MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Scholars of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, such as Nancy Armstrong and Bonnie Blackwell, have noted the significance of the fact that writing is the medium through which Pamela inspires Mr. B to respect her virtue. While these readings successfully highlight the extent to which Pamela’s self-expression in writing persuades Mr. B to respect her body more than he did before, I expand these arguments by examining how Mr. B handles the bodily layers of resistance that are communicated to him through Pamela’s writing. I argue that Pamela’s letters reveal to Mr. B that her embodied display of resistance during moments when he ignored her verbal protests, or when she was rendered unable to speak at all, were rooted deep within her heart’s instinctual system of response to the threat of sexual assault. While Mr. B ignored the signs of the heart’s resistance that appeared on Pamela’s body when he violated her, through reading her letters, he retroactively discovers that her heart “spoke” through her flesh in the moments when he perceived her body as a site of deceit and “artfulness.” I formulate this argument to consider how Pamela’s autonomic responses to Mr. B’s entrapment and violation tell a story of resistance that exists in its own right, and speak non-consent even in the absence of verbal and written protest. As we begin to explore the ethics of the “gray area” of sexual assault, and the necessity to read signs of hesitance that are not always accompanied by the verbal expression of protest, literary objects like Pamela offer a space to examine the trans-historical stretch of the stories that women’s bodies tell in moments when these women lose their ability to express consent with their voices, or when their voices are fundamentally ignored.