JC’s suggested reading list of important feminist literature.

For my friends in studies...

Jonnie Comet

Distributed to fellow undergraduate literature students; 9 May 1996

1. Richardson, Samuel; Pamela; or: Virtue Rewarded, 1740.

  Remarkable first-person epistolary novel intended to exemplify a young woman’s correct behaviour in the face of lewd harassment and attempted seduction.  Faith conquers all: Ben Franklin issued it as the first novel published in America for a reason.  Every Christian girl should read this book before age 16.

2. Fielding, Henry; Joseph Andrews, 1744.

  Comic mock-epic about a role-reversal of the Pamela situation, intended as a spoof on Pamela (actually depicts Richardson’s heroine herself, though sadly far out of character, towards the end).  Fielding’s tongue-in-cheek digressions on writing and morality guarantee belly-aching laughter, yet convey his points beautifully.

3. Wollstonecraft, Mary; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; 1792.

  Important sociological treatise, a basis for modern feminism, influenced by the humanistic sensibility of the French Revolution prior to the sobering ‘Reign of Terror’ slaughters.  It will open your eyes about modern feminism.  Find it in the Brit.Lit. anthologies, read as much of it as is available– you owe this woman.

4. Austen, Jane; Pride and Prejudice, 1813.

  Intensely detailed, culturally authentic novel of two country sisters’ attempts to meet eligible husbands in spite of their family’s social faux pas.  This is Austen’s best, but by far not her only worthy effort.  The A&E video from Jan. 1996 is a scholar’s dream.

5. Shelley, Mary; Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818.

  Typically gravely misunderstood; actually a cry-in-the-wilderness from the overeducated, underappreciated daughter of Wollstonecraft and radical social reformer William Godwin, stuck in a misogynist society.  Avoid Branagh’s film (and all the others), if you care.

6. Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, 1847.

  Magical, sentimental novel about every woman’s plain-Jane heroine using faith, common sense, and ‘slow and steady wins the race’ tactics to resist and reform a reprobate rogue, the embodiment of the Romantic anti-hero.  The BBC/CBS video with Dalton and Clarke is most faithful to the text.

7. Hardy, Thomas, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, 1891.

  Sensual, naturalistic novel about a young girl’s victimisation by selfish, manipulative, judgemental men; frighteningly godless (keep Rosary at hand!).  Polanski’s film Tess distorts the seduction scene (remember, it is Polanski!) but seems otherwise respectful.

8. Chopin, Kate, The Awakening, 1899.

  Moving existentialist novel about a married woman’s sensual and emotional awakening despite grave societal censure; though Chopin remained an earnest Catholic it was banned for years after its writing due to suggestively ‘immoral’ content.

9. Colette, Claudine at School, 1900

  Sweetly modest ‘coming-of-age’ tale of a French country schoolgirl, peppered with sexual innuendo, enormously funny, undeniably realistic– and mostly autobiographical.  Consider the Penguin edition which includes its three sequels, though the first is by far the most delectable.

10. Lawrence, David Herbert, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, 1928 (unexpurgated!).

  Lush, beautiful, naturalist novel about the inalienable relationship between sex and love.  No mere film has ever done it justice.  Be sure to read the attendant ‘Apropos’ essay, in which DHL explains why every teenager should read this book.

11. Duras, Marguerite, The North China Lover, 1984.

  Tender, mostly biographical reminiscence of a girl’s sexual and emotional coming-of-age in 1930s Indochina, ‘so exquisitely beautiful that you’d as soon weep at the ending as at the irretrievable loss of a Ming vase’ –JC.  The film The Lover with Jane March, while stunningly graphic, is an eminently commendable rendition.

* * *


This was almost a joke.  Towards the end of the spring semester there was great discussion round the lunch tables and snack counters about what constituted ‘valuable’ literature.   I was the only one who actually contributed a list in hard copy (typically).  The fact that the majority of the students in these informal discussions were women only partially affected the selections –JC

My school of philosophy.

Jonnie Comet
2 May 1996

  The study of philosophy is the asking of questions.  Inherent in that is the element of cynicism: it seems that every philosopher inevitably disputes something the rest of society takes for granted.  In his search for ultimate truth he asks, as did Pilate, ‘What is truth?’ [i] and then invariably concludes that no such thing exists.  Fielding contrasts seekers of philosophical truth and seekers of gold:

  ‘[Y]et surely, there can be no comparison between the two; for who ever heard of a gold-finder that had the impudence or folly to assert, from the ill success of his search, that there was no such thing as gold in the world?’ [ii]

   So it will hold for all seekers of truth who initiate their search with skepticism, for as the scientific model tells us, he who enters a scientific study suspecting a specific outcome will surely arrive at precisely that outcome.  The atheist mathematician Bertrand Russell would have done well to heed the prime maxim of his field before declaring that there is no God. [iii]

