In Anti- Pamela and Shamela, Haywood and Fielding dissect Pamela to mock and question the (supposed) virtue of Richardson’s protagonist, and present what could be interpreted as more realistic versions of Pamela. While Pamela appears to be nothing but virtuous throughout Richardson’s entire novel, Haywood and Fielding both take the opinion that Pamela is much more aware of the other characters’ perceptions of her than is we are lead to believe. And certainly, it can be difficult to attain an accurate portrayal of a character if you are only equipped with letter penned by the character herself, so it seems quite natural to question this, at times, unbelievably sweet and innocent character.
Both Haywood and Fielding are so capable of lampooning Richardson’s admittedly preposterous world that it’s easy for the reader to forget that in reality the career of a flesh and blood artist is being mocked mercilessly for the entire world to see. The epistolary form of Pamela is mocked ad nauseum in both satires to great effect, such as when Shamela is aware of the absurdity of her writings in the present tense. But upon reading Shamela I was given the impression that Fielding’s work is more centered upon the anger toward Richardson than Pamela. I particularly enjoyed the very short piece at the beginning before the actual story, where the editor supposedly writes a letter to himself. As the footnotes tell us, Pamela originally contained letters of praise for the novel at the beginning of the work, and although blurbs are common place on commercial books, at the time Richardson received much criticism for the inclusion of such letters. And evidently, as I heard in class, there was a bit of a rivalry between the two writers.
Just for fun, here’s an article about some famous feuds between authors.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/07/fighting-words-five-classic-literary-feuds.html
