In this paper I will challenge the dominant reading of Pamela that argues that Richardson constructs an interiorized character in Pamela through her letters and her occupation of the private space of the closet. I will contend, on the other hand, that Pamela does not have an independent, identifiable private self because of the performative nature of her letters and her movements; she develops subjectivity only when she performs. Furthermore, she performs various ‘roles’ such as maid, wife and lover, thus not inhabiting any one identity. Pamela does not so much present either a publication of the private or a privatization of the public as it suggests that these distinctions are meaningless.

The strong dramatic elements of Richardson’s text—the to-the-moment dialogue-like writing, the representation of space as a theatrical set, and the emphasis on costume—work together to present ‘scenes’ and tableaux in the novel. This theatricality suggests that Pamela is deeply interested in public performativity. Rather than seeing in Pamela the public articulation of the private imagination as Margaret Doody does, I see that Pamela’s interiority cannot be transparently represented through her words and actions.

Pamela’s vision of herself as a heroine, a heroine participating in extraordinarily melodramatic set pieces, further distances the reader from any interior identity that Pamela may have. These ‘scenes’ are staged for the benefit of, for example, B, the reader or Mrs. Jewkes, thus they are in a sense performed publicly and it is through these scenes that Pamela develops a subjectivity. Richardson represents both Pamela’s private interiority and her public persona as performances, thus the distinction collapses and subjectivity, as Judith Butler has argued, is revealed as a performance. Investigations of the public and the private have dominated eighteenth-century studies recently, thus it is particularly fruitful to question the validity of even distinguishing between the two in the eighteenth-century.