Cross-Examination
Dr. Matchel was becoming more and more agitated. She slammed her hands on the table. “I cannot believe you are allowing this testimony,” she told Judge Hardcastle. “This man admits he planned a rape. There is no way, by any standards, that this is acceptable fiction.”
“I don’t agree,” blurted the dark-haired young woman in the audience benches.
Everybody looked at her. She blushed at the attention but grinned and waved a hand.
The judge said, “Ah, Ms. Walsh? My clerk gave you a pass this morning?”
“Miss. Deborah. Yes.”
“I’m afraid you have no expert standing in this hearing.”
“I review romance novels,” Deborah said hopefully.
Gary and Dr. Matchel looked pained, but the judge set down a folder and said, “Really? Would you call this novel a romance?”
“Sort of,” Deborah said. “It’s really more a polemic about education and servants and stuff. But it has a lot of the same material you’d find in a romance novel.”
“Such as?”
Dr. Matchel objected: “A discussion of romance novels is hardly appropriate.”
“We are looking for established literary customs,” the judge said briskly. “What are the romantic components in Pamela, Miss Walsh?”
“There’s a heroine, first of all, and she’s good--you know, virtuous. And there’s a hero, and he’s a rake. And he pursues her and gets her into bed, but he backs off at the last moment, and then they reconcile, and then they marry.”
Dr. Matchel cried, “These romance novels have done more to undermine women’s rights than any other type of literature.”
“Oh, that’s old-school,” Deborah said. “Like people who think women should only have supported Hillary in 2008.”
The judge said, “Do other eighteenth-century novels share these components?”
“No!” Dr. Matchel said, but Leslie Quinn said, “Yes. Novels for the middle-class. Broadsheets. The romantic romance isn’t new. Everyone likes a juicy story.”
The judge glanced at Mr. B who looked rather shell-shocked. The judge couldn’t blame him. Mr. B was being depicted as either a lecher or a champion. Personally, the judge thought both roles would prove uncomfortable.
“Did you back off?” he said.
“In a sense,” Mr. B said, still looking guarded. He continued his testimony.
Week 6 (continued)
Towards evening, I went to my room to change and from there to Pamela’s square bedroom with its canopied bed and large French chest. She and Mrs. Jewkes were in the back parlor downstairs. I sat in the elbow-chair in the darkest corner and covered my face with an apron and my legs with a petticoat as if I were the maid. I dozed off and on until I heard Mrs. Jewkes and Pamela come upstairs.
Mrs. Jewkes was teasing Pamela about her writing. Pamela was complaining about me. She ignored the “maid,” whom she obviously thought was drunk, but she checked the closet--I smiled to myself--and finally went to bed, still talking rapidly. Pamela is no fool. She knew something wasn’t right.
They doused the candles and after a few minutes, I got up and undressed. I sat down on the edge of the bed closest to Pamela. I slid under the covers.
“Are you alright?” she said, thinking I was the maid.
I suppose no red-blooded gentleman will believe me, but for a long moment, I just wanted to sleep--there, next to Pamela with my arm across her middle. Sleep away dreams, sleep away thoughts of drowning. I suppose I was already drowning, and Pamela was the only way out, the only way up. I slid closer until her arm was under my shoulders and clasped her around the waist.
I kissed her full on the mouth before she could scream, and then I came up for air, and she did scream. Mrs. Jewkes was somewhere on the periphery, shouting, “Don’t dilly-dally, sir.”
Cross-Examination
“Mrs. Jewkes encouraged you to violate the girl?” Judge Hardcastle said, dumbfounded. He was beginning to think he’d stumbled into a cross between Charles Dickens and Married with Children.
“Mrs. Jewkes has an uncomplicated approach to problems,” Mr. B said.
“She hates her own gender,” proclaimed Dr. Matchel.
“She’s a damned good housekeeper,” Mr. B said.
Dr. Matchel blanched. Gary sputtered. The judge couldn’t blame them. For a man claiming to be in love, Mr. B’s matter-of-fact attitude was a trifle chilling.
Leslie Quinn said, “Sex was a less private matter in eighteenth-century households than in our modern world.”
Mr. B said, “I did not have sex with Pamela in front of Mrs. Jewkes.”
“You almost did,” Gary said. “That woman’s a voyeur.”
The judge had to agree. “Surely, a servant would have more propriety—”
“Most servants are sluts,” Mr. Shorter muttered; Mr. B kicked him.
“What?” the judge said sharply.
Leslie Quinn said, “Servant women were considered more, ah, earthy than women of the upper classes.”
The judge had been right: this was definitely Married with Children meets Twisted Tales of Bleak Expectations.
Mr. B said wearily, “I did not have sex in front of Mrs. Jewkes.”
“What did happen?” the judge said.
Week 6 (continued)
Pamela was still screaming, and I was trying to explain that this was it, she might as well accept my proposals, and then she went limp, completely limp, like something dead.
“She’s had a fit,” I said, getting up.
“Ah, she’s faking, sir,” Mrs. Jewkes said.
“No, she isn’t,” I said and lit a candle. Pamela lay on the bed, white and motionless. Mrs. Jewkes leaned over her.
“She’s breathing,” she said while I pulled on my gown and slippers. I brought another candle to the bed and sat on the free side.
“Can you wake her?” I said.
 |
| Ah! The smell of ammonia! |
| If you want to revive yourself |
| after a swoon, smelling salts |
| can be purchased at most drugstores. |
She was terrified of drowning.
She sat up, edging backwards until she struck the headboard.