  Philosophers are therefore very idiosyncratic.  Perhaps there is no recognising the ultimate truth, since every being is biased in his way of thinking, and will, understandably, seek to justify his own point of view.  I will grant readily that I am biased against those who challenge the establishment for the sake of challenge alone, but am just as biased against those who champion it for the sake of championing alone.  I have traditionally called myself a pragmatist, but my definition of Pragmatism will not correlate with that of the studied texts.  For example, I strongly maintain the concept that ethical absolutes do exist in this world and that we are either fools to deny them or fools to accept them blindly.  But like Fielding’s gold-digger, we would be most foolish to assume that, because we do not see them right in front of our faces, they do not exist anywhere.

  I suppose I am mainly an idealist, but I have been this way for so long that I long outgrew the need to place myself in some simplistic category.  I will state unequivocally that it is the responsibility of the teacher to exemplify ethical ideals in thought, word, and deed for the benefit of all young people.  Kant states that ‘the child must learn to act according to “maxims”’, [iv] and insists the teacher’s job is to prescribe such maxims in terms even small children can understand.  I absolutely agree that children need strict moral guidance, but I also hold with Rousseau in that there may well be an inherent goodness in human beings.  The truth most likely lies in Alexander Pope’s succinct assessment, that man is a ‘Chaos of Thought and Passion’, [v]  both logical reasoning and illogical feeling rolled into one.  The wise teacher understands and accepts this.

  Kant’s remarkable argument, two hundred years before Skinner, [vi] convincingly makes the point that manipulation of behaviour and consequences is not a desirable method of developing a child’s ability to make ethical decisions:

  ‘If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the rewards; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness punished, he will grow into a man who… does right or wrong according as he finds either of advantage to himself’. [vii]

  This is the frame of mind of the destitute urban American minority to whom, sadly, so much immoral inclination may be rightly attributed, because he recognises no relationship between the ideal of doing good and the reality of his personal situation.  In the liberal American ‘politically-correct’ Naturalism of the 1990s he is justified in his behaviour and considered a victim of unnamed, unattributable circumstances.  As this mindset becomes increasingly prevalent among children of means, all society slides into the gutter (vis., why do even rich kids wear the baggy trousers of homeless refugees?), and soon develops into an anarchy of isolated individuals all fearful or hateful of others around them.

  The only just course for a pedagogue is to deliberately embody a positive moral stance, championing the set of values proven over all time to be the best for all mankind.  Yes; I know what that means; it is an idealistic crusade towards some Utopian concept of ‘Good’ that may never be fully defined or accepted.  But the striving towards Good is the stuff of which greatness is made, and if a teacher is ever to do anything, it is to attempt to effect the improvement of his charges.  Jefferson, Douglass, Gandhi, King, and Mandela all advocated a society in which the true worth of a man is measured not by his appearance, or birthright, or ability to amass material treasure, but by the goodness of his character.  Or, as I so often quote Richardson’s valiant young maiden, ‘Virtue is the only nobility.’ [viii]  That, as succinctly as it can be put, is my philosophy.

* * *

---

[i]  What is ‘truth’?  - John 18.38

[ii] [Y]et surely... world?  - Fielding; Tom Jones:  bk. 6, ch. 1

[iii]    The atheist... God  - Not the first time I have found fault with Russell! –JC

[iv]     the child... ‘maxims’  - Kant; Education; Charton, Annette, translator.  Excerpted in Philosophical Foundations of Education.  Eds. Howard Ozmon, Samuel Craver

[v] Chaos of Thought and Passion  - Pope; An Essay on Man: e. 2; l. 13

[vi]    Skinner  - Psychologist B.F. Skinner (1899-1990) pioneered the concept that behaviour can be conditioned through manipulation of stimuli and consequences.  Prominent in Skinnerian theory is the idea that man is subservient to stimuli which cause him to act in the exhibited fashion, as if he possesses no will to alter his behaviour on his own –JC

[vii]   If you... himself  - Kant, in Ozman & Craver text, pp. 33-34

[viii]  Virtue is the only nobility  - Richardson, Samuel; Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded: letter 23).  Apparently Pamela (at 15) has read Juvenal’s Tenth Satire; but then, her father was an Anglican priest and probably possessed of a good library. –JC

Richardson’s 'Pamela' as chivalric literature.

In defence of virtue....[i]

Jonnie Comet
27 April 1995

  Samuel Richardson’s Pamela may be a rollicking tale of class bigotry, gender warfare, and sexual intrigue, but it is also a sober look at how cooperation and a willingness to submit to a greater good than one’s self can achieve genuinely positive ends for all involved.  I like to view this quaint and much-maligned work as an example of chivalric literature, in which goodness triumphs over evil.  Pamela Andrews, then, can be seen as the traditional chivalric heroine, because she exemplifies the complete definition of virtue.

