse for festive wildness than an incentive for religious devotion.

The Medieval Catholic Church supplied pageantry and ritual coupled with religious devotion. The Protestant Reformation did away with much of the ritual. Protestants leaders like Henry VIII wanted to keep in the ritual (he just wanted to remove the pope from the equation). However, Henry VIII--however unwillingly--opened the door to the purer form of Protestantism that wanted to replace ritual entirely with individual testimony/scripture reading (Henry VIII did find it useful to detest ritual whenever it meant he could relieve churches of their belongings).

However, the rituals didn't vanish. In the absence of state-sanctioned ritual, many churchgoers simple retreated to or continued on with older folkloric customs, which customs had never really gone away in any case. 

Christmas underwent such a transformation, which is why the Puritans in America didn't celebrate it (or other ritualized celebrations). The American Christmas is the result of comparatively "new" traditions though even today, English Christmases tend to be far more, uh, worldly than so-called commercial American Christmases. To understand an English Christmas, think Thanksgiving plus Halloween plus the aftermath of a football game when the home-team won. The Christmas story is in there somewhere.

Post-Reformation Easters weren't all that dissimilar--in fact, most festivals in 1700s England could be described as "excuses to harass the neighbors and drink." (Making it more and more understandable why the Puritans were so un-enthused about bringing over these traditions.)

There was a particular Easter tradition called peace-egging which is basically trick-or-treating--for eggs! The eggs were sometimes dyed. Sometimes, the trick-or-treaters would sing. There could possibly be a connection here to "egging" a house without treats on Halloween! And a possible connection to caroling. My guess is that certain traditions simply lend themselves to being used . . . no matter what the occasion!

The picture is teenage me with an egg tree, a tradition that my mom started (or continued) in our family. She would cut a bare bush or tree limb in early spring (often as the result of pruning). We would then hang blown, dyed eggs from the limb. I don't know if there is a pagan/folklore connection. To me, the egg tree simply always meant "Easter"! At one point, when I was working at a business that wouldn't allow any religious decorations, I brought in my own egg tree. Another woman, also a Christian, brought in a palm branch. There's something to be said for symbolism that flies completely under the radar because nobody gets it but the people who produced it. (Though it could also say something sad about the gap in American education.)

Bribery as a Way of Eighteenth Century Life

In the twelfth installment of Mr. B Speaks! a desperate Mr. B suggests bribing the judge to decide in his and Pamela's favor.

Not his finest moment, perhaps, but bribery was a way of life in the eighteenth century. What we call corruption, eighteenth-century politicians, magistrates, and average citizens called everyday business.

Your average politician would be expected to bring wads of cash and trinkets to any political rally. Bail money was paid directly into magistrates' pockets. Military officers had to purchase commissions, paying anywhere up to several thousand pounds. (When Darcy pays off Wickham at the end of Pride & Prejudice, part of the pay-off includes a better commission than the one Wickham purchased with his inheritance, something the profligate Wickham can't afford on his own.)

Imagine if the next time you went to an interview, you were expected to bring along your checkbook as well; you'd pay a little money to the interviewer, a little to the head of human resources, and a great deal of money to the company. These wouldn't be bribes; they would be "fees." (Oh, wait, I think I just describe unions.)

The British officers on the hills watched the slaughter

but couldn't stop it.

Such an approach naturally destroys merit-based pay. And military commissions caused major problems in the British army as rank and file military officers--many of whom had been in the military all their lives--saw incompetent, vain upper-class peacocks take positions that should have gone to more experienced men. The ridiculous (but brave) man who led the Charge of the Light Brigade was such a peacock, the sad thing being that not only the rank & file but many of the commissioned officers knew he was a petty-minded bully: he actually underwent a court-martial before the Crimean War and was dismissed from the military. But class nepotism overrode good sense, and he got back in. And the peacock didn't even die (at the time).

Getting Sick in the Eighteenth Century

One of the first London hospitals:

Westminster Hospital. This is the newer

building, built 1834.

In the 11th installment of Mr. B Speaks!, Mr. B suffers from a brief illness. Although this illness is largely metaphorical (it lasts almost exactly as long as Pamela is gone), it would have caused concern in an eighteenth century household.

