SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761)

1689 Though his family resided in London before, and soon after, his birth, Richardson was born in Devonshire, as the son of a well-to-do joiner.

1706 He seems to have received but a slight education, and certainly was without any university training. His father’s wish was, first, to make him a clergyman; but, owing to money losses, young Richardson became apprenticed to a printer. He loved to write letters and had propensity to preaching.

1719 Set up his own printing business -which was to be very succesful.

1721 He married the daughter of his old master; she bore him six children, five of whom died in infancy. A year after her death, in 1731, Richardson married a second time; and, again, he had to undergo sad family bereavements.

1739 He was employed as printer to the House of Commons, and took on lease a country residence at Hammersmith. Long before becoming on of the most reputable printers in London, he had been the confidential adviser for damsels in love. He had written their love letters for them and had adquired a curiosity about the feminine emotional life.

By this time, Richardson was fifty years of age; he had long shown signs of declining health. He had not produced anything of consequence in the way of literature, when, in the same year, he was asked by two friends, printers like himself, to prepare for them “a little volume of letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers...” These letters came out in January, 1741, and, as was indicated on the title-page, furnished not only a pattern in style and form, but, also, directions “how to think and act justly and prudently in the common Concerns of Human Life.” One of the subjects emphasised in this collection was the danger surrounding the position of a young woman—especially when goodlooking—as a family servant. How Richardson’s first novel grew out of the treatment of this theme is pretty generally known. That the book should have been written in the form of letters was thus due to the accident of its origin. Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, was published in two volumes (November,1740), and immediately met with an eager reception; two further volumes, describing Pamela’s life after her marriage, were given to the public in December, 1741.

1740-41 Published Pamela or Virtue Rewarded.

1747-48 Published Clarissa or History of a Young Lady.

1753-54 Published Sir Charles Grandison.

Like Bunyan, Richardson owed a vivid strength of imagination to spiritual intensity; like Addison, he turned to account for dramatic purposes a wealth of psychological observation and insight into human character; like Defoe, he established the greatness of the English novel on its unique faculty of graphic realism. His works emulate Pilgrim’s Progress, illustrating the road to salvation by both positive and negative examples. Pamela’s trials, Clarissa’s sufferings, Sir Charles Grandison’s difficulties, all open the way to final happiness.

Pamela’s supposed indebtedness to Marivaux’s Marianne has been discussed, and definitively refuted, by Austin Dobson, in his study of Richardson. The novel, as a whole, lacks unity of conception and construction; one readily perceives that the plan was not decided upon from the first, but that it grew on the author as he became more conscious of his faculties and aim. The two volumes added as an afterthought are a mere tag and make a very heavy demand upon the reader’s patience. Pamela no longer appeals to the reader when her persecutor has been reformed into her husband. But the publication of Pamela swept the country with a wave of collective emotion. The reality of the story grows upon the reader due, partly, to the vividness of presentment which the epistolary form makes possible; partly, to that realistic grasp of minute facts which Richardson shared with Defoe, though, perhaps, not in the same measure. This faculty may be traced back to the positive bent of his middle-class instincts, as well as to the affinity of the traditional puritan genius with the concrete.

One of the most spectacular successes of burgeoning literary marketplace of eighteen-century London (A fourth edition came out within six months of the first.), "Pamela" also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel world. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world into "two different Parties, Pamelists and Antipamelists", even eclipsing the sensational factional politics of the day. Preached up for its morality, and denounced as pornography in disguise, it vividly describes a young servant's long resistance to the attempts of her predatory master to seduce her. Written in the voice of its low-born heroine, but by a printer who fifteen years earlier had narrowly escaped imprisonment for the seditious output of his press, "Pamela" is not only a work of pioneering psychological complexity, but also a compelling and provocative study of power and its abuse.

Pamela is not tame and rose-pink, nor dull and priggish. Her character is not marked with conventional idealism or moral pedantry, though there is a good deal of both in her, she is far more real than the heroines of works against which the novel protests. Her little tricks and ways, her conscious or semi-conscious coquetry, her more than innocent weakness, counterbalance the almost miraculous correctness of her conduct.

We know from contemporary evidence that it was the fashion to have read Pamela; and that, while fine ladies made a point of holding a copy of it in their hands, it stirred the emotions of middle-class or lower-class readers; and, in at least one instance, it was recommended from the pulpit. In September, 1741, was published an anonymous sequel, Pamela’s Conduct in High Life, which thus preceded the author’s own continuation of his novel. The story was adapted for the stage. According to Richardson, “the publication of the History of Pamela gave birth to no less than 16 pieces, as remarks, imitations, etc.” Among the less famous skits directed against it, we should mention An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews (April, 1741), the authorship of which is still under discussion; it was followed by Fielding’s History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and his friend Mr. Abraham Adams (February, 1742).

Pamela was followed by Clarissa, and while the author of Pamela had been optimistic, because it was his main purpose to point out a positive example, the author of Clarissa thought it his duty, rather, to offer a warning, and to lay stress on the exceptional nature of conversions. Clarissa, or, the History of a young Lady, was, thus, doomed to end in gloom, and to be a demonstration of the perfidy of man. As the title-page declared, the book was designed to show “the Distresses that may attend the Misconduct both of Parents and Children in relation to Marriage.” The first edition consisted of seven volumes, two of which were issued in November, 1747, two more in April, 1748, and the last three in December of the same year. It tells the tragic story of unprotected Clarissa who falls in Lovelace’s power, and once her pride is lost and her heart broken she has nothing left but to die. The pathos of her long agony is overdone, the theme being treated as a tragedy. Clarissa is ravished, but refuses to marry her seducer and dies of a broken heart. Clarissa is undoubtedly the richest of his three novels. The heroine, a model of virtue and beauty, is the victim of her wealthy, greedy, ambitious family who try to push her into a finacially advantageous marriage with Mr. Solmes. Clarissa´s refusal leads to her imprisonment and the growing pressure of her relatives will drive her to elope with Lovelace, a handsome and unscrupulous rake who finally seduces her while she is drugged. Lovelace then repents, hoping to marry Clarissa, but she refuses and dies of grief.

