Pamela: Imagery 5 key examples

Pamela does not just tell her parents that Mr. B. is violent. Rather, she describes how "he made my Arm black and blue." The visual image of the "marks" bruising her arm also conjures the sensory image of how it must have felt for Pamela to have Mr. B. squeeze her arm so tightly. This imagery plays into the pathos of the scene. Pamela is trying to explain to her parents why she would stay in the room with Mr. B. when he is in this state. Her parents have insisted, quite intensely, that it would be better for her to die than to have sex with Mr. B. Drawing attention to her bruised arm helps her emphasize the fear and lack of control she feels in his presence. This scene is one of many in which Pamela demonstrates how herculean the task of resisting his advances really is. It is not that she wants to yield to him, she persuades her parents. Rather, he has her practically in a vice grip. Pamela is in a constant state of danger in his presence.

Pamela emphasizes the "brown nodding Horrors of lofty Elms and Pines" all around the big, "lonely" mansion. The poetic image of the "brown horror" of trees was common at this time. For instance, the 17th-century writer and translator John Dryden did a famous translation of Virgil's Aeneid that used this image. It typically signaled danger and adversity to come. Pamela notes that some of the dark trees are elms, which in some traditions are associated with death and are planted near graves. Gothic literature did not really take off until a few decades after Richardson wrote this novel, but Pamela is unmistakably describing a haunted house of the kind that features prominently in gothic novels. She can tell instantly that terrible things are going to happen to her inside the house, just from the way it looks. She uses the imagery to capture her sense of foreboding, which stands in sharp contrast to the hope she felt when she thought she was on her way to her parents' cheery house.

Mr. B. has often accused Pamela of witchcraft. He does not mean it literally; by the 18th century, very few people really believed in witches. However, it is one of his favorite insults for Pamela when she is not behaving as he wants her to. Here, Pamela demonstrates that Mr. B. has gotten in her head and made her superstitious about witchcraft. She knows that she is not a witch, but she has come to expect all kinds of horrors from Mr. B. and her captors. The bull is effectively one of her "watchers" because she cannot safely leave the Lincolnshire estate without encountering its "fiery Saucer Eyes," from which she is sure the devil stares out. The description of the bull's eyes as "fiery saucers" conjures the image of actual flames. Bulls can have a reddish rim around their eyes, but their eyes are by no means bursting with fire. Pamela might be exaggerating what she sees, but she also comes across as paranoid: she might actually believe what she is writing here. It is no wonder that she is paranoid given how closely Mr. B. is having Mrs. Jewkes and his other servants watch her. She encounters the bull as though it is a sentient guard representing Mr. B. and the devil's collective aim of keeping her trapped inside the house.

Pamela compares Mr. B.'s voice to a sudden "clap of thunder." Thunder itself can be startling and loud, and the imagery embedded in the simile helps the reader feel how instantaneously Mr. B.'s voice fills Pamela with fear in this moment. Additionally, thunder is associated with the destructive, sublime power of nature and God. Mr. B. holds the kind of power over Pamela that God and nature hold over humans. Pamela describes the piercing sound of her own scream "as never any body heard the like." This image conveys the fear Pamela feels in response to Mr. B.'s thunderous voice: she knows that he is about to assault her, and it is the worst thing she can imagine happening to her. She goes on to describe how her hands are "secured" so that she cannot fight back. The reader can see the image of Pamela being held down by Mr. B. and Mrs. Jewkes working in cooperation, but the reader is helpless to intervene. What's more, because Pamela is narrating her own experience, the reader can imagine the physical sensation of being held down. In this way, the reader's helplessness and Pamela's helplessness are conflated. By contrast, Pamela's imagery serves to amplify the power her simile has already granted to Mr. B.

Pamela has recently been crying in anticipatory grief on Mr. B.'s shoulder. Mr. B. points out the fragrance and beauty of the flowers around them. He urges Pamela not to dwell on his death, but instead to "take pleasure" in these images of life. He tells Pamela that it is easy to think that she, and not the recent rain shower, is the one responsible for "all Nature [that] blooms around me." He does not outright compare her tears to the rain shower. Still, he tells her that she has an "enlivening" effect on him. Altogether, Mr. B.'s words here suggest the image of Pamela crying on Mr. B. in order to bring him further to life, like the rain making the flowers grow more lush. He wants Pamela to reframe even her grief as a life-sustaining force for him.

Mr. B. is horrible to Pamela for the first half of the book, but he genuinely seems to have reformed by the end. There is a very legitimate argument that he still does not deserve Pamela's loyalty. However, Richardson is invested in his redemption arc as evidence of how powerful Pamela's virtue is. Her convictions, which Richardson wants young women in the real world to emulate, really have nurtured the formerly wicked Mr. B. into a sensitive and honorable husband.