Life of Richardson

b. 1689 - nearly 20 years older than Fielding, and over fifty when his first novel published.

Father a skilled carpenter and follower of the Duke of Monmouth - after his rebellion fails in 1688, Richardson’s father moves from London to Derbyshire to escape reprisals.

Planned that he should enter the church (like Defoe), but has to be apprenticed to a printer instead - a diligent worker and letter-writer (Stinstra 25).

“I have been twice married; to good women both times.” [R’s intense & sentimental relations with women were Platonic]

“My business, sir, has ever been my chief concern. My writing-time has been at such times of leisure as have not interfered with that.” [R concerned with the pressure of material interests, but not at the everyday level (like Defoe), and not uncritically.]

26 - 27: taken into the company of young women

27 “Serious and Gravity” [not just absence of a comic vision, like Fielding’s - practically no sense of humor, despite his insight into every other kind of human motive]

29: “Clarissa is a piece from first to last, that owes its being to invention.”

“I never, to my knowledge, was in a vile house, or in company with a lewd woman, in my life.”

Richardson hurt by Fielding’s satire on Pamela, and considered Fielding a coarse and immoral writer. Fielding admired Clarissa, though, and sent Richardson a letter telling him so, especially praising Clarissa’s letters after her rape:

“The circumstance of the fragments is great and terrible: but her letter to Lovelace is beyond anything I have ever read. God forbid that the man who reads this with dry eyes should be alone with my daughter, when she hath no assistance within call!” (35)

Opposition between Fielding and Richardson as novelists is classic, & need not be labored - summed up in Dr Johnson’s remark that Fielding knew how to read the dial of a clock, Richardson knew the inner workings of it.

Clarissa as an Economic Novel

Original title was “The Lady’s Legacy” - points to the origin of the central situation in sibling ribalry, rather than sexual relations.

The Harlowe family has only become rich and powerful in this generation - through discovery of coal on their land and trade with India. If they were an aristocratic (i.e. old landowning family) inheritance would be by “strict settlement” - that is, land entailed on the oldest son & his oldest son.

James Harlowe acts as if this were so (top of p. 24, uncles his stewards), but it isn’t yet - and the grandfather’s legacy opens up an alternative possibility.

p. 64: Arabella and James jealous of Clarissa’s favor with their grandfather.

He leaves Clarissa his estate, “The Grove,” and half his money - Arabella the rest of the money - James nothing. Clarissa gives over the estate to her father.

James then inherits an estate in Yorkshire, from his Godmother Lovell.

23-24: Clarissa’s uncles are childless, and think of making Clarissa the family’s ticket into the aristocracy, by concentrating their wealth on her rather than James.

222: Lovelace has £2,000 a year, and will get £1,000 more from his uncle when he marries - offers to give Clarissa control of her own wealth for life, plus £400 a year - would also sue Clarissa’s male relatives for control of her estate at The Grove. C. says she won’t sue her father over the estate (74), but L. would.

James’s alternative plan:

1. Marry Clarissa to Solmes

2. Solmes has an estate next to The Grove - 34-35 - will perhaps exchange it for James’s Northern estate - & will make over all his estate to Clarissa in the event of his death.

3. 34, 80: Solmes covets Clarissa’s estate - one reason why he won’t court Arabella.

4. If Clarissa marries Solmes, who is not an aristocrat, there would be no reason for her uncles to leave her their property - they’ll leave it to James instead.

5. Solmes plans to oppress Clarissa in marriage (p. 75) - compare Blifil - James can profit doubly: by getting more property, and by using Solmes as a surrogate to revenge himself on Clarissa.

In the complete text, Solmes indicates that he expects Clarissa to be a virtuous wife, but also tolerate his adultery.

6. Arabella will also benefit: a) by making Clarissa unhappy and b) once Clarissa is married, Arabella has a chance to get married too.

Faced with all this, it’s not surprising that Clarissa toys with the idea of accepting Lovelace, provided she is sure that she can reform him (60).

The Clash of Cultures in Clarissa

Clarissa and Lovelace are not just opposed individuals; they each represent a class, a moral code, and a way of life. One way of understanding this is through the anthropological concepts of Shame culture and Guilt culture.

[For background see, e.g., E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational; Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.]

