Pamela Violence Quotes

Pamela must have a pretty good spidey sense, because she senses that something is off about Mr. B even before he lays a finger on her. Plus, violence was a way of life for eighteenth-century aristocrats—if they weren't assaulting their servants, they were hunting or dueling or otherwise getting out their aggression in no longer socially approved ways.

Pay attention here, because this little exchange is emblematic of Pamela's relationship with Mr. B in the early part of the novel: he refuses to admit that he's done anything wrong and threatens to rough her up a bit to go along with it. Sounds like the basis of a happy marriage to us … not.

Check out this pretzel logic: Mr. B is trying to get Pamela to calm down by arguing that if she is physically unable to resist his advances, she can't be held responsible. In other words, the more violent he is, the better off she is. Seems legit.

This is some more wacky almost-logic from Mr. B, logician extraordinaire (we'd love to see his LSAT score): the violence he uses makes their little relationship into a kind of story, one in which he has to use violence to protect Pamela from blame. Or, of course, he could just not assault her. Either way.

Mr. B just can't help being abusive and violent when he is out of temper with Pamela. To make matters worse (if that's even possible), he blames her for getting herself pushed around. That's some awesome abuser reasoning there, Mr. B.

Okay, so let's get this straight: not only does Pamela have to worry about not getting raped, she actually has to run away from Mr. B to avoid getting beaten up. Remind us again why she's still hanging around this guy?

So the one good thing about being abducted to Lincolnshire is that Mr. B can't beat her up anymore. Right? Right … but now Mrs. Jewkes can, and that woman is packing some serious guns. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Pamela's at a major disadvantage here: not only is she meek and passive by nature, her body is weak, too. That puts her at risk for mental violence and physical violence—meaning that her only defense is to be really, really virtuous. Virtue is like her superpower: it neutralizes all the violence that people keep directing at her.

Not long before she agrees to marry Mr. B, Pamela teaches him (and us) an important lesson: consent is meaningless if it's given under threat of violence. Only slaves can be threatened and beaten into submission—but not good Christian girls protected by their virtue. (And if they are threatened and beaten into submission, well, then, they just weren't trying hard enough, were they? /sarcasm.)

Oh ho ho, how the tables have turned! Now Mrs. Jewkes is defending Pamela from a physical assault—but notice that even marriage hasn't totally removed the threat of assault. Sounds like it was pretty dangerous to be a young, beautiful woman in the eighteenth century.