Summary
Letter 7: Jervis to Henrietta
Mrs. Jervis writes to Henrietta about the success of her daughter’s scheme. Shamela disguised herself as a charming farmer’s daughter and went to the Squire, who threw his arms around her when he saw her. He proclaimed that he found Shamela to be an ugly slut and nothing compared to her. But suddenly he realized it was Pamela, and was surprised.
He decided to send her to Lincolnshire, thinking her to be a pure virgin and knowing nothing about the child she had by Parson Williams a year ago.
Mrs. Jervis concludes by assuring Henrietta she thinks her daughter will make the right choices and will not do anything unbecoming.
Letter 8: Henrietta to Jervis
Henrietta thanks Mrs. Jervis for her attention to her daughter.
Letter 9: Shamela to Henrietta
Shamela writes to her mother that she arrived in Lincolnshire at another one of the Squire's settlements and is now with Mrs. Jewkes, the servant who helped her with Parson Williams. She received a letter from the Parson, and includes it here.
He writes to Shamela that he does not like the Squire, whom he knew was rude even as a child, but has to be polite to him since he needs him for a favor.
He considers Shamela like a wife, even though they did not take vows, and hopes she is still reading good books. He looks forward to spending a night of pleasure with her soon, for which they can repent later.
Shamela tells her mother how fond of the Parson she is, then resumes her story. She relates how he came to town and gave a sermon, then came over to the house where Mrs. Jewkes left them alone for an hour and a half. She believes Mrs. Jewkes wants him for herself, especially as she was the one who encouraged Shamela to be with the Squire. Mrs. Jewkes pilloried her for her bad behavior with the Parson, and the two fought.
Analysis
Critic W.R. Irwin writes of Fielding’s views of Richardson and Pamela: “Shamela reveals that Fielding thought Richardson's novel objectionable morally as well as artistically. Shamela is somewhat more than clever pornography because throughout it censures Pamela not only as a literary production but also as a conduct book,” and Bernard Kreissman says that “Shamela by its open bawdiness was a condemnation of the concealed eroticism of Pamela, though in the main it was an attack on Pamela's business view of morality.” Obviously readers are not supposed to conduct themselves like Pamela/Shamela or the Squire, but they also are not supposed to conduct themselves like the two main servants in Shamela—Mrs. Jervis and Mrs. Jewkes. Both offer some comic relief to readers in their puncturing of Shamela’s hubris, and both offer moral lessons at the textual and meta-textual levels about the putatively problematic behavior of servants. To wit, Morris Golden notes that “Instead of loyally supporting the squire like Richardson's servants, Fielding's servants first group around Shamela to exploit Booby's weakness, then curry favor with her as the new power in the house.”
Mrs. Jervis is the first servant working with Shamela. In Letter 7 she writes to Henrietta of Shamela’s progress with the Squire, herself being responsible for the bedroom scene in which the Squire tried to take advantage of Shamela. She is wily and manipulative, and cares most about holding onto her position. Her goal is to have Shamela procure the “large Sums of Money” (17) the Squire will give her for sleeping with him, and then benefit from association with Shamela. Mrs. Jewkes is equally problematic in that, as Shamela writes her mother, she helped “formerly helped Parson Williams to me; and now designs I see, to sell me to my Master” (21), and when she and Shamela are ensconced in the Squire’s house, tells Shamela “it was both an inexcusable Folly and Pride in me, to pretend to refuse him any Favour” (23). Later she tries to aid the Squire in raping Shamela, which Shamela narrates thusly: “Mrs. Jewkes crying why don’t you do it? I have one Arm secure, if you can’t deal with the rest I am sorry for you” (28).
Returning to Mrs. Jervis, she is only present for a brief bit of time, but in her article on the novel, scholar Earla A. Wilputte suggests that Mrs. Jervis represents something even more troubling to contemporary audiences than duplicitous servants. Looking at Fielding’s minor (and sometimes made-up) characters, Wilputte says “His technique in Shamela is to equate shifting sexual identities with shifting meanings of moral terms. He employs feminization, 'the persistent gendering as feminine of that which is devalued’, to underscore his point that the Christian vocabulary has been perverted and devalued by his contemporary society. Thus, Colley Cibber, Conyers Middleton, John, Lord Hervey, and Richardson's Mr B become feminized, trivialized, and derided. Individually, they are pismires, but, Fielding warns, cumulatively, their effect on society may be dangerous. Likewise, Fielding masculinizes the characters of Shamela and Mrs Jervis to emphasize their morality's degeneration from the standard order. Throughout Shamela, the ambiguous sexual identities are meant to stand for the ambiguous, shifting moral vocabulary that is so easily utilized by society’s 'Thrivers' to the detriment of society's morality.”
Fielding has actually taken Richardson’s character of Mrs. Jewkes, with her queer tendencies, and turned her into Mrs. Jervis, who uses sexually-charged language with Shamela. Wilputte writes that these terms of endearment “are read metaphorically, with a definite anatomical bias. Although this is probably only a throw-away thrust at Richardson, the questionable relationship between Shamela and Mrs Jervis indicates a perversion of the standard order.” Homosexuals were seen to have unnatural lusts that stand “in opposition to the standard order and can be read in contraposition to the way his or her sex is traditionally understood.” Fielding’s deliberate inversion of the two characters makes the reader of Shamela think more critically about the character in Pamela, and conclude that there is something problematic about Richardson’s text.
