Summary
Shamela Booby to Henrietta
Shamela tells of how she pretended to be a virgin on her wedding night and ably fooled her new husband. She heard that the Parson was released from jail.
The next morning Shamela enjoyed a delicious breakfast and dressed in lovely clothes. The Squire was very fond of her but she did not like him half as well as Parson Williams. At least she had all the money she wanted; she tells her mother “I believe I shall buy every thing I see. What signifies having Money if one doth not spend it” (35).
She continued to ask her husband for more and more money and he grew concerned, especially as it would most likely be worse when they got to London. Shamela burst into tears and threw a fit and he cursed his own terrible temper. He asked her pardon but she vowed not to smile or entertain him.
The coach picked them up and the Squire held her hand tightly and kissed her. She let him, but remained peevish. Suddenly both of them saw Parson Williams racing his horse at breakneck speed, chasing a hare with his greyhounds. The Squire looked at her and asked if it was the sight of the Parson that gave her uneasiness, and proceeded to criticize the parson, whose family his own had helped raise up but who now hunted brazenly on his land. Shamela replied that she was surprised he would quibble over a few hares. She cried and said she was the hare and was pursued and persecuted because of the Squire’s jealousy.
The Squire tried to comfort her and said he trusted her, and to prove that he would have the Parson come into the coach while he rode on the outside. This was arranged. When her husband looked another way Shamela gave the Parson a kiss, delighting that he had not smoked tobacco for two days so he could kiss her. On the drive he spoke of how she had two husbands, one the Object of Love and one the Object of Necessity.
At dinner Squire Booby was civil to the Parson and said he was sorry and would give him money. The evening proceeded amiably enough, and the two men got along well enough that Shamela feared she would not see the Parson again that night. The Parson told her he wanted to put the Squire and other men in their place in regards to politics, which had become the subject of the evening.
Shamela was irritated that night because it is a terrible thing to “be obliged to go to bed to a spindle-shanked young Squire, she doth not like, when there is a jolly Parson in the same House she is fond of” (39). She refused her husband’s advances, but finally grew happy when he said they were going to London, for she would have lots of pretty things and the Parson was also going there to be instituted in the Church.
Shamela ends her letter by telling her mother that now that she is a fine lady, she cannot be seen with a woman like her, and they will have to meet in private. If anyone suggests they are related, she will deny it with all her might.
In a postscript, Shamela complains that her husband wants a book written about them, but the Parson refused to write it. They decided to change her name to Pamela. The Parson told her privately that the man who would write it would be discreet.
Parson Oliver concludes his letter to Tickletext by saying he has all the original documents, given to him by Shamela’s mother in a rage. Hopefully the story of Shamela will be a warning to young gentlemen about improper matches and the trouble with satisfying transient passions. He believes Parson Williams to be an odious example of a clergyman, and any clergyman who desired advice on how to act could feasibly be told to simply be the opposite of Williams.
Ultimately, he deplores the lascivious images in the book, the bad messages for young gentleman and chambermaids, the rewarding of vice in the character of Mrs. Jewkes, and a troubling example of a meddling clergyman. He does not have time to list all the problems with this book, but hopes this is enough to dissuade Tickletext from disseminating it.
Parson Tickletext to Parson Oliver
Tickletext replies that he is very upset and is eager to see the original documents. He heard that the hussy herself was in town and asked after her but had not been successful yet in talking to her.
In a postscript, he tells Oliver that he heard the Squire caught Shamela in bed with Parson Williams and “turned her off, and is prosecuting him in the spiritual Court” (43).
Analysis
Shamela ends with the heroine (though she really is not one) getting what she wants (mostly), free of consequences (well, not exactly). In Tickletext’s postscript, he adds a quick note that the Squire found Shamela in bed with Parson Williams, turned her out, and is now prosecuting the parson. We do not know anything else about her, but it does not really matter on a meta-level—Fielding is suggesting that Pamela was always a Shamela, that Richardson’s text was full of puffery and silliness and a problematic view of the, as Earla Wilputte calls it, “Christian concept of virtue.”
Critic Eric Rothstein summarizes what has happened to Shamela at the end of the text: “Shamela's virtue is at last rewarded: she loses her mother, then her husband, and with the publication of her letters, her reputation as Pamela.” Demonstrating a complete lack of filial loyalty as well as awareness of her own hypocrisy, Shamela announced to her mother that she would not longer be able to associate with her: “it will look horribly, for a Lady of my Quality and Fashion, to own such a Woman as you for my Mother. Therefore we must meet in private only, and if you will never claim me, nor mention me to any one, I will always allow you what is very handsome…I am positively resolved, I will not be known to be your Daughter; and if you tell any one so, I shall deny it with all my Might” (40). It is not surprising after this breathtakingly audacious pronouncement that Parson Oliver explains that the original letters were “sent down by her Mother in a Rage” (41).
As Rothstein says, the other characters’ true behaviors are out there for the world to see: Parson Williams is discredited by the clergy, and the Squire is shown to be a cuckold. Fielding wants his readers to look at Pamela with fresh eyes, and to be able to come to the conclusion that none of Richardson’s characters are as benign or laudable as they may seem. Bernard Kreissman writes of Pamela’s Mr. B (Squire Booby in Shamela), “He is apparently a satyr whose frustration by one girl blinds him to everything but the necessity to enjoy her. Such a basis for marriage is hardly reasonable or sensible; it is not even romantic.” And in terms of Mr. B/Squire Booby and Mrs. Jewkes, “In Shamela, Booby is a dupe; the villain on his side of the struggle is Jewkes. But in Richardson's novel, regardless of his bungling, the archvillain is B. and Jewkes is merely his tool-one must not be misled by her greater coarseness. Thus in the character of B. we have vice rewarded.”
Another theme Fielding deals with in Shamela is the intersection of sex and politics. Rothstein suggests that there is an “analogy between politics and sex, and between domestic and national government.” He references the Squire and Parson Williams’ dinner, the conversation of which surrounds “something concerning chusing Pallament Men” (38). Shamela knows nothing of “Pollitricks” (39) except that of which the parson tells her, but critics believe contemporary readers of Shamela would be able to guess at his allusions. Rothstein notes that the Squire’s Parliamentary ambitions have nothing to do with the plot of the novel, but instead “tighten satiric unity” and “are linked with Shamela’s sexual intrigues.” Earla Wilputte references the common connection of Shamela with the affairs of state, i.e. the King and his prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole: “on one level Mr B. and Pamela are representative of the King and Walpole and the hope for a harmonious 'union of ruler and chief minister'. In Fielding’s work, Shamela also represents Walpole, but “his heroine is a feminized, devalued presentation of the Prime Minister. Whereas Richardson hopes for a nationally beneficial relationship between king and country, Fielding sees only the meretricious behaviour of a selfish minister who sells the country out from under a foolish ruler. Through Shamela, Fielding stresses Walpole's effeminate characteristics of greed for material goods and luxury, ambition for greater social status and power, while emphasizing the minister's lack of manly public-spiritedness and generosity.”
Even if, as critic W.R. Irwin claims, “Shamela has no significance except in comparison with Pamela,” it still offers fodder for thought on contemporary politics, sexual relationships, class, and more.