Richarson wrote, Clarissa is an epistolary novel, a succession of letters between the heroine and her friends and family, between Lovelace and his friends. This makes for slow development, heightened suspense, but also for a richer and more immediate analysis of the small events of everyday life and sometimes for multiple points of view when some of the events are narrated by different characters.

Richarson´s last novel was Sir Charles Grandison; the masculine counterpart of Clarissa. The easy morals and low tone of the books of his rival Fielding were all the more odious to Richardson’s sense of propriety, because his vanity, ever a weak point with him, was sorely tried. The success of Tom Jones encourage Richardson to write . The History of Sir Charles Grandison; in a Series of Letters published from the Originals professed to be “by the Editor of Pamela and Clarissa”.It came out, in seven volumes, between November, 1753, and March, 1754. In the preface, Richardson practically admitted his authorship.. The didactic purpose is as glaring as it is in the previous novels, without being, in the present instance, relieved by the wealth of human pathos which made the story of Clarissa, in itself, a moving tragedy. Perhaps Sir Charles is the author´s dream-picture of himself, a man of lofty birth, great riches, perfect breeding, endowed with every gift, accomplishment and virtue, and always surrounded, like his creator, with a chorus of adoring women, from among whom he must choose the one most worthy to be his consort. Four of them are rivals for his affection. He likes two of them almost equally and weighs the matter in the scale of duty to decide which of them shall prevail. His scruples make him seen to lack blood and vitality and his ideal which is to preserve the conventions is rather negative. In spite of very fine passages, this novel, lacking the freshness of Pamela and the tragic strength of Clarissa, is inferior to its predecessors.

All through the composition of his last novel, Richardson had been aware of declining powers and failing health. He still kept up his epistolary intercourse with his admirers and friends; and his letters, most of which, duly prepared by himself for the use of posterity, have been preserved and handed down to us, are a mine of information for the student of the period. Our knowledge of his life is, to this day, mainly based on the selection of his correspondence, published, in 1804, by Mrs. Barbauld. Besides a pamphlet (1753) aimed against certain piratical Irish booksellers who had forestalled the authorised issue of the last volumes of Grandison, and a letter to The Rambler on the change in the manners of women (no.97, for 19 February, 1751), perhaps his most characteristic, though not his most interesting, literary productions still remain to be mentioned. One of these is A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments, Maxims, Cautions, and Reflexions, contained in the Histories of Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison (1755). The other is Meditations collected from the Sacred Books, and adapted to the different Stages of a Deep Distress; gloriously surmounted by Patience, Piety and Resignation. Being those mentioned in the History of Clarissa as drawn up for her own Use (1750). These meditations are thirty-six in number, only four of which are inserted in the novel.

In 1754, Richardson removed from North end to Parson’s green, Fulham; and, in the following year, his printing-house in Salisbury square had to be rebuilt on an adjoining site. This expenditure points to a prosperous condition of affairs; in fact, Richardson’s means and social position were so far improved that he had become master of the Stationers’ company. Though he never was in touch with the most brilliant society of the time, he numbered among his acquaintances men of a standing far superior to his own, and certainly did something to promote the gradual recognition of literary genius as a distinction equal to any other. His eldest daughter, Mary, made a good match in 1757; and, on the occasion of her marriage, he wrote his will, which Austin Dobson describes as “very lengthy, and having four codicils.” His last years were afflicted with increasing nervous disorders, and insomnia. He died, from a paralytic stroke, on 4 July, 1761

Characteristics of the Richarsonian novel

·  It is an epistolary novel:

·  Implies first person narrative: an air of authenticity.

·  Justifies minuteness and circumstantiality.

·  Favours a sense of passing of time, or duration, and a sense of irreversibility.

·  Heightens the dramatic tension and the reader´s sense of involvement. The reader can identify himself with the narrator and the narrator expresses his own emotions at the very moment of experience.

·  It lends itself to the exploitation of pathos and the analysis of sentiment at the expense of action.

·  Results in subjectivity:

a) The reader is enclosed within the consciousness of a character and sees everything through his eyes. There is no omniscient observer.

b) The character can only express and analyse his conscious intentions and sentiments bu the letters may betray his unconscious desires.

The clear sighted reader perceives Pamela and Clarissa are in love with their persecutors long before they confess it o themselves.

c) Letters written by different characters give different accounts of the same scene or circumstances.

·  There is a danger of formlessness in the epistolary novel; this is something that Fielding did not like about it.

The epistolary form permits a fresh and particular presentment of everyday facts to us, yet it is apt to seem hopelessly slow and antiquated; it savours of a time when letters were a work of leisure and love, and people liked to piece together the different threads of a story. The psychological characterization is based on a puritan consciousness of sin and lacks depth in the portrayal of emotions. His realism is great, however, in its handling of minute details, its imaginative power, its concatenation of events.