gradual moral reform she was able to bring about in her spouse.
It must be conceded to him that some capital scenes are the
result of this post-hymeneal treatment; that, to illustrate,
where the haughty sister of Pamela's husband calls on the woman
she believes to be her husband's mistress. Yet there is an
effect of anti-climax; the main excitement--getting Pamela
honestly wedded--is over. But we must not forget the moral
purpose: Mr. B.'s spiritual regeneration has to be portrayed
before our very eyes, he must be changed from a rake into a
model husband; and with Richardson, that means plenty of elbow-room.
There is, too, something prophetic in this giving of ample
space to post-marital life; it paves the way for much latter-day
probing of the marriage misery.

The picture of Mr. B. and Pamela's attitude towards him is full
of irony for the modern reader; here is a man who does all in
his power to ruin her and, finding her adamant, at last decides
to do the next best thing--secure her by marriage. And instead
of valuing him accordingly, Pamela, with a kind of spaniel-like
fawning, accepts his august hand. It must be confessed that with
Pamela (that is, with Richardson), virtue is a market commodity
for sale to the highest bidder, and this scene of barter and
sale is an all-unconscious revelation of the low standard of sex
ethics which obtained at the time. The suggestion by Sidney
Lanier that the sub-title should be: "or Vice Rewarded," "since
the rascal Mr. B. it is who gets the prize rather than Pamela,"
has its pertinency from our later and more enlightened view. But
such was the eighteenth century. The exposure of an earlier time
is one of the benefits of literature, always a sort of ethical
barometer of an age--all the more trustworthy in reporting