“A most wicked jest”: Titillation, Rape Jokes, and the Ethics of Laughter in Pamela

Abstract: This article examines Samuel Richardson’s use of the joke as a structuring principle in Pamela . Long recognized as a “comedy” in the traditional sense of the word—a genre ending in marriage—I argue that the novel’s frequent scenes of near-rape and sexual coercion can be read as “jokes,” structurally aligned through their use of comedic reversal with the category of the rape joke. I interrogate Richardson’s use of the joke structure, attempting to identify what the ethical implications of such structurally induced laughter might be. At core, I seek to introduce a novel way of reading texts through the structural lens of the joke and to show how Pamela functions in gist as a “wicked jest,” both tantalizing and teasing its reader into an ethically problematic response.