In Pamela, Samuel Richardson presents a very definite link between clothing and writing, and thus between fabric and paper.  The novel commences with the modification of Pamela’s clothing, but as it progresses, her writing intensifies and becomes the focal point of the narrative, though the two remain inextricably linked.  When Pamela is first assailed by Mr. B, she concentrates on how her outer appearance can help her escape. Clothing choices, she rightly believes, will aid her shift between classes, for the fluctuations in fashion in the Eighteenth Century support Pamela’s class maneuverings.  She frequently writes letters to her parents to convey what is happening early in the novel, but when she is imprisoned, her writing becomes less a pastime or an amusement and more of an obsession.  Rendered illicit, it takes the form of a journal with less structure than the letters and without a clear addressee. She is forced to hide this journal in the only “private” place available to her – her underclothes.  Through this progression the writing transforms into a “body of work,” both because of its assimilation to Pamela’s physical body and the focus of it as a collection.  Through the stripping of Pamela’s freedom and the unraveling of her clothing the story is revealed.

           To understand the emphasis on Pamela’s clothing, it will help to provide some background of the history of fashion.   The manufacturing of women’s clothing underwent a transformation in the Eighteenth Century with the rise of the hoop petticoat.  The hoop petticoat was more fragile than its Elizabethan predecessor, and suited to lighter fabrics like silk, which were coming in from France in abundance (Chrisman 2).  At the end of the Seventeenth Century, the petticoat had begun to become popular, but what was once an undergarment became fashionable outerwear.  “When from about 1670 trained skirts became fashionable at Court, they were drawn back and up to form a kind of bustle and to reveal petticoats” (Ewing 36).  Chrisman notes: “The top petticoat (or underskirt) was frequently visible throughout the Seventeenth Century, giving it a new symbolic, if not literal prominence. (Chrisman 2).  In the Eighteenth Century, skirts gradually became shorter, and for the first time, underwear was something that was sexy: “What this focus of attention did on the petticoat and the smock meant was that feminine underwear, had for the first time, become sexy” (Ewing, 37).  The appeal of Pamela’s underclothing is not lost on us, but in this context we understand how shocking a focus on undergarments would have been for contemporary readers.   Caryn Chaden states “A new category of clothing appears in Pamela that had previously been confined to pornography –  undergarments” (Chaden 14).  But undergarment was a relative term as petticoats could be worn on top or underneath.  Later we will see how this ambiguity connects to Pamela’s particular narrative.

           The petticoat reached an unprecedented popularity in the Eighteenth Century, gaining in size and prevalence as never before.  Petticoats were worn across class lines, as more women had more money to purchase clothing  (Ewing 46). It has also been said that they allowed men to catch the first sight of women’s legs, because they were light and could blow up.  (Chrisman 8):  “Being able to see up a woman’s skirt – so long and voluminous for so many centuries – must have been a masculine, if not an artistic, preoccupation of long standing.  Since women wore no underpants, the sight of the nude leg undoubtedly carries rather intense associations with undefended nudity higher up” (Chrisman 8).   An understanding of the construction of women’s daily wear makes the relationship between Pamela and her clothing all the more intriguing and titillating.

           Clothing was also one of the first commodities to cross gender and class lines (Chrisman 7). Servant women like Pamela were among the first of the lower classes to don them as they often received their mistresses hand-me-downs.  And female servants, unlike their male counterparts, did not have a specific uniform (Bruckman 1).  “Servants provide a direct link between the upper and lower classes, the city and the countryside.  Thus, female servants were likely the first of the lower classes to wear hoops, as they often copied their mistresses’ wardrobes or inherited their castoffs” (Chrisman 7).  Defoe, in his 1725 “Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business,” sited the hoop as an indication of class mobility (Chrisman 7).  All of these factors explain and emphasize Richardson’s focus on Pamela’s clothes.  The social and economic climate of the day allowed Pamela the freedom to dress in her mistress’s clothes and to imitate the upper classes.  It is not surprising, then, that Mr. B gives her nice clothing and encourages Pamela to wear it, for this was the norm of the time.    If the servant position is a specialized one that bridges the gap between the upper and lower classes, then in this position is it acceptable for her to wear fine clothes. 

