Book Review: Shamela (1741) by Henry Fielding
An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (1741) by Henry Fielding
If getting intimately acquainted with a character who navigates her way through various stages of victimhood – all the while bearing the torch of Virtue - is a tumultuous experience, one might expect her parodied caricature to elicit a more favourable response from the reader. However, such an assumption veers too close to forced optimism, and is, unfortunately, laid to rest when considering the case of Henry Fielding’s Shamela.
Fielding, a novelist struggling to find his own footing in the literary world of the eighteenth century, was known to hold a rivalrous relationship with his close contemporary, Samuel Richardson. At a time when ‘conduct books’ were popular amongst a massive readership, Richardson had forged a revolutionary path by enveloping questionable messages about the female virtue into a tale that was subtle in its moral propagation; Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded – an epistolary novel first published in 1740 – narrated the journey of a timid house-maid from being the servant of a manipulative Master, to eventually becoming his wife. Pamela’s was a story that gained quick fame, in the form of both sympathy and contempt. Henry Fielding happened to favour the latter, and eventually externalized the extremity of his emotions – under the pseudonym ‘Conney Keyber’- through his 1741 novel, An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews.
Fielding’s Shamela, while considerably shorter than its inspiration, too, eventually attained a literary merit that places it amongst some of the most remarkable works of the eighteenth century. While most parodies are brushed aside as cheap imitations that do not merit literary critique, Fielding’s creative endeavor to dissect an existing work with biting scorn must not be discredited. Although a parody at heart, Shamela does not lack the underlined meanings of an original, and may thus be viewed as a thoughtful piece of fiction that struggles to stand on its own and deliver its own brand of intelligent social critique.
The method employed by Fielding to satirize a work is remarkable in its originality. The basic premise of the novel acknowledges the existence of Pamela as a novel, and hence operates within the “real” world. The entirety of Fielding’s novel is enveloped within an exchange of correspondence between two of Fielding’s original characters, Parson Oliver and Parson Tickletext. Following a series of exaggerated praises for Pamela by Mr. Oliver - ones that echo the author’s ridicule for the real mainstream response towards Richardson’s work – Mr. Tickletext takes on the authorial task of refuting Pamela’s status through the revelation that the characters of Pamela, in fact, exist as real persons, and Richardson’s book is a mere bastardization of real-life events occurring in the life of a maid called Shamela. This is followed by the revelation of the “real” letters exchanged between Shamela and her mother, Henrietta, and these letters make up the meat of Fielding’s Shamela. This ingenious narrative method is further embellished through the insertion of other epistolary exchanges within Shamela and Henrietta’s correspondence, effectively creating a structure of letters-within-letters-within-letters. Towards the end of Shamela, it is also implied that Pamela the novel is one that was commissioned by the real Mr. B and Shamela herself. The impressive use of this stylistic format alone deems Fielding worthy of admiration.
In terms of content, the story Fielding wishes to share is that of Shamela – a maid who effectively lives as a prostitute, yet lives under the guise of a virtuous young maiden by the name of Pamela. The Pamela she pretends to be – as seen in multiples instances where she “feigns” her actions and reactions – is the one Richardson created as real, and in presenting this very contrast Fielding attempts to lay bare the extent to which Richardson’s character is too one dimensional. Of immense note here is the fact that in the instances where Shamela poses as the virtuous Pamela, her actions are not one bit exaggerated. In the moments where Shamela swoons, freezes or faints, she perfectly encapsulates the realness of Pamela, and only the difference in narrative voice between Pamela and Shamela marks one as authentic – albeit quite unbelievably so, at times – and one as obviously deceptive. To all those readers that shook their heads while reading Pamela and frustratingly muttered “Is this woman even real?” under their breaths, Fielding effectively answers that No, she is absolutely not.
Such a claim against a character like Pamela’s, however, is a harsh one. While Fielding’s criticism of Pamela’s self-victimization is valid in one manner – especially with regard to her ultimate, willing submission to her abuser- it is reductive in its oversimplification of Pamela’s character. In Richardson’s Pamela, the titular character, despite her timidity, is one who embodies defiance in the face of those who hold her class, gender and sexual position against her. In spite of being robbed of her agency by forces external to herself, Pamela continues to build her defenses using her body as a shield, and her pen as a mouthpiece. Fielding’s caricature of Pamela lacks the nuances of the original, and instead operates on the basis of a virgin-whore dichotomy. If Pamela cannot be the pure, virtuous maiden Richardson constructed her to be, she must be a cunning seductress who simply cannot contain her sexuality, and can only possibly resort to vice and adultery in order to take ownership of herself. It must, thus, be ascertained that while Fielding employs humor to make light of the ridiculous situations the original Pamela find herself in, he does not make attempts to make his rendition any more likeable.
Fielding’s characterization of Mr. B – or Mr. Booby, as known in his version – has scarcely any function other than to subvert the power dynamics of the original story. However, it must be noted that Mr. B is in no way rid of his original offences, and is simply victimized through the portrayal of his shallow wit; Shamela may be an unfaithful partner, but Mr. B is still an abuser. Fielding’s attempts to soften his character may hence be subject to criticism. Similarly, the inflation of Rev. William’s character into an active agent of sin and hypocrisy may be read as more of a plot device to deepen the “fall” of Pamela, than to simply reveal the corruption of the Church and its representatives, as many critics believe. However, certain truth is contained in Parson William’s claim that “people very often call things Goodness that are not so” – this may be inferred as pointed criticism by Fielding of the vaguely defined binaries of vice and virtue propagated by Richardson’s Pamela.
Shamela, all in all, very much attempts to be an “antidote” to the “poison” Fielding ascertains Richardson’s work to be, but is in ways perhaps as hard to swallow as the original. Crisp in its writing, and sometimes as ludicrous in its humor as Pamela is in its seriousness, Shamela makes for an amusing read infused with latent social critique. Whilst various interpreters may take away different opinions from this work regarding the social notions of honour and virtue, one irrefutable lesson seems to shine through quite effectively: if you loathe any work of art intensely enough, there are always ways to capitalize on it whilst single-handedly strengthening the merits of a new literary genre.
