Epistolary Interior and Figures of Waste in Pamela

In this paper, I argue that while the epistolary novel focuses on the mimesis of letter writing and epistolary verisimilitude, it necessarily exceeds its own functions and produces a certain form of textual waste. In Pamela this is not a one-way traffic, whereby Richardson uses typography simply to perpetuate or imitate reality in the second order. Instead, I suggest that for Richardson the epistolary form can be a kind of reality, revealing a kind of awareness of excess and doubleness that are embedded in the margin of letters and the figures of waste. Pamela's popularity therefore suggests that various epistolary excesses in Pamela are no mere idiosyncratic arrangement of the letters' formal qualities, but are evidence of a larger cultural suspicion toward material functionalities.