Modern, Western youth has almost no idea how far medicine has progressed in the last oh, forty years--let alone 300. Medicine is one thing that has continually improved--in fits and starts--throughout history. Governments rise and fall. Human nature remains as recognizable as it was to Shakespeare. But the knowledge of the human body has steadily improved from ancient times to now.

So much so that the lack of "basics" is hard to conceive. In Connie Willis's Doomsday Book, when the boy Colin shows up in medieval England to rescue the heroine Kivrin, he says (paraphrasing), "I brought aspirin. I figured they wouldn't have penicillin yet, but they would surely have aspirin."

No--no aspirin, Colin.

And no aspirin by the eighteenth century. Also no aesthetic. This was in a world filled with toothache, cancer, and influenza plus diseases caused by poor hygiene--typhus, puerperal (childbed) fever and--due to malnutrition--scurvy.

There were some hospitals but they weren't terrible effective. Hospitals were mostly just holding areas for the ill poor, including servants. Some hospitals focused on smallpox inoculations. Generally, however, you were better off staying home.

After all, the most a hospital could do was give you a place to die. There were few real remedies. The popular technique of bloodletting was entirely useless. Lethal "remedies," such as mercury, were used to combat venereal diseases. As mentioned above, inoculations did begin in the early 1700s, but unlike alarmists' claims today, these inoculations really would as likely kill as save you. (Inoculations improved rapidly over the next 100 years--to good purpose since a disease like smallpox could decimate a population. In the Americas, such diseases wiped out nearly 90% of the Native American population.)

There were some useful folk/home remedies, such as quinine and foxglove, but not nearly as many as the lovers of natural medicine would like to believe. Let's face it: before pharmaceutical companies, life was a lot more painful and a lot less safe.

Criminal Acts Against Women in the Eighteenth Century

The Rape of the Lock (1712) by
Alexander Pope is a satire whose

focus is the capture (cutting)

of a woman's lock of hair;

this, naturally, represents

an ambush of the woman's virtue.

In the ninth installment of Mr. B Speaks! Mr. B must address the notorious bedroom scene at the center of Pamela, namely the scene where he attempts--or tries to attempt--to rape Pamela.
Rape was a crime in the eighteenth century.* Even within marriage, a woman could argue cruelty--though the case would often be brought by her father or other male relative.

In addition, there were multiple social practices aimed at protecting women, specifically young, unmarried women, from the possibility of rape. In Pride & Prejudice, Darcy shows a remarkable lack of responsibility when he fails to inform his neighbors of Wickham's true character. From a modern point of view, Darcy simply seems to be exercising his privacy. From an eighteenth/nineteenth century point-of-view, word-of-mouth warnings were the best defense parents had against untrustworthy/dangerous men. In general, young women were warned to stay away from cads and bounders, and some social pressure would be exerted to prevent compromised young women from being abandoned.

Ostensibly, these defenses were to prevent young women being seduced (and once seduced, from further social stigma). However, the correlation of seduction with rape was much closer in Richardson's world than in contemporary culture (in which rape is correctly perceived more as an exercise of power than of charm). "Seduction" had a far more rapacious, negative connotation for Richardson's contemporaries. And the word "rape" carried far less political baggage. (When I was an undergrad, our English Department put on a spoof of the spoof The Rape of the Lock. An on-campus women's group complained about the use of the word "rape" in our posters. Hey, it's Alexander Pope--take it up with him!)

Without justifying Mr. B, it is useful to remember that he would have no training in the concept that one stops seducing when a woman balks, not even one just going on sixteen. It is also useful to remember that Mr. B, in keeping with every other male of his class, would consider female servants willing sexual partners ipso facto they were servants; Pamela's objections in Bedfordshire would appear like empty protestations, attempts to "increase the price" (as double proof, this is exactly how writers like Fielding interpreted Pamela's actions). With Pamela's forced remove to Lincolnshire, Richardson created the equivalent of a locked-door mystery for his characters since they are both locked into social roles that seem completely incompatible.

