Letter written by Lady Davers & Letter written by Pamela

Pamela's letter I'm going to analyse includes also another letter that she has discovered, written by Mr B's sister, Lady Davers.

In her letter she invites her brother to let Pamela in peace and she provides the reader three important argumentations to support her invitation.

For Lady Davers her brother has only two possibilities if he does not refuse her: either he will have her for a kept mistress, or for a wife.

As a matter of fact, at the time was an ordinary event for noble men to have a lover and a wife and was also an ordinary event for them to behave in such way with young girl of the lower class.

First she says that Pamela was a good girl, after that she adds that he must not attempt to her virtue and last but not least, she was not a noble woman, on the contrary their family was an ancient as the best in the kingdom.

The implicit allusion is that Mr B would not behave in that way if Pamela was an aristocratic lady.The function of the letter for Mr B' s sister is to make her point clear about the situation that was developing.

Pamela has attached the letter in her one for two reasons: on one hand she wants to underline her difficult situation, on the other she wants to show her parents that there is someone who defends her.

The second part deals with Pamela's letter to her parents in which the most important theme is the relation between the social classes, in particular between poor and rich.

She provides her parents her opinion, she thinks poor people are despised by the rich and after that she discusses this sentence.

The first argumentation is that they were "all on a foot originally", which means that they were all equal, she adds also that many of noble people would be glad to have a blood as "wholesome and untainted" as their.

She quotes also philosophy to demonstrate that she is in right and religion, speaking of the final judge (she represents the ideology of Puritanism).

In my opinion there is an important element to underline: according to the plot Pamela was a poor young girl, who works as maid; so I think it sounds a bit strange that she uses the area of philosophy for her argumentation because probably she did not study.

However, in the last part of the letter Pamela explains the function of her reflections because she says they occurred to her thoughts.

In the same sentence she calls Lady Davers "lowly" and herself "high-minded" and also for these adjectives she provides an explanation.

She calls Mr B's sister lowly because she is proud of her noble gentry and she defines herself high-minded because she hopes she is too proud "ever to do the like".

At the end she emphasizes once again the miserable situation of poor people but with the last sentence she communicates her pray to be kept from the pride of a high estate.

It means that she prefers to be poor rather than have a "sinful pride".

In this letter, made up by two, the events are narrated by two points of view: from Lady Devers's and Pamela's.    

The two point of view represent the two social classes, poor and rich, involved in the situation;  Pamela's situation is the pretext that allows the novelist to show the reader the conventions of social classes at the time and their contrast (XVIII century).

Comparing this letter with Letter XXI an other aspect of Pamela's personality comes to surface: in Letter XXI emerged mainly her fear for her master's behaviour, in this one the reader can create in his mind a different image of Pamela. She appears stronger than before, she wants to support her ideas and to demonstrate that rich people are not better than poor. 

This feeling is mainly conveyed by the exclamation marks, by the tone of Pamela's words and by the fluency of her speech.