Question 2: Does the apparent greater prevalence of women as readers- and indeed writers- of seventeenth and eighteenth century fiction have an impact upon the way they are represented? If so, how? Discuss in relation to two texts.
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Introduction During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, there was a significant increase in writing and reading of fiction by women. Armstrong argues that the phenomenon was due to ‘women’s domestic experience, especially with respect to sexual desire, love and courtship and marriage, [that was] promoted and was promoted by the novel’ (Hammond and Regan, 2006: 12). Writers, regardless of their sex, noticed the change and took advantage of it: as opposed to the history, the protagonists of the novel have been women as often as they have been men and, the story of the woman trapped in social constraints [becomes] a particularly novelistic subject’ (Nestvold, 2011: np). It became a topic that forms the focus for many novels that have now acquired classic status, such asPride and Prejudice,The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders,Pamela-Virtue RewardedandJane Eyre, just to name a few. Some of the novels were claimed to be written for moral purposes: - ‘It is customary for novelsto preach moral values to their audiences which were, of course, primarily women’ (Swan, n.d: n.p). The argument embedded in these novels is still relevant today. Recently, the world was outraged by the incident in New Delhi, India. ‘A23-year-old physiotherapy student, died from internal injuries inflicted with a metal rod during [a rape incident], which took place on a bus two weeks ago’ (Gottipati and Timmons, 2012:n.p). Such a shocking episode reminds us that the way women are written about or represented has real consequences and that Richardson and Defoe represent very different responses to this change in the literary habits of women (we note that Richardson’s novel Pamela is essentially a long and elegantly written work, but exploitative novel, about women’s sexual vulnerability). This essay will be based on two texts that I have chosen which arePamela; or Virtue RewardedandThe Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders’. It aims to look at the exploration and the exploitation of the woman issue to suit the readership market at that time.
Pamela; or Virtue Rewardedby Samuel Richardson When Richarson’sPamelawas published in 1740, it was indeed a remarkable success. ‘With five editions appearing in less than a year..., Pamela was a bestselling coup, its rapidly acquired status as cultural touchstone sped along by organized puffing’ (Keymer, 2001: xxii-xxiii). Keymer (2001: xxiii) further explains that ‘Pamelawas boosted by measured newspaper publicity as well as the eighteenth century equivalent of celebrity endorsement’ and it means that almost everybody, at that time, had readPamela. The novel was circulating in the public and there were
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