Before I analyze Richardson's solution to this "locked door mystery," I should note that despite the lack of legal protections for woman, the eighteenth century produced good marriages with as much variety as any you will find today. Marriages of affection, marriages between friends, marriages where the wife calls the shots are not exclusive to the twentieth/twenty-first centuries! Check out Antonia Fraser's excellent The Weaker Vessel for an exploration of the variety and strength of many seventeenth-century English marriages. (Among other claims, Fraser maintains that people of the past loved their children as much as we do now, despite the number of infant mortalities.)

Pamela Fainting by Joseph Highmore, 1743

As to Richardson's solution:

From a literary point of view, the near-rape scene is enormously important in re-establishing Pamela and Mr. B's relationship. It is not until this crisis has been passed that Mr. B begins to believe Pamela's words, culminating in his reading--and appreciating--her letters. At the risk of overreaching, Pamela's death-swoon is also necessary to her advancement as a heroine: all good mythic heroes and heroines must descend into death/hell/cross-the-threshold before their lives can truly change.

And yes, Richardson's probably intended the symbolism, but it is unlikely he intended much more than that, so that's as far as I'm going to take that literary analysis! (Except to say that I prefer Richardson giving his heroine a death-swoon BEFORE she is raped--and subsequently keeping her alive--than killing off his heroine AFTER she is raped, i.e. Clarissa. Working through the problem is so much more interesting than collapsing beneath it!)

*London saw six rape trials in 1730 (one guilty verdict). This is in a city whose population had reached 630,000 with a high-risk female population (poor women and prostitutes unprotected by family and social standing) in the area of 50,000 (see Dan Cruickshank's London's Sinful Secret: The Bawdy Histoy and Very Public Passions of London's Georgian Age).

Read All About It! The News in the Eighteenth Century

In the eighth installment of Mr. B Speaks!, Mr. B dismisses newspapers as "scandal sheets."

This is a tad extreme. Although the celebrated Times would not make its appearance in London until the late 1700's, the eighteenth century was awash with newspapers of all sorts, including a stunning number of local/county newspapers.

These papers were read by people from a wide range of economic/social backgrounds for a wide range of purposes. As depicted in the below picture, even if only a few people in a community could read, others would supply the lack; as late as 1870, Dickens would go hoarse reciting his celebrated A Christmas Carol to spellbound audiences (as Dr. Who lovingly and chillingly depicts in the episode "The Unquiet Dead").

Despite the occasional die-hard academic who insists that reading has always been an aspect of upper-class/intelligentsia behavior (whilst carefully and condescendingly shunting verbal storytelling into the so-called pure bubble of "folk culture"), the printed word has always impacted all classes, and all classes--since the beginning of time--have willingly spent a disproportionate amount of money on the pursuit of "media-sponsored" entertainment. (Using economic standard-of-living models to determine out how much people in the past spent on theater or concert tickets is an exercise in futility.)

Mr. B is correct, however, in that many eighteenth century newspapers, or scandal sheets, printed scurrilous, salacious, scandalous news based on rumor, innuendo, and raunchy details.

Yes, People magazine and Internet news has always been with us.

Seriously, if you think political ads and editorials are bad now-a-days, take a look at the press, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the 1700s. Wow! Talk about libelous!!

To Be a Mistress or Not to Be a Mistress in the 18th Century

The 7th installment of Mr. B Speaks! refers to Mr. B's proposal that Pamela become his mistress.

The outspoken and clever Catherine Sedley,

mistress to James II, survived Queenly jealousy

& courtly intrigues with her wits and spirit intact.

If a woman could get a good deal (namely a wealthy and generous patron), becoming a mistress in the 17th and 18th centuries offered almost as much (temporary) financial security as becoming a wife and, in the case of royal mistresses, a rise in status.

The children would be illegitimate (although some noble personages had their bastards declared legitimate--or their legitimate children declared illegitimate if you count Henry VIII). Plus the mistress would not have the support of reputable society.* A mistress who incurred the wrath of court officials would have no protection from their maneuverings.

As Mr. B's mistress, Pamela would have suffered far more than a royal mistress. Her status would have risen, but she would never have been accepted by Mr. B's peers, and he would never have acknowledged their children as legitimate. Moreover, his "contract" with her would have no legal status; unless she could establish  a group of (male) followers who might act on her behalf, she would not be able to pressure Mr. B to honor his agreement.