Lionel Trilling said that the English novel is about the tension between the middle class and the aristocracy - Clarissa shows this tension at many levels, but also dramatizes it as a complex struggle between two individuals - each of whom wants to convert the other to their culture, while at a deeper level being caught up in “the attraction of the opposite.”

Clarissa and Lovelace

There are two schools of interpretation of the novel, one stressing Clarissa’s complicity in events, the other Lovelace’s guilt. The issue can also be seen as: is Clarissa continuous with Pamela, or fundamentally different?

Leading recent interpreters on each side are William B. Warner (Reading Clarissa: The Struggles of Interpretation) and Terry Eagleton (The Rape of Clarissa). But the debate goes back to the very beginning, with Richardson himself intervening in later editions of the novel to try and blacken Lovelace’s character, and remove any ambiguity about Clarissa’s role.

Samuel Johnson: “You may observe there is always something which she prefers to truth.” Dorothy van Ghent: the novel is “a study in moral obliquity.”

These readings turn on the idea of the “consenting negative” that Clarissa uses against Arabella - in greater or lesser degree, more or less consciously, Clarissa is seen as always moving towards Lovelace, though with the aim of honorable marriage. Lovelace is her partner in this game, recognizing that “It is cruel to ask a modest woman for her consent”; but his goal is seduction rather than marriage. Women must use “indirect means” (in Moll Flanders’ phrase) because it is not legitimate for them to express their wills openly.

Clarissa’s double nature is often complemented by the idea of Richardson’s authorial dishonesty - that he is out to have his psychic cake and eat it too: by upholding morality while secretly identifying with Lovelace and thus indulging his sadistic male fantasies. Richardson claims that he is writing against the abuse of authority by parents, and the immorality of rakes; the argument is that he doesn’t have to show Clarissa half-dressed and in distress to do this - that representation is equivalent to recommendation (as with, for example, violence on television).

Rise of feminist criticism has often brought a more direct reading of Clarissa - emphasising Richardson’s sympathy with the plight of women in 18th century society, and his condemnation of the rake as a sexual predator. Clarissa is, after all, a novel about rape - and how can you criticise Clarissa’s behavior without condoning Lovelace’s sexual crime? Such critics say that we should acknowledge that Richardson was “on the right side,” and that Clarissa said she had “no culpable inclinations” (309). The greatness of the novel lies in its making an eloquent case for sexual victims, not in an ambiguity that allows readers to find a deep meaning that is the opposite of the surface one.

William Warner’s argument is deconstructive in a more modern sense - of showing how the text, as novel, eludes Richardson’s efforts to control its effects on the reader and turn it into a tract, a straightforward piece of dogma. It is true that flirtation here ends in rape; but this doesn’t prove that flirtation and rape are continuous with each other. Warner emphasises the mutually pleasurable struggle of wills between Clarissa and Lovelace, and sees the rape as both a crime, and a defeat for Lovelace’s project of getting Clarissa to submit voluntarily. One (female) critic actually argues that Lovelace is impotent when it comes to the deed - that his obsessive verbalizing about sex is a compensation for feebleness in performance.

Another critic, Tessie Gwilliam, emphasizes the “erotically charged jealousy and antagonism” between the homosocial couple, Lovelace and James Harlowe. Clarissa keeps this rivalry going by her refusal to accept either Solmes or Lovelace.

Warner’s reading focuses on struggle for its own sake - so that neither of the two antagonists want either to withdraw from the struggle, or to complete it.

Lovelace’s explanation of what he is doing: “I am no sensual man; but a man of spirit - One woman is like another - In coursing all the sport is made by the winding hare - A barn-door chick is better eating.”

Once Lovelace has cornered his prey and overcome her resistance, he loses interest and begins a new chase - the Don Juan complex.

Clarissa’s aim is the reverse - to subdue the rake to her moral code, and then keep him in order (as Sophia will Tom). But she worries about her motives for doing this: “has the secret pleasure intruded itself, to be able to reclaim such a man to the paths of virtue and honour” (60). The key word here is “such”: Lovelace presents her with a challenge, as a man like Hickman would not - thus stimulating her pleasure and pride.

The other side of this situation is Anna Howe’s dissatisfaction with Hickman’s lack of spirit (handout).

Clarissa and the Body

Clarissa is of great importance in establishing influential cultural stereotypes, such as the rake and his opposing/redeeming counterpart, the pure woman. I want to look here at its portrayal of the female body, using Manichaeanism and Bakhtin’s idea of the “grotesque body.”

