VIRTUE REWARDED
Prose fiction up to this time had dealt for the most part with men; its
most popular variety was the “picaresque,” telling the adventures of
vagabonds and rascals. But now in this bourgeois England the fiction
writer settles down, and becomes respectable, and discovers the theme
which is to occupy him for the next two hundred years--the feminine
heart, and what goes on in it during the mating season.
Watch the gentleman-turkey, stirred by erotic excitement; he struts up
and down, swells out his comb, spreads his feathers, scrapes the ground
with his stiff wings. And there stands the humble and retiring
lady-turkey, observing him with modest but attentive eye; she takes a
step or two away, but does not run far. What is going on in her mind?
What does she think of the blood-flushed comb and the spread feathers,
the heroic pose and the awe-inspiring gobble? We are not permitted to
enter into the psychology of a lady-turkey; but through the magic of
fiction we are permitted to watch the mind of the lady-human, and note
every detail of the process whereby she gets her mate. We share her
emotions, we analyze the devices she employs--and thus, if we belong to
her sex, we perfect our technique, or, if we belong to the male sex, we
learn how to write novels.
In this bourgeois world, the emotions of mating are dominated by those
of money. Society has become settled, property relations are fixed, and
you live a routine life, without great change or adventure--except once,
which is at this mating period. Here is your great chance to rise above
your own class in a world of money classification. A beautiful and
charming maiden may catch the eye of some wealthy man; a handsome,
dashing youth may stumble upon an heiress. Such is the significance of
the heavenly smiles and the coy glances of bourgeois romance. Cupid
travels about, armed with a golden arrow, and in the love-glints from
the eyes of youth and beauty we see fortunes flying to and fro--diamonds
and rubies, manor-houses, estates, orders and offices, titles to
nobility. And always in the background sit the chaperons, keeping
watch--old women, whose function it is to know the grim facts of greed,
and to pass on such “worldly wisdom” to the young.
The first old woman to take up this task in English fiction was Samuel
Richardson. He himself was a hero for any bourgeois novel--a printer who
had married his master’s daughter, and become publisher to the king. He
knew what money costs, and believed in it with all his heart and soul;
in his mature years he set out to warn young women of the value of their
virtue, and point out to them the importance of a life contract in love.
He wrote a novel called “Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded,” telling the story
of an innocent fifteen-year-old servant girl in the household of a great
gentleman who makes love to her. In a series of letters to her parents
she exposes to us the details of this love-making, and all her
bewilderments, agonies and fears.
Pamela Andrews is the very soul of humility; but young as she is, she
knows the business facts concerning the life contract--“with all my
worldly goods I thee endow.” She knows that her master is a rake and
scoundrel--he gives her in the course of the story all possible evidence
of that; nevertheless, she stands firm, and in the end her virtue is
rewarded--by marriage with this rake and scoundrel. If that seems to you
a strange reward of virtue, it will be only because you do not
understand this eighteenth century world. What a man is personally
counts for little compared with the class he belongs to. He is a
gentleman, he owns houses and lands, and Pamela’s children will be
ladies and gentlemen, and will own houses and lands. This novel became
the sensation of the day, not merely in England, but all over Europe.
There were two large volumes, and a sequel with two more, but no one was
bored; great ladies sat up half the night, weeping their eyes red over
Pamela’s trials, and welcoming her--in imagination--into the class of
ladies. The writers learned how to make money, and a new profession,
that of the love-describers, came into being.