           However, Pamela imitates the upper classes in more than appearance, as she is educated beyond her status, a fact remarked upon by Mr. B and others frequently.  She illustrates this propensity through her speech, and most notably through her writing.  There are many ensuing linkages between clothing and writing, the writings as a collective, referred to alternatively as a journal (35, 267), and a novel (268, 281), and the corpus of clothing.  Besides the repeated references to Pamela hiding letters in her bosom (61, 261), we find she actually makes the letters a part of her apparel:   “But I begin to be afraid my writings may be discovered; for they grow bulky.  I stitch them hitherto to my undercoat, next my linen” (168). And later, “These, down to the issue of my unfortunate plot to escape, are, to the best of my remembrance, the contents of the papers, which this merciless woman seized: for how badly I came off, and what followed, I still have safe (as I hope) sewed in my under-coat, about my hips” (264).  The letters act as another layer of clothes, forming, along with her words, barriers against Mr. B’s sexual advances. 

           Just as Pamela crosses class boundaries with her clothing, Mr. B challenges gender boundaries when he assumes the person of Nan, the housemaid, wearing the clothes of Mrs. Jewkes.  As will happen often, Pamela’s (and Mr. B’s) undergarments are emphasized in the scene: “…To say my prayers, and this with my under clothes in my hand,…but little did I think it was my wicked, wicked master in a gown and petticoat of her’s” (240).  Clothes as well as words are used to transgress accepted boundaries and spaces.   Pamela is in the lengthy process of undressing in this infamous scene.  Fittingly, she begins to open up for the first time to Mrs. Jewkes, by telling her a bit of the story of her life:  “All this time we were undressing; and I fetching a deep sigh, ‘What do you sigh for?’ said she.  ‘I am thinking, Mrs. Jewkes, Mrs. Jewkes,’ answered I, ‘what a sad life I live, and how hard is my lot’” (238).  Pamela goes on for some time, relating her story, while we are reminded of her state of undress: “She heard me run on all this time, while I was undressing, without any interruption” (240). This scene is an update of the earlier scene with Mrs. Jervis where Mr. B leaps out of the closet, and where Pamela is also undressing (95).    In the second telling, the sexual danger is more imminent, but the two scenes obviously share a lot in common.   Caryn Chaden writes: “Even in the provocative bedroom scenes, when Mr. B surreptitiously watches Pamela remove her outer garments, Richardson parallels the state of undress with the private thought she reveals, for in each of those scenes Pamela begins to ‘give a little History of herself’ to the housekeeper attending her (66, 173)” (Chaden 115).  The act of disrobing is equated to the revealing of the plot.

           Like undergarments, the letters are something that should be kept private, but are often exposed in the novel for others pleasure.  And as “underwear” in the Eighteenth Century shifts to the outside of the body, Pamela’s private thoughts are undressed and exposed.  The story is denuded as Pamela writes herself in and out of her clothing, leading to diverse forms of exposure.  The eventual seizure of her letters mirrors this uncovering.  As Conboy notes: “When some of her letters are seized by Mrs. Jewkes, Mr. B insists upon reading them, and the exposure which Pamela fears parallels the sexual threat she has previously tried to suppress” (Conboy 91). Caryn Chaden also writes about this relationship, and quotes Ralph Cohen: “She sews the journal into her undergarments, creating a symbolic relationship between uncovering the journal and uncovering herself” (Qtd. in Chaden 114).  The letters become so entrenched in her clothes that it is physically and emotionally difficult to remove them: “So I took off my undercoat, and with great trouble of mind unscrewed the papers.  There is a vast quantity of writing” (272).

           Pamela is acutely aware that different clothes serve different functions.  She tells us so when she divides her clothes into three “bundles” – the clothes her Mistress has given her, the clothes Mr. B has given her from her Mistress’s closet, and the clothes she will wear at her parents’ house (109-111).  But letters are also often referred to in groups, forming what can be called Pamela’s “fourth bundle,” as the emphasis on itemizing and packaging them increases as her freedoms are diminished.   She gives Mr. Williams a “large parcel of letters” to keep safe and dispatch to her parents (Richardson, 180).  There are also the “two parcels” she is forced to give Mr. B, which she gives him one parcel at a time. “(P)ulling the first parcel out of my pocket, ‘Here, sire,’ said I, ‘since I cannot be excused, is the parcel, that goes on with my fruitless attempt to escape”  (274). Importantly, the letters are linked to her escape, signifying that Pamela equates autonomy with freedom of movement, as well as the ability to write.  And of course, there are the repeated references to hidden groups of letters.

