One Great Family: Domestic Relationships in Samuel Richardson's Novels. Simone Höhn

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СКАЧАТЬ “Respect is a natural restraint upon us […] even when we are obliged to reason and remonstrate against [parents’] conduct. Such is that earnest intercession of Jonathan to his father Saul, for the life of David his friend” (144; Sermon VI).2 Anna – whose friendship with Clarissa is compared by the latter to Jonathan’s – justifies her conflict with her mother by her duty as a friend (477).

      DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson’s cited exception to the rule of obedience, however, is based on duty to others. When it comes to resistance as self-defence, he is even more reticent. He acknowledges only implicitly that unquestioning obedience may be relaxed, but not dispensed with, in the case of marriage. Significantly, he does so while discussing parental, rather than filial, duty (thus, once more, evading the question of children’s rights). Addressing parents’ authority in the question of marriage, he condemns not only violence, but also over-persuasion, reminding parents that a dutiful child may be led to not mention her justified, or at least involuntary, aversion to a proposed marriage partner: “But although they [parents who persuade] act with less appearance of violence, may be as guilty; and by insinuations and artful address prevail over fearful and modest minds, and obtain a consent, when they have not courage or assurance enough to resist or contend on such an occasion” (135; Sermon VII). He does not go so far as to say a child may speak out without the parents’ invitation, or even point-blank refuse to obey. However, by stating that the most dutiful children may be silent until urged by the parents to voice their feelings, he leaves room to assume that a respectful resistance is not condemnable.

      Nevertheless, admitting that there are cases where parents should not insist on their authority does not automatically clarify how such a situation should be negotiated. All the Harlowes, including Clarissa, agree that she should obey those commands which are neither impossible nor immoral. However, as GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W. notes, the fact “[t]hat the norm commonly imposes obligations of reciprocity only ‘when the individual is able’ to reciprocate does not guarantee agreement concerning the individual’s ‘ability’” (66). After all, Clarissa says she cannot honestly marry Solmes; her family say she can – but who is to judge? And how can Clarissa voice her opposition with due respect if her parents do not allow her to speak? The difficulty of doing so is, ironically, highlighted by comments of sympathetic critics who admire her resistance. Janet ToddTodd, Janet, for instance, approvingly notes that “[i]t seems that she is overtly obedient then, while covertly recalcitrant” (12). Clarissa would not have been comfortable with this assessment of her behaviour, for it implies that she is a rebel, just as her family claim – not an obedient daughter faced with an impossible command, as she herself argues.

      In order to justify her resistance to hierarchy, Clarissa draws on the network of duties. Within the novel that bears her name, she is the most determined spokesperson for general duty. At one point – disgusted by the selfishness she perceives both in Solmes and in her own relations – she writes wistfully: “And yet, in my opinion, the world is but one great family; originally it was so; what then is this narrow selfishness that reigns in us, but relationship remembered against relationship forgot?” (62). Her statement is based on the system of duty, with its insistence on the mutual ties which bind all men to each other, but it is also a daring revision of it. If “family” is just another term for “mankind”, then there is no place for absolute (human) authority, no justification for privileging the demands of one person over the interests of all others.

      Such a conviction puts into question not only the attitude of the Harlowes, but that of others who wish to claim a privileged position with regard to the heroine – including Lovelace and Clarissa’s best friend Anna. Thus, ToddTodd, Janet notes with some regret that “Clarissa cannot wholeheartedly return Anna’s love, seeing it detracting from the primary love of family” (54). She identifies “a coldness here that speaks not only of Clarissa’s distress at Anna’s awkward aid but of her uneasy fear of ‘unbridled’ friendship” (55). Despite these misgivings about Clarissa’s apparent lack of fervent friendship, Todd also suggests that the heroine’s death is in part a response to a world which does not accept single-minded devotion to a friend. Clarissa, according to her, “now understands that to live is to live for more than her friend and to be forever in conflict” (58). However, the heroine has always known that she must live for more than either her friend or her family. Indeed, the fervency of her friendship with Anna takes such prominence precisely because she is cut off from most of her other relationships in the course of the novel. Far from wishing to confine her sense of duty and relationship to any one person, Clarissa yearns for a world where all relationships can work together, rather than against each other.

      At least one of Richardson’s early readers clearly recognised this aspect of Clarissa and spelled out the implications of diversity of duties. In a letter dated 22 April 1750, David GrahamGraham, David, correspondent of Richardson, then a student at Cambridge (Schellenberg 11 n.1), writes about misreadings of Clarissa’s behaviour. Readers who criticise her for disobedience, lack of self-assertion, prudery, or coquetry, fail to appreciate her, he thinks, because her behaviour

      is not leaven’d with their [own] infirmities: Their mistake proceeds from their ignorance of the grand rule of morality; which seems to consist in an unreserved obedience to the divine will: In which, as in a fix’d point, all the duties resulting from the several relations of social life, like lines drawn in a circle, so as not to interfere with each other, should ultimately center. But ’tis the privilege of few to be able steadily to keep their Eye on that mark, without being misled by those delusions, which education and custom have sanctified by the name of Virtue […]. (Schellenberg, Correspondence 14–5)

      In accordance with moral writers, GrahamGraham, David, correspondent of Richardson notes that at the centre of one’s conduct stands not any single human relationship, however important, but the “divine will”. In contrast to them, however, he continues to show that in order “to keep one’s eye on that mark”, the individual herself needs, as it were, to take a step back from any single relationship as well as from “those delusions” attached to common conceptions of virtue. Besides implying that the performance of duty necessitates not only good intentions but clear perceptions, he includes the impediments to truly moral behaviour: false preconceptions, but also, if only by implication, the possibility that the “lines drawn in a circle” might, despite everything, “interfere with each other”. If one reverses Graham’s image by putting into the centre the individual who needs to act, rather than the (sun-like) God, and if one combines this with a parallel image of other individuals, a network forms – and, almost inevitably, the lines will indeed “interfere with each other”. GrahamGraham, David, correspondent of Richardson’s imagery, moreover, puts all duties on one level; they all equally derive from God. The logical implication – which, unsurprisingly, he does not spell out – is that unlimited human authority cannot easily coexist with diversity of duties. Thus, the necessity of judging for oneself, rather than obeying blindly, is justified on an abstract conceptual level.

      However, once the individual leaves this abstract level to deal with a specific situation, matters become complicated. Within the system of duty, Clarissa must obey any command by her father that is not in itself “unlawful”. If her situation is perceived to be mainly about filial duty, her options shrink to the simple binary opposition of obedience or rebellion. If, in contrast, her dilemma is interpreted as a conflict of duties, the situation becomes more complex. As she repeatedly argues, she cannot marry Solmes without disregarding the just claims of many others. For example, Solmes proposes to settle all his money irrevocably on her and her family. This would deprive his own relations of “their just expectations”; therefore, she is justified in refusing him (81). In addition, since “he is not only narrow, but covetous”, he would interfere with her charity to the poor (153). More importantly, her avowed fear that she will be unable to love and respect Solmes – and thus to fulfil her marriage-vow – in her view even compels her to resist marrying him. MulsoMulso, Hester, correspondent of Richardson agreed with her: the very weight of the marriage vow, she thought, calls for female self-determination before marriage. In her debate with Richardson, she СКАЧАТЬ