  I see chivalry as an ideal, a model, for male-female human relations.  Caxton’s handbook[ii] set down the basic creeds of the good knight, but Malory and others expounded on these and gave positive and negative examples of male and female behavior in society.  For purposes of this paper the definition shall be kept broad, but I feel that really any story which presents this value system can be considered chivalric literature; one of my own favourites has become Fielding’s Joseph Andrews.

  One key to the chivalric code is the concept of the separate spheres: the male realm and the female realm.  This can be supported by open-minded study of Aristotle, the Bible, or evolutionary theory, and certainly through a reading of Pamela.  The male and female each have certain attributes, strengths, and responsibilities, and in Pamela we see the consequences when one of the two parties fails even to recognise the ideal.  It is crucial to remember that the two realms do not stand in judgement of each other; if not of the same elements, they are certainly equivalent.  The female may not wield the same sort of power as does the male, but the character of Pamela illustrates just how, at least in the arena of love, her power may actually be superior to that of her man.

  The female’s role in chivalry is to inspire the male toward virtue.  Richardson created Pamela as the paragon and champion of virtue; in his preface, he explicitly states his intention ‘to give practical examples, worthy to be followed in the most critical and affecting cases, by the virgin, the bride, and the wife’. [iii]  His book will also teach the man of station– indeed, any man– how and how not to retain his dignity and good reputation in the face of temptation.  The secret to it all is to embrace virtue for its own sake, and for the sake of its benefits– for virtue is its own reward.

  Narrowly defined, ‘virtue’ may connote simply physiological virginity.  Pamela’s words seem to bear this out, in part.  For her, chastity represents the one gift which she can to give freely to her husband; as a girl without a dowry, it is all she has in body and soul.  However virtue has a higher meaning here.  I prefer to use the word ‘chastity’ rather than ‘virtue’ in twentieth-century vocabulary, when referring to virginity alone.  ‘Virtuous’ seems more to mean ‘laden with virtues’, of which, for unmarried people, virginity– call it chastity– is one of the principals.  It is a diffuse nobleness in all issues.  Mrs Jervis and Mr B will exchange opinion on this, [iv] Mrs Jervis taking my view here, and Mr B assuming, as the twentieth-century reader surely does, that it is merely a pleasant euphemism for virginity– which, he insists, is the one thing he has not yet offended.  In chivalric terms virtue can be said to be a deliberate tendency– that is, invoking one’s free will– toward goodness, as prescribed by God and fellow virtuous people.  Pamela sums this whole debate up quite nicely for the reader, in her ‘Verses Upon Going Away’: ‘For what indeed is happiness/ But conscious innocence and peace’. [v]

  Pamela embodies all that is good about Christianity: humility, piety, chastity, kindness, and especially forgiveness.  She lives by the ‘Golden Rule’, a sort of trite axiom for whole of Christianity which lies at the heart of chivalry.  Raised by a lay deacon, Pamela is a good Christian, and never compromises her beliefs.  More than once she appears even Christlike; most notably in wishing her jailer well, and in her frequent resolutions to trust her fate to Providence rather than pray for her own designs.  The Church is important to her, as the social manifestation of God’s word and law.  The maintenance of her physical purity is prescribed by God; but the condemnation of its loss outside of wedlock, is prescribed by human society.  Therefore, to represent virtue in all eyes, she must subscribe to both.

  The moral touchstone for the entire book is her realization that ‘Virtue is the only nobility’. [vi]  Pamela values the gentry by their actions, not their station.  She does not consider virtue as a province solely of the rich.  She laments that people too often regard themselves and each other for the good of their ancestors and not on their own actions.  Principles, morality, and ethics are valuable to her, not outward appearance (which is part of the male domain).  Her intentions and actions define her character, since ostensively she has no other value, and she naïvely thinks others should be valued likewise.  Through everything she remains certain that her piety, not her birthrights, shall earn her a place in Heaven.

  Inviting such an influence, Mr B cannot stay outside the realm of virtue forever.  Though he never quite admits it explicitly, he placed Pamela upon the proverbial pedestal long ago, and his only confusion or anger has been with himself for misreading and mistreating her.  In submitting to her influence, he realises that she has elevated him to a new station: that of a truly noble, respectable gentleman, blessed with the company of a woman who is his equal in all the ways she should be.  He is humble enough to admit it to her: ‘I might have addressed a hundred fine ladies; but never could have reason to admire one as I do you’. [vii]  It is a lovely sentiment, and the reader agrees that Pamela’s true assets are too worthy of admiration to be merely coveted.

