This essay investigates Richardson and Fielding’s projection of social mobility and the intrinsic conditionality of virtue and honor that is essential for social transformation. Maintaining a virtuous status among morally corrupt people destabilizes the established stereotypical view of social hierarchy and incites some aristocratic people’s passion for their servants, violating the consolidation of social class boundaries. Pursuant to the principles of the progressive ideology, some members of the upper class authoritatively thwart endeavors for upward mobility, except for social progression coupled with moral standing and good reputation that is propitiously received with communal acceptance and approbation. Therefore, the novels entail that values of good ethics, chastity, and piety become fundamental requirements for maintaining and enhancing social standing regardless of any prospective deterioration in the material situation. Both novels resist the ideology that honor as virtue is an inherited value that is vested in a certain class by ancestry and heredity. Contrary to this supposition, both contexts associate moral corruption with social degradation and document it historically to reform sinful practices and immodesty. Finally, the authors aspire for ideal societies where the holders of virtue and honor should be rewarded for resisting moral corruption, the allure of materialism, and the greed of capitalism.

This essay explores the influence of discourses of determinism and free will on the major heroines’ decisions and behavior when trying to comprehend and apply these philosophies to themselves. The conflicting ideologies of the philosophers create a state of confusion, which in turn has led to the decisions of self-isolation and hiding the real identities to avoid a possible clash with members of the other social classes. The major heroines, Renée and Paloma, hide their intelligence as well because of their firm conviction in the futility of cultural discussions with narrow-minded people who believe in restrictions on social classes boundaries. Therefore, the essay investigates how Barbery addresses both of the philosophical ideologies and trends that control and shape the heroines’ behavior and reactions. It also highlights the influence of these phenomenological philosophies on Renée’s struggle and suffering, which eventually lead to the dualism of her identity and patterns of tensional reactions and ambivalence because she does not understand these theories deeply. The harmonious and amicable relationship between Renée and Paloma who belong to different social classes indicates the author’s hope for a new generation who renounces disagreement and class prejudice; the proximity between them also undermines tools of determinism and discourses of social antagonism among the educated. Finally, the novel manifests itself as an irony of a woman in her fifties who rediscovers her femininity and reprioritizes her needs after years of displacement and self-concealment, and as a paradox for a precocious preteen girl who acts like adults.