           Patricia Bruckmann has pointed out Pamela’s invention in procuring fabric to make her simple clothes (Bruckmann 1).  But after she is abducted, the emphasis shifts to a focus on procuring pens and paper, an activity which mirrors the initial activity of obtaining the plain clothes she intends to wear to her parents’ house (76-77).  Pamela begs Mr. Longman to give her paper and pens.  What he gives her is enumerated, as in the case of the clothes: “[He] gave me three pens, some wafers, a stick of wax, twelve sheets of paper…” (80). Though Pamela is also given some pens and papers by Mrs. Jewkes, it is on the condition that Pamela show her everything she has written: “I will let you have a pen and ink and two sheets of paper…but, as I told you, I must always see your writing” (150). What begins as a simple request for pen and paper, when granted, turns into an obsessive accounting for what she has and where she will hide it: 

           But no sooner was her back turned, than I set about hiding a pen of my own here, and another there, for fear I should come to be denied, and a little ink in a broken china-cup, and a little in a small phial I found in the closet; and a sheet of paper here and there among my linen, with a bit of wax, and a few of the wafers, given to me by Mr. Longman, in several places, lest I should be searched (150). 

           The hiding of the paper among the linen emphasizes the connection between paper and fabric, and the detailing of writing equipment to the detailing of clothing supplies.  These two entities are Pamela’s most important assets.  The clothing enables her to slip between class lines – very important due to her shifting status, while her writing enables her to establish her present and secure her future.  Through detailing what happens to her, she exerts control over the situation, and tries to make sense of it.  When she is afraid of meeting Mr. B, she states: “To be sure something is resolving against me,/and he stays to hear all her stories./I can hardly write;/yet as I can do nothing else,/I know not how to lay down my pen.”  The strictures placed upon her reinforce her writing.  And, of course, the fact that Mr. B falls in love with her writing leads to their marriage.

           The supplies Mrs. Jewkes gives her are eventually not enough to contain Pamela’s prolific tendencies, and she must constantly beg for more.  Again the contents are enumerated: “I asked her for more paper; and she gave me a little phial of ink, eight sheets of paper, which she said was all her store…and six pens, with a piece of sealing wax” (188).  After her attempted escape, part of Pamela’s punishment (as foreshadowed in the passage above) is a reducing of her writing supplies: “[Mrs. Jewkes] has abridged me of paper all but one sheet, which I am to produce, written or unwritten, on demand.  She has also reduced me to one pen. Yet my hidden stores stand me instead” (217).  Reduced of her writing supplies, Pamela becomes more prolific and more cunning in the hiding of her work.

           Sheila Conboy has noted the connection between the pen and the needle, and the fabric of the story mirroring Pamela’s fixation on cloth and paper: “Pamela’s artifact of words has expanded in purpose, and what was meant as a personal record has become a ‘surprizing kind of Novel’ that weaves and reweaves the stuff of characters and of the readers who encounter it.  Pamela’s artistry, likewise, moves from the realm of traditional women’s role, her needlework, to the role of writer, weaver of words” (94).  Here Conboy is in fact remarking upon what we can term Pamela’s transition from making or procuring clothing to making writing and/or procuring writing tools.  Though she wrote letters at the beginning of the novel, by the end she has written a body of work.  Because letters must be hidden and meted out in packages by way of Mr. Williams and others  – they transform into both a journal and a novel.  It is the illicit nature of the letter writing that enables it to transform into more than just a bunch of letters.  If Pamela did not have to conceal her writing it would never have amassed to such an extent; the letters would have been sent to her parents, never to be seen again.