Mani was a Persian of the 3rd century A.D. His doctrines became intertwined with Christianity, especially through St Augustine, who was a Manichaean before he was a Christian.

The world is dualistic, a place of eternal struggle between:

• God and Satan

• Light and Dark (“The Prince of Darkness”)

• Spirit and Matter

• Soul and Body

Marvell’s poem “Dialogue Between Soul and Body” expresses the Manichaean idea that the soul is imprisoned in flesh, and longs to be released and reunited with God as spirit. The Manichee elite led austere and celibate lives; the lower orders could marry, but sexual pleasure and the begetting of children were condemned.

Women belonged to Satan’s realm, drawing men down into the realm of matter and away from the divine spirit; this mistrust of sexuality and of the female body became an important element in Christianity, thanks to Augustine and others.

Within Christianity, however, a further dualism emerged: between woman as Manichaean seducer, and as sacred virgin. Richardson cannot use the specifically Catholic symbolism of the Virgin Mary, but he makes Clarissa into a figure whose spiritual power derives from her distance from the normal life of the body - her being a “frost-piece,” as Lovelace calls her, or a “Puritan saint,” in Richardson’s conception. Her counterpart is of course Mrs Sinclair, onto whom Richardson projects everything threatening in the female body.

The Russian critic Bakhtin made a distinction between the use in literature of the “exalted body” and the “grotesque body” - which corresponds roughly to the body above and below the waist. The exalted body emphasises the ideal, the spiritual and the beautiful; the grotesque body foregrounds sexuality, dirt and excretion.

Bakhtin concentrates on the comic aspects of the grotesque body - the mode of “carnival” when the world is turned upside down, and drunkenness and lechery take over. In Clarissa, the grotesque body is dark and menacing - made into an object of disgust and horror, especially in the description of the death of Mrs Sinclair.

An important subtext in Clarissa is the threat of venereal disease, which is seen as having its “reservoir” in the brothel and in the female body - from which the rake may carry it to his virtuous wife. In this way the exalted body may be invaded by the grotesque body; whereas Richardson’s great concern is to keep them separate.

Another theme is food as supporter of the flesh, and even as a defilement. Mrs Sinclair’s gross and decaying flesh is the tangible sign of her moral evil; Clarissa’s wasting away represents her journey towards the spirit (some modern critics see her as suffering from anorexia).

Eating is also equated with sexuality, as similar kinds of sensual pleasure - Mrs Sinclair eats too much, Clarissa hardly at all.

The positive side of Clarissa can be found in the innumerable ways that Richardson validates female individualism - the novel is an epic of resistance to the reduction of women to objects or instruments by homosocial society - every act of oppression against Clarissa only makes her stronger in her self. Even her death represents a triumph over her enemies - and she is still writing, as the coffin itself inscribed and made into a farewell letter.

Nor would I want her to compromise - as many voices urge her to do, both inside and outside the novel - by marrying Lovelace.

Yet misgivings remain:

With the Christian idea of the glorification of suffering, victimization and defeat - with its corollary, that the inferior position of women in society is a source of moral good.

With the denial or devaluation of any normal path to female self-fulfilment - Richardson couldn’t find a place for a Sophia Western (or an Emma) in the universe of Clarissa. Female power may be great, but it must be negative in its operation.

With the potential sadism of the “maiden in distress” plot. Again, we may compare the treatment of the persecution of Sophia by her father or Lord Fellamar - Fielding doesn’t drag this out and in some sense relish it in the way Richardson does.

With the schematization of woman into angel or devil - Lovelace says this, and it’s one view of his that Richardson doesn’t contradict, but dramatizes in the Clarissa/Sinclair opposition - by facilitating the rape, the women of Mrs Sinclair’s house commit a gratuitous evil that is worse than Lovelace’s offense.

With Richardson’s rejection of the path of female emancipation or universalist feminism - it is a flaw in Anna Howe that she favors this, and Clarissa triumphs by moving deeper into the conventional female role rather than trying to free herself from it. Also, the conventional role is equally defined by Mrs Sinclair - the other side of the same coin. Richardson’s genius gave Western culture a powerful stereotype - of the suffering, spiritualized virgin - that seems to me dangerous in ways that Sophia or Emma could never be.