In Letter 31, Pamela writes to her parents that she is coming home to them. This letter, the last before Pamela is cut off from letter-writing and takes up a journal instead, is full of dramatic irony:
I am now preparing for my Journey; and about taking Leave of my good Fellow-servants. And if I have not time to write, I must tell you the rest, when I am so happy as to be with you.
Pamela has no idea that Mr. B. is not sending her home, but rather to his Lincolnshire estate. There, she is to endure innumerable cruelties at the hand of Mrs. Jewkes and Mr. B. The editor cuts in to let the reader know that things are about to get worse for Pamela. But she seems to fully believe that her greatest challenges with Mr. B. are over. It is especially ironic that Pamela promises to fill her parents in when she sees them in person "if I have not time to write." The bulk of Pamela's writing is in the journal that follows the 32 letters, so it is clear that she will have plenty of time to write. However, Mr. B. will prevent her from sending most of her writing to her parents.
Pamela's belief that she is going home plays into her role as a heartbreakingly naive heroine. She has lived such a sheltered life until now, it seems, that she never suspects that things could get worse for her. Pamela is not always a clever character (at least on the surface), but Richardson takes pains to invite the reader's sympathy for her precisely because she is not clever in the ways of the world. She is so virtuous, he implies, that she believes the best in people when she ought to be far more suspicious.
On the other hand, Pamela does end up happily married to Mr. B. Whereas he spends the first half of the book insisting that he does not want to be married, he relents at last. By marrying him, Pamela climbs up the social ladder. This drastic change in her fortune suggests that Pamela could be more savvy than she first appears. It opens the possibility that Pamela knows more than she is letting on when Mr. B. sends her away.
In Letter 31, right after Pamela tells her parents that she is on her way to their house, the Editor breaks in to foreshadow the events Pamela will detail in her Journal. This foreshadowing leans heavily on dramatic irony:
Here it is necessary to observe, that the fair Pamela’s Tryals were not yet over; but the worst of all were to come, at a Time when she thought them all at an End, and that she was returning to her Father[...]
Unbeknownst to Pamela, she is not being taken home to her parents, but rather to Mr. B.'s other estate in Lincolnshire. The editor warns the reader to brace for the worst. This warning is especially ominous given the fact that Pamela has spent the entire book so far avoiding Mr. B.'s sexual violence. How much worse could it get for her?
As the reader comes to see, Mr. B. has only just gotten started in his campaign to control Pamela. Up until now, she has at least had the support of several servants, including Mrs. Jervis and, ostensibly, John the footman. At the Lincolnshire estate, Mr. B. cuts Pamela off from such supports. He has manipulated John to interfere with some of Pamela's letters before now, but from this point forward he drops almost all pretense of letting her communicate with her parents. She takes up journal writing, still addressing her entries to her parents, because she can no longer send them letters. He completely isolates her and installs Mrs. Jewkes, a loyal servant of his, to control her every move. Pamela endures the same abuse Mr. B. has been inflicting on her all along, but now she also endures the abuse of a servant who is openly on his side.
Richardson has been criticized, both by his contemporaries and by modern readers, for subjecting Pamela and other fictional heroines (most notably Clarissa Harlowe in Clarissa) to ever-escalating cruelty just to drive forward the plot of his novels. It is sometimes difficult to tell whether Richardson is more interested in condemning or gawking at the "tryals" Mr. B. puts Pamela through. This moment is one of the places where that tension is apparent: the "editor's" tone toward Pamela is sympathetic, but the interjection is also a reminder that the editor and the characters alike are Richardson's fictional inventions. He is not just assembling a set of letters and journal entries but furthermore making up all the "tryals" Pamela is experiencing.
In the Journal, Richardson reveals a bit of dramatic irony surrounding a letter Pamela supposedly sent to Mrs. Jervis after Mr. B. kidnapped her. The dramatic irony not only stirs up intrigue but also demonstrates that Pamela can be an unreliable narrator:
The Letter [Mr. B.] prescribed for me was this:
‘Dear Mrs. JERVIS,‘I Have, instead of being driven, by Robin, to my dear Father’s, been carry’d off, to where I have no Liberty to tell. However, at present, I am not us’d hardly; and I write to beg you to let my dear Father and Mother, whose Hearts must be well-nigh broken, know, that I am well; and that I am, and, by the Grace of God, ever will be, their dutiful and honest Daughter, as well as
‘Your obliged Friend.
‘I must neither send Date nor Place; but have most solemn Assurances of honourable Usage.’
The reader has already seen a version of this letter. In Letter 31, Pamela tells her parents about her plan to get away from Mr. B. and return home to them. Richardson then cuts in to reveal that Mr. B. is fooling Pamela: he is in fact sending her to another house he owns. Richardson includes a letter Pamela manages to send to Mrs. Jervis, assuring the woman and Pamela's parents that while she has been kidnapped and can't share many details, she is nonetheless safe. Now, encountering the same letter in Pamela's journal, the reader learns that Mr. B. "prescribed" it for her (wrote it ahead).
Even this letter to Mrs. Jervis, which previously stood out as a way Pamela was fighting back against her captor, was part of his master plan to manipulate everyone. The people most interested in protecting Pamela believe that she is safe because she has told them so—except that it was not her, after all, who wrote those words. Mr. B. thus buys himself some time to do what he wants to Pamela without the interference of worried parents or protectors. The reader now sits in suspense, wondering just how bad things will get for Pamela.
Pamela is not at fault for Mr. B.'s manipulation, but this revelation nonetheless demonstrates that just because Pamela writes something and signs her name to it does not mean that it is really true. Almost the entire novel consists of her letters and journals, documents typically associated with authenticity. But Mr. B. has the power to read and influence Pamela's writing. Likewise, Richardson, as the book's editor, can also decide what material to present and how to present it. Richardson is playing with the idea that the truth is always being mediated, even in someone's journal or letters.