“Pamela,” I said gently. “Pamela.”
She watched me warily like something wild and injured. I leaned forward, speaking softly, and she put her hand on my mouth. We gazed at each other over her fingers.
She said, “Did I suffer any distress?”
“No,” I said. “I promise you I did nothing.”
“Well, you could now, seeing as she’s well,” Mrs. Jewkes said stolidly.
Pamela’s eyes rolled back in her head. She was pressed sideways against the bed’s headboard and would have fallen to the floor if I hadn’t caught her.
“Get out of here,” I said to Mrs. Jewkes. “Send the maid in.”
Cross-Examination
“He sent Mrs. Jewkes away,” Gary said. “He arranged to be alone in order to—”
“I did not violate her,” Mr. B shouted, and Judge Hardcastle banged his gavel.
“None of that,” he said sternly, and Mr. B slumped in his chair, a hand to his face. The judge eyed the man’s tight lips and closed eyes.
Dr. Matchel said, “Pamela was unconscious. Whatever isn’t stated in the text directly—”
The judge interrupted: “Does the text suggest in any way that Pamela was violated at this time?”
“No,” Lonquist said, and Leslie Quinn said, “I think Pamela would have known. She only asked Mr. B out of innocence. If she’d really been, uh, deflowered, she would have written about it.”
The judge glanced at Mr. Hatch who nodded reluctant agreement.
“Then she wasn’t raped.” There would be no deconstructionism in Judge Hardcastle’s court. Texts thrived on their own and all that, but meaning was meaning, and some things just happened and some things just did not.
“She must have been very frightened,” he said gently, and Mr. B, eyes still closed, said, “Yes.”
Mr. Hatch said, “It’s obvious Pamela suffered a dissociative fugue.”
Lonquist said, “She swooned. Everybody in eighteenth-century literature swooned. Even men swooned.”
Leslie Quinn said, “Swooning was a recognized reaction to emotional upheaval during this time period. Emotions are universal, but expressions of emotions are not. Swooning was an acceptable form of expression.”
“So—Pamela would swoon whenever she was upset,” the judge said.
“Whenever she needed to protect her future,” Leslie Quinn said.
“Whenever I was being an idiot,” Mr. B said. He was sitting up now, hands splayed on the table. “I stopped being one.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” the judge said. “If you can refrain from shouting, I suggest you continue your testimony.”
Week 6 (continued)
I laid Pamela flat on the bed; she was light, too light. She hadn’t been eating as Mrs. Jewkes claimed. I touched her cheek, and it was cold. There was a scar along her hairline I didn’t remember from Bedfordshire.
The maid showed up, blinking confusedly.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Nan, sir.”
“Sit down there, Nan.”
Nan agreed, wide-eyed. I waited, holding Pamela’s hand, watching her face as Nan waved the smelling salts.
Pamela entered consciousness slowly. Her eyes fixed on me.
“Nan will sleep here tonight,” I said. “I sent Mrs. Jewkes to her room.”
“Won’t the same thing happen again? Only this time with Nan to encourage you?”
“No,” I said. “I will not come in again tonight. Say you forgive me, Pamela,” and I kissed her hand.
“God forgive you, sir,” she said.
I had to be content with that.
Cross-Examination
Judge Hardcastle sighed, clasped his hands, and studied Mr. B. “Did you try again?”
“No,” Mr. B said. “Absolutely not.”
Gary said, “Your presence in the house was violation enough.”
Dr. Matchel said, “The mere possibility of rape would traumatize Pamela for years to come.”
Deborah didn’t hesitant to speak up this time. “But this wasn’t a real rape attempt,” she said, and everyone looked at her, including Mr. B.
“I suppose,” Dr. Matchel said icily, “you are one of those Katie Roiphe-type girls who think women ask for rape.”
“Sure, I read The Morning After. That’s not the point.” When no one stopped her, Deborah continued, “Romance rape is never really rape. Some scholars think the hero actually represents the dark side of the female psyche—the whole thing is sort of Jungian—”
The judge disliked overextended metaphors and must have looked it because Deborah said, “Yes, I know. I think it’s farfetched too. But the point is, the heroine is never completely at odds with the hero.”
“I can’t believe we are belittling the worst thing that could happen to a woman,” Gary sputtered.
“It isn’t the worse thing that could happen to Pamela the character. Anything Mr. B does to her will never be the worst thing because he is the hero, and he ultimately means well.”
Gary threw up his arms. “Talk about moral relativism. Why are we even here?!”
Everyone turned to stare at Gary.
“Gary!” Dr. Matchel said.
He folded his arms and tried to look belligerent. “I have to question things.”
“I think it’s a great question,” Lonquist said, looking amused.
But the judge wasn’t about to have the entire hearing put in jeopardy with more deconstructionist nonsense.
He said, “We are here to discover if Pamela has or will suffer beyond the scope of her time-period or genre. Even poor Tess of the D’Urbervilles was released from that terrible existence—” to a moderately less depressing novel (she wouldn’t, it was argued, be able to comprehend an entirely happy one).
“Pamela has and will suffer,” Dr. Matchel said sharply, still glaring at Gary.
“But not from Mr. B,” Deborah said. “The worst thing that could happen to Pamela would be if Lady Davers’s nephew tried to rape her. Or if she had to marry Williams.”
There was a brief pause, and then Mr. B laughed without restraint, lines creasing about his eyes.
Mr. Hatch said quickly, “None of this alters that Pamela was upset.”
“Yes,” the judge agreed, “but it does mean we can move on.”
