Interpretation of Pamelas Multiple Social Identities: Imprisoned Woman, Vested Interest Holder or Moral Guardian

Abstract

During the period of 18th century, British classicism prevailed, praised values of rational, order, stable and so on. Shamuel Richardson is the representative of epistolary novel; Pamela is one of his outstanding epistolary novels. With the development of capitalism, individualism prevailed, people more and more concerned about their own interest, and morality gradually became worse. In order to save the gradually deteriorated social morality, Richardson wrote an epistolary novel Pamela with the aim of setting up a good moral example for woman,
and further to maintain the stability and good morality of traditional society. Pamela as the heroine of this novel, there are some arguments
about her image which is the core issue of this article. The image of Pamela is various, so, I will explain Pamelas three identities in detail.