monk, the role of villain
devolves on the Marquis of L---- V----'s father, who tries to block at
all turns the impending marriage between his son and this peasant girl.
It is the elder Marquis who causes St. Fal to imprison Jenny, and it is
Jenny's plot to avoid the elder Marquis which causes her to be
threatened by the Colbrand-like Swiss. Throughout all this, the young
Marquis remains unblemished, his proposal of a clandestine marriage and
his excessive jealousy simply indicating his passionate love, not his
moral turpitude.

The implications of this important difference between Mr. B and the
Marquis of L---- V---- should be clear to us even if they were not to
the author of _Pamela Censured_. As Ralph Rader indicates in a recent
essay dealing with, among other things, the narrative form of _Pamela_:
"Richardson's chief problem in the novel is the need his form imposes to
make Mr. B. both a villain and a hero. B. must threaten Pamela and
threaten her increasingly, else our sense of her danger and the merit
which develops from her response to danger will not increase, as the
form requires, along lines that make her ultimate reward possible; but
the more directly and villainously he does threaten her, the less
acceptable he will appear as an ultimate and satisfactory reward for
her, something that the form requires also."[11] Jenny's reward, her
marriage to the Marquis of L---- V----, raises no serious moral
questions since the Marquis remains virtuous throughout the story.
Moreover, while Jenny carefully protects her chastity, she does not in
any sense seem motivated by mercenary desires since the preservation of
her chastity does not necessarily lead to her marriage with the Marquis.
Pamela's reward, on the other hand, is marriage to a vicious though
presumably reformed rake. The preservation of her chastity, furthermore,
seems motivated by mercenary goals. Finding herself in a situation where
she either looses her chastity and becomes Mr. B's whore or preserves
her chastity and becomes his wife, Pamela clearly chooses the more
profitable alternative.

The artistic success of _Clarissa_ undoubtedly reflects in part the
lesson Richardson learned from such moral attacks as _Pamela Censured_
and _Shamela_. While "warm scenes" remain in his second novel--as indeed
they must in any realistic portrayal of male-female
relations--Richardson continually tempers these scenes with clear
indications of Lovelace's vicious natur