Pamela

Mr. B is both the antagonist and the primary love interest of the novel: At first, he tries to force Pamela to abandon her moral principles and enter into an illicit sexual relationship, but once they are engaged he becomes a loving and supportive ally to Pamela. Mr. B is a wealthy, upper-class man who owns multiple estates throughout England. His wealth and social position are repeatedly linked to his selfish and entitled behavior; as Mr. B explains to Pamela, wealthy people who have never “been subject to controul, or even a contradiction” (465) become accustomed to simply having whatever they want. While Mr. B is a threatening figure, he is also young, handsome, and rich, which hints that he will eventually shift from being an object of fear to an object of desire.

When he starts his pursuit of Pamela, Mr. B is a dissolute young man who is “a little wildish” (45). It is eventually revealed that Mr. B had an illicit relationship with Sally Godfrey and fathered an illegitimate child; Mr. B also plotted “as my Pamela advanced to maturity, one day to prevail with her to be Sally Godfrey the second” (505). Along with this history of using women for his own gratification, Mr. B is violent towards Pamela in the first part of the novel: He fondles and kisses her without her consent, he abducts and imprisons her in his Lincolnshire estate, and he comes very close to raping her. Mr. B believes that Pamela should submit to his will because of the privileges he holds due to his gender and class; he also believes Pamela is at fault for the way he treats her, because she provokes his desire and then refuses to sleep with him.

Mr. B experiences significant character development, transitioning from cruelty and selfishness to love and devotion; Pamela eventually reports that “my dear master is all tenderness” (364). Mr. B’s development is prompted by Pamela’s unwavering integrity: He sees that her refusal to become his mistress is authentic, and not a manipulative stratagem. Mr. B is deeply moved by what he reads in Pamela’s letters: “you have touched me sensibly with your mournful tale” (276). Pamela’s long resistance also gives him the opportunity to reconsider his skepticism about marriage. In his bold decision to marry a woman of a much lower social station, and his steadfast loyalty to Pamela once he declares his love, Mr. B shows a willingness to flout social norms and follow his heart.

Lady Davers is the wealthy, aristocratic sister of Mr. B; she lives on her own estate with her husband. Lady Davers becomes an antagonist late in the novel when she bullies and persecutes Pamela, unable to accept that her brother has married a lower-class woman. Lady Davers is snobby and arrogant, and believes strongly in divisions between social classes. For example, she is horrified at the thought of her brother marrying Pamela: “with such ancient blood in your veins, untainted. I cannot bear to think of your thus debasing yourself” (294). Lady Davers is also aggressive, with no respect for boundaries or privacy. She barges into her brother’s bedchamber, shouting “in vain shall you think to hide your vileness from me!” (435), and is rude to Pamela, calling her a “pert wench” (414).

Mr. B attributes Lady Davers’s entitled behavior to her spoiled childhood: “humoured by our nurses, through the faults of our parents, we practise first upon them; and shew […] an insolence that ought at first to have been checked and restrained” (463). While generally presented as an unpleasant character, Lady Davers does reveal some nuance: When Mr. B got his first mistress, Sally Godfrey, pregnant, Lady Davers arranged for Sally to be cared for, and has a close and loving relationship with her young niece. Lady Davers has sympathy for fallen women, as long as they don’t disrupt the established social order.