An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews
Author Henry Fielding
Country England
Language English
Genre Satire, Parody
Publisher A. Dodd
Publication date
 April 1741
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, or simply Shamela, as it is more commonly known, is a satirical burlesque, a novella written by Henry Fielding, first published in April 1741 under the name of Mr. Conny Keyber. Fielding never admitted to writing the work, but it is widely considered to be his.[1] It is a direct attack on the then-popular novel Pamela (1740) by Fielding's contemporary and rival Samuel Richardson and is composed, like Pamela, in epistolary form.

Publishing history

Shamela was originally published anonymously on 4 April 1741 and sold for one shilling and sixpence. A second edition came out on 3 November that same year which was partly reimpressed and partly reset where emendations were made.

A pirated edition was printed in Dublin in 1741 as well. Reprint editions have subsequently appeared as texts for academic study.[1]

Plot summary

Shamela is written as a shocking revelation of the true events which took place in the life of Pamela Andrews, the main heroine of Pamela. From Shamela we learn that, instead of being a kind, humble and chaste servant-girl, Pamela (whose true name turns out to be Shamela) is in fact a wicked and lascivious creature and former prostitute, scheming to entrap her master, Squire Booby, into marriage.

Themes and style

The novel is a sustained parody of, and direct response to, the stylistic failings and moral hypocrisy that Fielding saw in Richardson's Pamela. Reading Shamela amounts to re-reading Pamela through a deforming magnifying glass; Richardson's text is rewritten in a way that reveals its hidden implications, to subvert and desecrate it.[2][3]

Richardson's epistolary tale of a resolute servant girl, armed only with her 'virtue' to battle against her master's attempts at seduction, had become an overnight literary sensation in 1741. The implicit moral message – that a girl's chastity has eventual value as a commodity – as well as the awkwardness of the epistolary form in dealing with ongoing events, and the triviality of the detail which the form necessitates, were some of the main targets of Fielding's travesty.

Recent criticism has explored the ways in which Pamela in fact dramatises its own weaknesses. From this perspective, Fielding's work may be seen as a development of possibilities already encoded in Richardson's work, rather than a simple attack.[4] Another novel by Fielding parodying Pamela, albeit not so explicitly, is The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr. Abraham Adams (February 1742), more commonly known as Joseph Andrews.

See also

Footnotes

  1. 1 2 Hawley, Judith (1999), "Note on the text", Joseph Andrews and Shamela, London: Penguin Books.
  2. ↑ Vasarri (2006) p.7 quotation:
    Un esempio canonico: quando Fielding trasforma la virtuosa servetta di Richardson prima in una spudorata arrampicatrice, poi in un irreprensibile garzone concupito dalla padrona, fa una parodia. Leggere Shamela e Joseph Andrews equivale pressapoco a rileggere Pamela attraverso una lente deformante. Un dato testo è sovvertito, dissacrato, ma anche riscritto in una forma suscettibile di rivelarne, oltre agli aspetti risibili, le implicazioni nascoste, gettendo magari le basi di uno sviluppo futuro.
  3. ↑ Davidson (2004) p.134
    Fielding's parody revises the conversational exchanges between Pamela and B. into a condensed, degraded pastiche that exposes the truly sordid nature of Richardson's dialogue. ... readers of Shamela who return to Pamela often feel themselves to be reading a different – and a far less innocent – novel.
  4. ↑ Fielding, Henry (12 July 2008), Keymer, Thomas, ed., Joseph Andrews and Shamela (paperback) (New ed.), Oxford, ISBN 978-0-19-953698-6

References

External links

Full text of Shamela from Project Gutenberg

Edition of Shamela with Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela

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