She found the lectures stifling, but the intellectual demands bracing. She called it "seven years’ ecstatic experience interspersed with brief periods of gloom...a sort of lengthy spiritual-intellectual chess game.”

Modern readers might be somewhat amused to learn that this bodice-ripper is regarded as one of the early examples of “realistic” fiction. Is there any plot less true to life than the lord of the manor marrying his serving girl? But Pamela’s realism has little to do with the plausibility of the story. It lies, instead, in the novel’s scope and language.