The Power of Sex : Pamela and the Genealogy of a New Tool to Power

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This essay discusses the eighteenth-century novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson. In its analysis, the essay defines the novel as discourse-altering artifact, and exemplifies how the story of the main character provides a behavioral template that makes possible the permeation of power structures. Through the insurrection of formerly subjugated knowledges, the novel founds a means to overcome old hierarchical power structures, offering a way in which the desires for power of a member of the lower station can be fulfilled without obtaining the stigma of immorality. Instead of giving up her virtue, her virginity and her honor to her master, Pamela manages to trade her virginity on specific terms. The commercial transaction in which this commodity is handed over requires marriage as payment. Through marriage, Pamela elevates not only her financial but also her social station, and enters the ranks of the aristocracy, but she can only do so because she is still in possession of her virginity.
2008-03-17