Even at the time of publication, critics argued that Richardson's heroine was too passive. Why didn't she simply remove herself from Mr. B's house? (The critics weren't upset about her staying for feminist reasons; they were upset because Pamela didn't behave like a "good" servant.)
However, what even critics like Fielding failed to appreciate was how limited Pamela's options truly were. In the eighteenth century, female servants were supposed to be servile and impoverished or sluts (and impoverished).
Pamela doesn't want to be servile, impoverished, or a slut. Her constant calculation of expenses and belongings isn't manipulative; it is about survival. After all, this is the age of no credit cards, no welfare, and no sexual harassment laws where debts could land a person in jail.
But the thing that makes Pamela great is not the heroine's lack of options. Her lack of options is a given. What makes Pamela great is the heroine's wit and willingness to defend what she perceives as her core personality.
One of the difficulties with the book Pamela is how much of the wit is
lost in the lecturing. But Richardson was a truly masterful writer.
However much he loves to preach, he can't keep Pamela's character from
creeping through--and what creeps through is consistent. Behind all the
verbiage is a powerful voice that will not be shut up, NOT because
Pamela is particularly aggressive (although she is far more assertive
than she paints herself) but because her voice comes across as genuine
and presents an intelligent, interesting, and passionately held
point-of-view.The genuineness of the voice, to me, is what makes the difference between good passive heroine fiction and bad passive heroine fiction. It isn't about telling people off (which too many romance writers, unfortunately, assume). It's about letting the reader into the heroine's head, letting the heroine speak, letting us see her internal conflicts. And if she is witty about it--all the better.
Here is a list of novels where the heroine, is unable to control her circumstances due to conditions and/or personality (i.e. for part of the book, she is a victim), yet still manages to endear herself to the reader and make a life for herself:
Celine by Brock Cole
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Wyrms by Orson Scott Card
Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Deerskin by Robin McKinley
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
