The Governess and Crowd Control

Reading The Governess, I find I am touched in quite a different way from Richardson's Pamela. Somehow, Fielding has managed to find a morality tale that reads as more real to life, and yet at the same times includes quite a bit of shameless allegorical storytelling as its teaching vehicle. There were even a few bits about how to act as a governess, or one responsible for educating young people, which I found to be quite amusing. Both of the pieces are directed towards the improvement of the reader, but it seems that Fielding wanted to avoid the criticisms that Pamela/Clarissa and Richardson received for their attempt at showing the virtuous path to self improvement. In Pamela, the narrative presided over the moral messages, leaving room for the audience to spread doubt on the virtue of Pamela. The lessons to be spread were left largely implicit until the end, where Richardson attempts to tell the reader exactly how to understand and interpret each character. Fielding, writing a simpler narrative, avoided that with a rather simple rule of grammar that might have saved Richardson all the headaches of criticism against his characters and novels (although may also have cost him not a small fortune in sales). That rule is to put the modifier as close to the object that it modifies as possible, and you will avoid much potentially devastating miscommunication so common to the reader, as opposed to the interrogative prerogative of the listener. In this way, Fielding manages to stop the critical train of thought from ever gathering steam, while Richardson's reader finds enough of time and material to be critical in spite of his attempt to regain that control.
This brings to mind the idea that a person wishing to write literature that promotes proper conduct, should probably consider the potential audience that one is writing for. With Richardson the audience occupies an odd space where the reader is not the focus, but it seems to be expected that the reader will have their own conclusions. His explicit instructions occur too far away from their poignant moments to have any dramatic effect upon the reader. In The Governess Sarah Fielding produces a work that clearly marks the role of the reader, and in part positions them in a position alongside the other girls as they listen to the chosen reader for the day. This produces an odd sensation of reading what someone else is supposed to be reading aloud, and also having to fill in that voice, making the reader both audience and participant in an activity that leaves little room for their own individual input and none at all for their voice to be heard. The state of explicitness regarding the moral lessons for the novel essentially employs the reader while removing them from the process of criticism, which I believe is one of the morals of the Fairy Story -  that we should all listen to our wise mother, or in this case Sarah Fielding.