With the bourgeois novel, as for example those novels by Samuel Richardson, the reader not only
knows perfectly well what he is going to read, but also the reason why he is going to read that kind
of story: “Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded”. Richardson was a printer and, like Defoe, came to write
novels almost by chance: he had been commissioned to write and publish a series of model letters
for uneducated people. From this activity Richardson derived the idea for the plot of “Pamela”
(1740). This is an epistolary novel which uses the interchange of letters between characters to tell
the story: how a virtuous young woman tries to defend her honour against an unscrupulous man
who wants to seduce her “... at last, I saw some reason to be suspicious: for he would look upon
me, whenever he saw me, in such a manner, as showed well: and one day he came to me ... I will
make a gentlewoman of you, if you are obliging, and don’t stand in your own light and so saying,
he put this arm about me, and kissed me” (LETTER XI).
This time the first person narration technique does not leave any chance, the reader cannot
choose but be sympathetic with Pamela. She symbolized the “virtue rewarded”, Richardson’s
main concern was to “promote the cause of religion and virtue”.