            In an extension of these motifs, clothes and documents take on lives of their own.  The letters act as seeds from which plot and action ensues.  They are compared to “horse-beans” as Pamela buries them in the garden when trying to communicate with Mr. Williams: “I went and stuck in here and there my beans, for about the length of five ells, on each side of the sun-flower; and easily deposited my letter” (169).  Pamela also buries her papers in the rosebush before trying to escape, in case she is caught (209), and the secretive letter delivered by the Gypsy is covered by clods of dirt (261), illustrating that letters when hidden have an enormous power to develop and grow.  Our awareness of the letters as evolving objects is amplified by the fact that Pamela is constantly copying letters other people have written to her such as Mr. Williams, Mr. Arnold, Mr. B and others.  She tells us when she is transcribing letters she has written to others for her parents (120).  At the same time, she is copying manner of dress in an attempt to fix her story and her identity.  These letters are not static, but grow and change, just as Pamela’s outer appearance is subject to shifts and changes. For example, we are given two versions of the letter from Pamela to Mrs. Jervis, in which the language is changed to reflect that she is a captive, and not a willing participant.(129,154).

           Futhermore, Pamela’s ubiquitous petticoat, the site of her literary core, is emblematized when she attempts escape.  The ghostly image of the petticoat floating in the pond – an intended signal from Pamela that she is dead – becomes a symbol of her identity.  At the moment when the petticoat is discovered, Pamela is the petticoat, though the reader knows she is not truly dead:  “Nan had thought to go towards the pond, and there seeing my coat, and cap and handkerchief, in the water, cast almost to the banks by the motion of the waves, she thought it was me, and screaming out, ran to Mrs. Jewkes, and said, ‘O madam, madam!  Here’s a piteous thing!  Pamela lies drowned in the pond!’” (215). The articles of clothing that Pamela throws into the pond later come under scrutiny by Mr. B when he threatens to search her clothing for the letters.  He asks her if they are in her stays, her pockets (which would be attached to the petticoat), or tied to her garters (271).  Given what we know about the prevalence of the petticoat in the Eighteenth Century, the extended focus on the petticoat is not strange.   Pamela strips the clothes that presuppose her identity in an attempt to regain her freedom. 

           It is fitting that Pamela derives the idea of throwing her clothes in the pond from a story, as she is obsessed with stories, and with her own story, a preoccupation that increases as the novel proceeds.  Her drive to write is strengthened by the fact that she must hide it, and ironically, that she has an audience beside her parents.  This dialectic culminates when she gives her “two parcels” of letters to Mr. B.  He states: “’I would have you,’ said he, ‘continue writing by all means; and I assure you, in the mind I am in, I will not ask you for any papers after these; except something extraordinary happens.  And if you send for those from your father, and let me read them, I may very probably give them all back again to you,’” to which Pamela responds in her journal, “This hope a little encourages me to continue scribbling; but, for fear of the worst, I will, when they come to any bulk, contrive some way to hide them, that I may protest I have them not about me, which, before, I could not say of a truth” (275). It is apparent that her dive to write is bolstered by the fact that “something extraordinary happens” – that someone should be so interested in what she writes that they go to extraordinary measures to see her work.

           Again, Mr. B famously makes references to undressing her in this scene: “’This, added he, ‘gave me a noble pretence to search you; and I have been vexing myself all night, that I did not strip you garment by garment, till I had found them’” (274). Once she hands them over, he takes the parcel and “(breaks) the seal instantly,” and since Pamela’s letters are so closely associated with her body, we cannot help but think he is metaphorically taking her virginity, something he will do physically once they are married.  This scene is climactic in terms of Pamela’s frenzy to write, and her relationship to Mr. B.  Subsequently, the novel descends to its denouement.

            In Pamela, the morass of letters and “writing” mirrors the tangles of thought and complex motivations that drive the plot.  While the letters seemingly reveal a brutal honesty, they also hint at a frightening artifice, for their transmission is complex and multi-layered.  And as Pamela’s clothing is deconstructed and peeled away, layers and layers of the plot are revealed, and a “hidden” story becomes public.  The connection between the cloth and the page is intricate and inextricable, while the emphasis on clothing and undergarments seems to mirror both a cultural anxiety and obsession.   Undergarments were for the first time being openly discussed in a written form other than pornography.  The omnipresent petticoat itself was once inner garment that became a visible outer layer of clothing.   Because women did not wear drawers as we know them today, the boundary between inner and outer garments was subject to ambiguity.  That the petticoat is so tied to women’s identity in society and in Pamela evokes Chrisman’s comment: “In the Eighteenth Century, perhaps for the first time, women were what they wore (Chrisman 7).  Like the undergarments of the day, Pamela’s inner thoughts, and her “surprizing novel,” are turned inside out.