Well, I definitely though that I had already done this post until I did a quick review of my posts. Oh well, better late than never. So, Anti- Pamela and my thoughts. My thoughts were few. The idea of parody is easily and quickly understood not only by the story, but also from the layout of the story. Actually, when I originally opened the book, I thought I had accidentally picked up Pamela. I find that Haywood is slightly more upfront with her mockery than Fielding because of this as well as because of her title. Although Fielding’s is obviously a parody of the original novel, Haywood is much more direct with her intentions and her thoughts.
Anti-Pamela contained more humour for me personally than Pamela. Pamela did not contain the same humour that this novel does, because Pamela was more ridiculous than funny. I was personally annoyed a lot while reading Pamela, but this was not the case with Haywood’s novel. Since my annoyance had existed in Pamela, it made the humour better for me in this case. It is my belief that Haywood played on this expectation when creating “Anti-Pamela”, and this permitted a successful parody.
Although Syrena’s character shared extremely similar characteristics to Pamela, she was a far more enjoyable character. Pamela’s character drove me nuts by time, as she was full of woes and concerns, and yet she was sweet and loyal. Syrena’s character had this image, but it stopped at an image. I enjoyed how Haywood manipulated her and turned her into the person that I had wanted Pamela to be all along. It was great entertainment.
One other thing that I realized while reading this work, was that it brought out similar emotions that I experienced while reading Fantomina. I found myself quite humoured in Fantomina as I had in Anti-Pamela. The same sort of irony, and parody mixture was used in both novels, and apparently I quite enjoy this, because at several points I found myself snickering. Hmm, what does this say about my sense of humour?
Eliza Haywood