However, if she were shrewd and saved her pennies, she could enjoy a lifestyle unencumbered by want until she died--even if (when) Mr. B left her. Unfortunately, many mistresses spent money commensurate with their patrons' lifestyles; when discarded, they had to move on to another patron or settle into destitution.

Nevertheless, survival and even success were possible for a mistress as Catherine Sedley's life indicates (keeping in mind that she was already an aristocrat and an heiress when she took on the job).

It all still makes one grateful for Women's Rights.

*Modern society truly doesn't understand the stigma here. In Sayers' detective novels, Harriet Vane agrees to live with a man who claims to believe that marriage is just a piece of paper, yadda yadda yadda. She accepts that she will no longer be received in certain parts of society and even cuts her ties with certain people. She deliberately limits her social life.

Consequently, when the jerk decides he wants to marry her after all, she feels utterly betrayed--she sacrificed her reputation and her opportunities for a "test" rather than a true belief. 

And yet I've spoken to modern readers who don't understand Harriet's reaction at all; they fail to appreciate that a woman living with a man without benefit of marriage in the 1920s was participating in her own self-destruction. Pamela is no idiot; she knows that agreeing to be Mr. B's mistress would cripple her social standing forever.

Fun with Language: the Power of Connotation

The English language is filled with words that have double and triple and quadruple meanings, words that change meanings within a generation, and words that alter their connotations within a few years.

For instance, in the fifth installment of Mr. B Speaks! Mr. B describes lurking in a closet to spy on Pamela. This closet would not be the type of closet we have in our houses today--complete with shelves and clothes on hangers. Rather, as Leslie Quinn will tell the judge later, "A closet was a small room like a breakfast nook. With a door. It often contained books and a desk."

An 18th century prostitute:

what "sauciness" led to in the 18th century.

Another word that reoccurs over and over again in Richardson's Pamela is the word saucy or sauciness--to describe Pamela. In modern parlance, the word means nearly the same thing it did in the 1700s: cheeky, pert, flippant, bold, impudent.

What has changed is the word's connotation--the emotions and images associated with the word. The connotation for saucy in the 18th century were far more negative than it is now.

Changing connotations is an unique, lingual phenomenon that has occurred--in the modern world--with words like handicapped. The word's meaning hasn't changed in the last twenty years; rather, the word has accumulated negative feelings; in an effort to dump the negative feelings, handicapped became special (very briefly) which then became disabled. The problem, of course, is that being handicapped/disabled (and even, frankly, "special") kind of stinks, so the replacement words will continue to accumulate negative emotions, no matter how often they are changed (however, this is less true than it is used to be since there are fewer social stigmas associated with being disabled than there used to be).

Likewise, racism unfortunately exists whether someone is referred to as Negro, black, or African-American. A change in terminology cannot single-handedly effect a change in attitude. 

The introduction of new terms to counteract negative connotations often leads to confusion over the current courteous and/or politically-correct term. As P.J. O'Rourke writes in All the Trouble in the World, regarding a discussion of Huckleberry Finn in a college classroom:

There was a great deal of fumbling with racial terms, among white and nonwhite students both. No one seemed exactly sure whether or when to say "black" or "African-American." How much better if we just called each other by our names.

An interesting example of reverse negative association is "Indian." I was taught in school to say Native American rather than Indian. Now the terms are used interchangeably by Native Americans and non-Native Americans alike. (It does get confusing when one is actually talking about inhabitants of India.)

My own practice is to be polite and call people what they want to be called. (I have black friends who don't like "African-American." After all, I don't refer to myself as "Anglo-Celt-American.") And also to give people a  break when they get confused.

* * *

To return to Pamela: by describing Pamela as saucy, a somewhat loaded adjective, Richardson opened up the door for portrayals of Pamela as a seductive harlot out for all she could get.

Now-a-days, of course, the term has a far more positive, and youthful, connotation: "The little girl was saucy to her mother."

