I’ve often witnessed people throw their hands up in horror when I’ve casually mentioned that over the course of this semester I’ve read Samuel Richardson’s Pamela for the literary seminar I signed up for. Admittedly, before I started reading it, my apprehensions before reading it had been slowly but steadily building. I expected it to be the most insipid story ever written, describing the hysterical fears of a girl that’s virtuous to the point of being kinky. And somehow that’s a pretty apt description of Richardson’s novel. And somehow not quite. What’s certain, though, is that I’ve got a problem with it.
