eludes B's attempt and the latter, growing frustrated, continues in his attempts. According to Barbara Belyea, Pamela's “duty to resist him without compromise has become a duty to obey him without question” (411). In other words, readers of Pamela experience the trajectory of the plot, and the romance between the hero and heroine, as a back-and-forth, pendulum-like swing. Belyea claims this oscillation persists through readers' interpretations as Pamela sustains the formative action of the plot through the letters she writes to her parents detailing her ordeal: "Within the fictional situation, the parents' attitude to their child's letters is the closest to that of Richardson's reader. The parents' sympathy for the heroine and anxiety for a happy end anticipate the reader's attitude to the narrative" (413). Pamela's parents are the audience for her letters and their responses (as recipients of the letters) mimic what Belyea argues are readers’ responses to Richardson's novel. Arguably, Richardson's Pamela invokes an audience within an audience and "[c]areful attention to comments and letters by other characters enables the reader to perceive that Pamela's passionate defence of her chastity is considered initially as exaggerated, fantastic--in a word, romantic" (412). Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded demonstrates morality and realism as bound up in individuals’ identities and social class because of its form as an epistolary novel. Literary significance and criticism Reception Considered by many literary experts as the first English novel, Pamela was the best-seller of its time. It was read by countless buyers of the novel and was also read in groups. An anecdote which has been repeated in varying forms since 1777 described the novel's reception in an English village: "The blacksmith of the village had got hold of Richardson's novel of Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, and used to read it aloud in the long summer evenings, seated on his anvil, and never failed to have a large and attentive audience.... At length, when the happy turn of fortune arrived, which brings the hero and heroine together, and sets them living long and happily... the congregation were so delighted as to raise a great shout, and procuring the church keys, actually set the parish bells ringing." The novel was also integrated into sermons as an exemplar. It was even an early "multimedia" event, producing Pamela-themed cultural artefacts such as prints, paintings, waxworks, a fan, and a set of playing cards decorated with lines from Richardson's works. In