When it came time for me to describe Pamela, I relied on Pamela's explanation of her behavior from Pamela II. In answer to a letter from her sister-in-law, Pamela describes her faults, including her sauciness:

I am naturally of a saucy temper: and with all my appearance of meekness and humility, can resent, and sting too, when I think myself provoked.

What would you expect, she goes on to write, when I have to defend herself against so many detractors?

In other words, Pamela gets provoked and lashes out with witty barbs before she remembers herself/her station and retreats. This is the characterization I utilized, making Pamela neither as flirtatious nor as manipulative as detractors often paint her to be.

I should note that despite (or because of) the word's negative associations in the 1700s, Mr. B enjoys Pamela's sauciness, even when he is exasperated. Whatever society's views, a writer--in this case, Richardson--can make the language work for him: at least, within the confines of the text.

Where are All the Cars? Not Getting Around in the 1700s

A common argument against Pamela's innocence in the book by Samuel Richardson is "If her master Mr. B's advances truly upset her as much as she claims, why doesn't she just leave?"

In the fourth installment of Mr. B Speaks! Mr. B defends Pamela's failure to act by explaining that Pamela didn't have access to transportation. How was she supposed to get home? 

Gentleman with His Horse

This is another difference between us and the world of the pre/early-Industrial Revolution, one so blatant yet so easily bypassed, it rather staggers the mind. So many moderns are hung up on the idea that (1) life in the historical past was simpler; (2) the separation between rich and poor just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

While it is true that the rich now-a-days are richer than the rich of the past, simpler is not automatically better--or fairer. The level of poverty experienced by every-day, supposedly well-off people in the 1700s is incomprehensible to just about everybody in the modern, Westernized world (and yes, I am including people who depend on soup kitchens).

There was no RTP. No buses. No bikes. Pamela couldn't climb on her moped. She couldn't call a taxi. She couldn't get a lift from a friend (not if that friend answered to someone who didn't want her to leave).

And she couldn't just go get herself a horse.

Because horses are unmechanized and bucolic and cute, many moderns (and unfortunately too many historical writers) assume that horses are also easy and cheap to care for.

Not at all.

Horses, then and now, are expensive. Remember poor Jane, sent on a soggy horse ride to visit Bingley's sisters? How her father wasn't sure if the horses were available to take her in the family carriage?

Mr. B and Pamela later go for a
ride in a carriage like this one.

The horses wouldn't be available because letting even one horse sit around in a stable doing nothing was something only an exceptionally wealthy man could afford. Darcy can afford to keep extra horses in his stables at Pemberley, but even Darcy doesn't bring his carriage and horses to Netherfield. He brings his horse, nothing else. Gallivanting around in a carriage is something Darcy keeps for special occasions and emergencies, not for visiting a friend.

Pamela's best hope is to get a ride with a servant--performing an errand for Mr. B on one of Mr. B's horses--or with a farmer. She would still need Mr. B's permission to take advantage of the first option. Regarding the second option, farmers are kind of busy guys. In fact, a truly stunning portion of the book is spent trying to figure out HOW to get hold of transportation (and then pay for it).

Compare that to the 21st century kid who works at McDonald's to pay for his car insurance--because he's got to have a car. Not that I have a problem with this, any more than Eugene--cheap, easy transportation that allows one to MOVE rather than tying one to a parcel of land is the true democracy.

Pamela could walk home, but the pastoral countryside--like horses--was not automatically safe just because it was (also) cute. Circa 1740, London may have been more dangerous; that didn't make the countryside safe. (Romantic imagery promoting the supposedly untouched, peaceful countryside was a few decades in the future.)

Pamela has principles, but she doesn't want to end up raped by a highwayman. Much better to  hold off her master with her wits.

Getting Married in the 18th Century (and Earlier!)

These 18th century ladies,
Lady Georgiana Cavendish,
and Elizabeth Foster Cavendish
both married at 17.

In Installment 2 of Mr. B Speaks! Leslie Quinn--the popular non-fiction writer--comments that 12 was the legal age for marriage in the 18th century.

While this is true--despite the wince it causes--innocent teen girls were not married off to grumpy elderly men (or youthful teen boys to robbing-the-cradle elderly ladies) as often as you might think.