  Richardson’s point is that neither sex has a monopoly on virtue in the chivalric ideal.  Pamela is the chaste female who favourably influences the male toward goodness, and readily welcomes him when he at last embraces it.  Mr B is touched when she, goodness incarnate, honors him by calling him ‘good’, and so he willingly returns to what Lady Davers praises him for, his ‘usual generosity of spirit’.[viii]  In the argument with his sister he defends his marriage, in terms to illustrate his full understanding of what good has been done him: ‘A man ennobles the woman he takes, be she who she will’. [ix]  For him, Pamela deserves no less than the very best he can give her: his love, his respect, and his family name.

  Richardson does not end the novel with the marriage and a promise of ‘happily ever after’.  Pamela’s virtue carries on, to idealise the genteel, modest female in a variety of social situations.  She endures, capable, intelligent, responsible, self-effacing, never haughty.  The new Mrs B assumes her role as gentleman’s wife with reserve and grace, almost out of character for a modestly cultivated servile-class teenager.  True to the chivalric code, she acknowledges her responsibility to continue as his lantern of virtue: ‘To be sure, a woman cannot be too good’. [x]   

  Yet she will expect the same standard of behaviour from him– in fact, from all men.  She favorably impresses her sister-in-law and all the ladies of Mr B’s society, who find new inspiration in witnessing Pamela’s humility and graciousness; they marvel as she gives silver to the poor squarely in front of them all.  Pamela acknowledges her responsibility: ‘God raised me to a condition to be useful to better persons than myself’. [xi]  All along she has been an instrument of God– which, after all, is the only truly noble calling.

  I believe this is a book for idealists.  It must be monotonous to read such a high ideal so relentlessly idealised if one is not in total agreement with the principle.  But ideals, and idealists, have their place.  It is the purpose of an ideal to be universal, to transcend race, ethnicity, natural law, God’s law, and socioeconomic station.  Richardson very plainly intends ‘to instruct and improve the minds of the youth of both sexes’, [xii] and touts this as a realistic ideal, one which should be presented to youth on down through the ages.  He was very mindful of the new order he was proposing: ‘The ideal in human relations… is direct emotional contact with another person’. [xiii]

  After all, why must virtue ever be out of date?  In my view Pamela still stands as a model for female behaviour, and the early Mr B, of course, as the precise opposite of desired male behaviour.  Pamela’s responses to his 48 rules for married bliss indicate that here is a woman two hundred-odd years ahead of her time, a champion of equal treatment in gender discourse.  In a period when wives were considered chattel, she proposes that women exert some degree of free will over their husbands– but always in their best interests.  She embraces what the Soviet jazz musicians of the Cold War era knew, when faced with a potentially oppressive environment, that there is liberty in ‘improvising within the system’.

  As a novel Pamela succeeds gloriously in the two most basic purposes of all literature: to delight and to instruct.  In its day it was popular for being fanciful and devotional at once.  I feel it ranks with any piece of chivalric literature, as an example of how noble ideals are to applied to situations in which anyone’s word may be suspect, duplicity is a practised art, and no-one is quite what they seem.  Dickens’ John Jarndyce advises in Bleak House that the prudent approach is to trust only in God’s hand and in one’s own efforts.  All else may be forfeit– but if so, one’s goodness survives until it may be of the most use for others who need it.

  Fifty years hence, Mary Wollstonecraft would propose a standard of conduct for both genders in society, based on merit and not appearance, insisting, ‘Elegance is inferior to virtue’. [xiv]

  No doubt Pamela would agree.

* * *

---

[i]  As an uncanny coincidence, the word count on the original of this paper is 1741– the same figure as the year Richardson declared his edition of Pamela completed –JC

[ii] Caxton’s handbook  - In about 1485 William Caxton, an English historian and contemporary of Malory, set down in A Book of Chivalrie what he perceived to be the rules of chivalric code, which became widely read and emulated throughout Europe –JC

[iii]     to give... the wife  - Richardson; Pamela, p. 31

[iv]    exchange opinion on this  - Ibid, pp. 59-60

[v]  For what...  peace  - Ibid, p. 122

[vi]    Virtue is the only nobility  - Ibid, p. 83.  There is some debate about the origin of this statement; its gist appears in Juvenal's Satires and elsewhere since.

[vii]   I might... you  - Ibid, p. 309

[viii]   usual generosity of spirit  - Ibid, p. 294

[ix]    A man... she will  - Ibid, p. 441

[x]  To be sure, a woman cannot be too good  - Ibid, p. 470; on his Rule 47

[xi]    God raised me... myself  - Ibid, p. 515

[xii]   to instruct... both sexes  - Ibid, p. 31

[xiii]  The ideal... another person  - Golden, p. 128

[xiv]  Elegance is inferior to virtue  - Wollstonecraft; A Vindication on The Rights of Woman; 1793