Content warning: This Themes section includes references to attempted rape and sexual harassment.

The major conflict of the novel is Pamela’s resistance to Mr. B’s sexual desire. Because Mr. B is a wealthy man, and Pamela is poor, he often resorts to offering her money and expensive gifts in exchange for her yielding to him. However, Pamela consistently asserts the importance of choosing personal integrity over material rewards. She learns this lesson from her parents, who insist that “what signify all the riches in the world, if you are to be ruined and undone!” (45) Having internalizes this belief, Pamela is eager to avoid any connection between material gain and illicit sexuality; when she plans to leave Bedfordshire, she refuses to take the clothes Mr. B has gifted her, telling Mrs. Jervis that “they were to be the price of my shame” (111). As Mr. B explicitly proposes to pay her for being his mistress, Pamela grows more strident in her refusal: “to lose the best jewel, my virtue, would be poorly recompensed by the jewels you propose to give me” (229).

Pamela’s decision not to trade her chastity for jewels and fancy

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