The edition of Pamela a person reads will affect his or her perception of Pamela's ascent into aristocratic society. Richardson's revisions to the fourteenth edition of Pamela, published posthumously in 1801, change Pamela's character from the 1740 first edition in such a way as to make her social climb more believable to readers outside the novel and to "readers" inside the novel. Pamela alters her language, her actions, and her role in the household by the end of the first edition; in the fourteenth edition, however, she changes in little more than her title. Pamela might begin as a novel that threatens the fabric of class hierarchies, but it ends-both within the plot and externally throughout its many editions-as a novel that stabilizes and strengthens social norms.

This thesis examines representations of trust in selected British sentimental novels of the eighteenth century. It focuses principally on the manner in which sentimental prose fiction reflects and participates in the shift from premodern to modern formations of trust. Commenting on the nature of modern trust, Anthony Giddens claims that, with the move to modernity, trust relations in the intimate sphere become increasingly dependent on emotional mutuality, while trust in institutions becomes increasingly impersonal and disengaged from assessments of moral character. / My work explores this dual shift in three sentimental novels. It first analyzes Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) and contends that Richardson denies the concept of honor its epistemological role in practical deliberations. The denial of the epistemology of honor uncouples the mechanism of personal trust from assessments of role and role performance and thus makes the trust in persons in the intimate sphere less dependent on institutional forms of trust. To replace honor's role in the formation of trust, Richardson proposes that the sentiments can provide reliable grounds for trust in the intimate sphere. However, he denies the sentiments a role in the formation of an encompassing social trust among strangers and mere acquaintances. The thesis proceeds to read Henry Fielding's Amelia (1751). In order to argue that Fielding envisioned divergent grounds for trust relations, it maintains that Fielding considers trust relations in the intimate sphere and trust relations in public life as based on the sentiments and fair distribution respectively. To conclude, the thesis investigates Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) to uncover the manner in which Goldsmith distinguishes personal trust in the intimate sphere from general system trust, which Goldsmith ultimately envisions as an ontological trust in providence.

No description available.