When Elizabeth--or Bess's--husband
died, she moved in with Georgiana and
shared her husband whom she married
after Lady Georgiana's death.

According to G.J. Meyer, during hard agricultural times in the 1500s, merchants and farmers actually married "in their mid-twenties or later." Even amongst the nobility, later marriages were not uncommon. Although Henry VII's mother was married at age 12 and bore Henry VII at age 13, she didn't bear any more children, likely due to complications with Henry VII's birth.

Medievals may have been callous (debatable), but they weren't stupid. If you wanted kids, you waited for maturity to hit. (During the divorce between Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine, those against the divorce argued that Catherine's prior marriage to Arthur, Henry VIII's brother, was never consummated. This is not unlikely: Arthur was sickly and may not have undergone puberty despite Catherine and Arthur both being approximately 15 when they married.)

However, while not condoning marriages to early adolescents (and not all parents of the past did), the denouncement of the act as perverse would have confused anybody up until the 20th century. When middle-age is 35, old-age is 50, and princes are leading armies at 18, getting married at, say, 13 wouldn't seem quite so strange and icky as it does now.

It still wasn't the norm. As suggested above, marriage, at least for the nobility, was as much a political maneuver as a sexual one. Mr. B's sister marries "up" by marrying a lord despite the fact that Mr. B is far wealthier than all the other characters both in Richardson's novel and in my adaptation. For you Pride & Prejudice fans, Darcy is a step up from Elizabeth--whose mother's family comes from trade--and from Bingley--whose father was in trade--but not as far up the scale as someone with a title.

Even without titles, the landed, untitled gentry of the 18th and early 19th centuries considered themselves, justifiably, to be far more powerful and far more respected in their small enclaves than the average aristocrat. This would change by the mid-19th century after which dozens of wealthy Americans would pursue English marriages on behalf of their daughters for titles rather than for land or money. None of them were 13 although Consuelo Vanderbilt was 18 when her mother forced her to marry the 9th Duke of Malborough.

The First English Novel

Mr. B Speaks! begins with Mr. B being pulled out of his novel into the "real" world to be tried for his supposed crimes as a rake.

When he is put on trial, Mr. B has already been married several years; his wife, Pamela, has just given birth to their third child.

We know about Mr. B and Pamela's children from Pamela, Volume II by Samuel Richardson. Pamela, Vol. II; or Pamela's Conduct in High Life details Mr. B and Pamela's life together as a married couple while the first volume, Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded--upon which Mr. B Speaks! is based--details their courtship and first few weeks of marriage. The two books were published approximately a year apart.

Both books were wildly popular in the 18th century although the first book was more popular and lasted longer (think Star Wars IV: A New Hope and Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back). In fact, Pamela I was so popular, it immediately attracted plagiarists hoping to capitalize on the book's fame with a false sequel. That doesn't sound too different from, say, a modern-day writer producing a satire of Pamela for her own enjoyment. The difference is that since copyright laws were close to non-existent in Richardson's day, his plagiarists were under no compulsion to give him nominal credit. (They could even claim to be Richardson, and nobody could do a thing about it.)

Richardson wrote Pamela II partly in response to criticism but mostly to defend himself against these false sequels. Like with Harry Potter fan fiction, many of the ideas in Pamela II had already showed up in the false sequels, and the novel eventually devolves into a series of essays about education. However, Richardson does manage to capture the oddly modern feel of Pamela and Mr. B's relationship in several sequences. (His sequel is also far less melodramatic than the false sequels.)

After Pamela, Richardson went on to write his classic (and currently, better-known) novel Clarissa. Although Wikipedia claims he wrote Clarissa because interest in Pamela was wavering, it would be more accurate to say Richardson wrote Clarissa because he figured out with Pamela what he was trying to do. Clarissa is more novel-like (and much, much longer) than Pamela.

However, Pamela bears the merit of being the first English romance novel and, for many people, the first full English novel, being told from a character's point of view, containing a clear plot structure (rising and falling action) and being its own reward--that is, the story is told for the sake of the story, not to support a travelogue or satire or sermon. Granted, Richardson skirts the line when it comes to the last. Pamela can get rather preachy; it's also a lot of fun!