The Namesake

For the past few weeks, we've been reading Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson in the 18th Century Novel class. I always wanted to read this book, since I was named after a woman who was named after it. After all these weeks, it's clear that my parents never read the book before they gave me this name, evidently on impulse.
Until recently, all I knew about the name was that it was invented in the 18th century for use in a poem. The poet put together a couple of Latin roots to come up with a name that means "all honey." In other words, anyone named Pamela is supposed to be sweet, kind, gentle, and genteel. That is a lot to live up to, even in the 18th century, let alone any time over the past several decades.
So. Pamela the novel. My classmates have been greeting me with, "Pamela's an idiot!" for a while now, and are they ever right! This perfectly beautiful young peasant woman becomes a chambermaid, attracts the attention of her master, refuses to compromise her virtue (which she says at one point is the only thing of value that she has, and do we ever agree), is kidnapped by his servants, held prisoner, tries to escape, fails miserably, nearly gets raped by her master, and finally convinces him to let her return to her parents. She gets into the coach and is on her way home, when he sends a messenger to tell her that he has become ill, and could she please return to where she's been captive for weeks because why? Because he misses her, and will never mistreat her again.
Of course, being a female character written by a man in the 18th century, she picks herself up and returns to the mansion, where she and the master plan a nice private secret wedding. Throughout the novel, Pamela is devout, sickly sweet, and amazingly helpless, except when she's counting money.
This novel provided the template for thousands of English language novels over the years. Since romance sells, for centuries readers, historically mostly women, have been reading this twaddle and believing it.
Some readers have even believed that someone who attempts a rape can change utterly and completely, and make good marriage material. The students in the class are not among the believers.
As a small female child, it occurred to me that male authors might be facing some challenges in writing about women; I've definitely noticed that certain women mystery authors in particular have problems in creating believable male characters. Obviously the difficulty has been situated at the center of the novel since its beginning in the 18th century.
Now I have to calm down and write a serious paper about Pamela. And I can't use the word "idiot" even once.