Influence or ‘Influenza’? Pamela, Anti-Pamela, and the Tradition of Women’s Amatory Fiction

Abstract

撒姆耳‧理查生(Samuel Richardson)的《帕梅拉》(Pamela)甫自1740年11月一出版即大受歡迎,對此暢銷書的瘋狂熱潮很快發展成史無前例、轟動社會的事件,通常稱之爲「《帕梅拉》爭議」(the Pamela controversy)。亨利‧費爾汀(Henry Fielding)1741年4月出版的《羞梅拉》(Shamela)和伊萊莎‧海鄔德(Eliza Haywood)1741年6月出版的《反帕梅拉》(Anti-Pamela)爲眾多回應《帕梅拉》風潮的文學作品中之兩部,彼此出版日期相距未及兩個月。然而,若更近一步檢視這三部小說,則可發現雖然費爾汀和海鄔德同樣以其仿擬小說攻擊理查生,海鄔德的《反帕梅拉》卻比費爾汀的《羞梅拉》在風格上更接近理查生的《帕梅拉》。本文旨在探討理查生的《帕梅拉》和海鄔德常被忽略的作品《反帕梅拉》之間的互文影響。筆者認爲兩者風格之相似性並非來自海鄔德之模仿理查生,而是源自理查生融合了女性情愛小說傳統之元素於其自身小說中,在該傳統中海鄔德1720年代作品佔據相當重要的地位。換句話說,儘管理查生一貫地譴責女性情愛小說就像「傳染病」般,他的文本卻透露其事實上受惠於海鄔德早期小說;而海鄔德在創作《反怕梅拉》時,並未離棄其1720年代小說創作之風格,因此造成海鄔德似乎在風格上仿效理查生之假象。本研究分析顯示理查生和海鄔德之間的文本交流影響絕非單一方向,而是多重方向,亦反映出在企圖重建英國小說文類興起與發展之「眞實」歷史時所面臨的複雜情境。

The publication of Samuel Richardson`s Pamela in November 1740 was an immediate success, and the frenzy over the immensely popular novel quickly developed into an unprecedented sensational event commonly called ”the Pamela controversy.” Among the very first literary responses to the Pamela vogue are Henry Fielding`s Shamela (April 1741) and Eliza Haywood`s Anti-Pamela (June 1741), published within less than two months from each other. A closer look at the three novels, however, reveals that Haywood`s Anti-Pamela is curiously closer in style to Richardson`s Pamela than to Fielding`s Shamela, despite the fact that both Fielding and Haywood aim at attacking Richardson with their parodic novels. As one of the first attempts to deal with the intertextual influences between Richardson`s Pamela and Haywood`s much neglected work Anti-Pamela, in this essay I argue that the similarity in style between the two texts comes not from Haywood`s imitating Richardson, but rather from Richardson`s incorporating elements from the tradition of women`s amatory fiction, of which Haywood`s works in the 1720s constitute a significant part. In other words, despite his consistent disparagement of such writings by women as ”influenza,” Richardson`s text betrays his indebtedness to Haywood, and in composing Anti-Pamela, Haywood does not depart much from her earlier novelistic style, thus leading to the false impression that Haywood is following Richardson in style. The analysis in the essay shows that the textual exchanges between Richardson and Haywood are never one-directional but intricately multi-directional, reflecting the complicated situation one encounters when trying to reconstruct the ”true” history of the rise and development of the English novel.