Pamela and Shamela

As I wrote in my last post, I was surprised that Richardson could have missed the message that he was sending, considering that money is never out of the picture in Pamela. Just one of many examples is when Pamela describes the scene in which Mr. B. comes out of hiding in her closet, intending to rape her, and she notes that he was wearing "a rich silk and silver Morning Gown" (63). Moments like this suggest that Pamela is attracted to him or to his wealth and is open to a relationship with him if he reforms. Fielding's Shamela plays on this, but has a different take. Shamela mocks the money-grubbing message of Pamela, but also endorses class hierarchies by presenting Pamela as a calculating servant girl trying to trap a wealthy man. Shamela is comfortable with the prospect of literally whoring herself. She says, " I thought once of making a little Fortune by my person. I now intend to make a great one by my Vartue" (97). While Richardson keeps class distinctions intact by making it very clear that Pamela is to be grateful to her master, he also suggests that a poor girl can value her virtue as highly as a wealthy girl can. Fielding, by presenting Pamela as calculating her conquest while having an affair with Williams, mocks Richardson's imperceptiveness, but also mocks the idea that a servant girl's virtue can have any value.
One thing I wondered was whether servant girls were a particularly sexualized class. The instructor of another class I took said that in the medieval period, it was considered acceptable for an aristocrat to rape a peasant girl on his land as long as she wasn't a nun. I wonder if it was still that way in the eighteenth century?