Chapel Symbol Analysis

Mr. B’s disused family chapel symbolizes how he and his family have neglected religion. Before meeting Pamela, Mr. B was a rake who got involved in duels and who fathered a child with the unmarried woman Sally Godfrey, showing a lack of respect for traditional Christian marriage conventions. At first, Mr. B acts similarly toward Pamela, totally disregarding her wish to remain celibate until marriage with his many sexual advances and assaults. At one point, he even schemes to use Pamela’s religious beliefs against her, trying to trick her into a sham-marriage so that he can have a sexual relationship with her while still having the option to break off their relationship at any point.

Eventually, however, Pamela’s good example begins to change Mr. B’s behavior, particularly after he reads some of her journal entries and learns more about how she thinks. When Mr. B proposes to Pamela—for real, not as a sham—Pamela insists that they should get married in a proper church rather than his house. This leads Mr. B to clean out his family’s chapel, which they had been using as a shed to store lumber. The lumber in the chapel signifies how Mr. B and his family prioritized worldly economic issues over spiritual ones. Pamela’s decision to clean and revive the chapel so that she and Mr. B can get married in it, then, shows how Pamela’s virtuous example brings religion into Mr. B’s life, and so the chapel symbolizes the positive, transformative effect that religion can have on a person.