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

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СКАЧАТЬ liking” – although, as Clarissa claims, “she is the person of all the world, next to my mamma, the most likely to prevail upon me were the measures they are engaged in, reasonable measures” (62). Clarissa’s mother, of course, fails to prevail upon her. Indeed, Clarissa even struggles with her reluctance to ask Anna Howe for sincere advice concerning Solmes, fearing that even this friend may advise her to marry him (66). However, Clarissa’s reluctance to accept unpalatable advice is clearly surpassed by that of her family, who reject her request that an “impartial person”, such as Dr. Lewin, judge between her and her brother (227). Clarissa’s cousin Dolly even reports that Dr. Lewin disapproves so much of the Harlowes’ behaviour that they have arranged for a different clergyman to marry her to Solmes (364). Other family sins emerge as the Harlowes grow more aggressive against both Lovelace and Clarissa: greed, haughtiness, implacableness, desire for revenge. James swears in front of the entire family, “unchecked either by eye or countenance” (60). Most shockingly, Mr. Harlowe’s curse of Clarissa – consigning her not only to worldly ruin, but to hell – directly clashes with parents’ duty to bless their children and runs counter to the injunction that when we pray, we must “look that we ask nothing that is unlawful, as revenge upon our enemies, or the like” (AllestreeAllestree, Richard 123; Sunday V).4

      However, the Harlowes seem to be caught themselves in the conflicting axioms of a system which grants some individuals almost unlimited authority, but also requires every person to be just to everyone with whom he or she is connected. All members of the family suffer at least occasionally from the deadlock in which they, as well as Clarissa, find themselves. Repeatedly, the more kind-hearted ones, like Mrs. Harlowe or Uncle John, try to plead for Clarissa, only to be brought to order again. Indeed, John Harlowe’s simile of the “embattled phalanx” (150) is telling: the family agreement of enforcing Clarissa’s obedience is based on military discipline and control. The individuals comprising this seemingly strong and privileged group are as much entangled as Clarissa is. The celebrated “family unity” transpires to have been a phantom all along.

      1.3 Duty and interiority

      If individual duty is conceptualised as a network of obligations rather than as a dualistic, hierarchical relationship between one who commands and one who obeys, interiority becomes of central importance. A simple hierarchical relationship may or may not include demands on the inner life of the subordinate (or even the dominant) partner; it may require only obedience or “cheerful obedience”. A network, however, always demands that the individual balances his or her diverse duties. Even the most obedient, admiring, humble subject must, according to AllestreeAllestree, Richard, check whether “active obedience” to his prince is in accordance with divine laws. Indeed, Pamela’s despicable Mrs. Jewkes illustrates the dangers of the system of duty without this kind of individual judgment: “Look-ye,” she tells an indignant Pamela, “[Mr. B.] is my Master, and if he bids me do a Thing that I can do, I think I ought to do it, and let him, who has Power, to command me, look to the Lawfulness of it” (110).

      Unlike a hierarchy, a network thus invests the individual with more responsibility and with agency. This agency, in turn, may be open – admitting of debate with all parties concerned – or secret, taking place entirely within the individual consciousness. In its most extreme forms, moral duties like the obligation to love and honour may even demand that the individual hide his or her own thought processes, once completed, from themselves, remembering only their result. In The Whole Duty of Man, both extremes are present. On the one hand, it contains pages of advice on how to bring oneself to true repentance. For example, AllestreeAllestree, Richard advises us “sometimes to abridge our selves somewhat of our lawful pleasure” in order to practice the self-denial we need to resist temptations to sin (29; Sunday I). Similarly, he explains with what spirit we should approach the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and how to induce the proper mood in ourselves. For example, in order to feel contrition, we should not only come to a sense of fear of God’s punishment – instead,

      the sorrow of a true Penitent must be joyned also with the love of God, and that will make us grieve for having offended him, though there were no punishment to fall upon our selves. The way then to stir up this sorrow in us, is first, To stir up our love of God, by repeating to our selves the many gracious acts of his mercy towards us […]. (78; Sunday III)

      And “at the holy Table”, he advises us to “meditate on those bitter sufferings of Christ […] for the increasing thy Humility and Contrition: then in the second place think of them again, to stir up thy Faith” (90–1; Sunday III).

      The aim of such carefully-managed thought processes is absolute control of one’s feelings: after all, it “is the peculiar property of God’s Laws, that they reach to the heart” (270–1; Sunday XIII). Thus, as children “we”

      must not upon any pretence of infirmity in [our parents] despise or contemn them, either in outward behaviour, or so much as inwardly in our hearts. If indeed they have infirmities it must be our business to cover and conceal them […] and that in such a manner too, as even themselves might not behold it. We are as much as may be to keep our selves from looking on those nakednesses of our Parents, which may tempt us to think irreverently of them. (297; Sunday XIV)

      This leaves little space for the managing of interiority to take place. Ultimately, implicit obedience must come from the heart, and mere outward respect is not enough. Interior thought-processes are necessary for the discharge of one’s duty. However, these same processes, if not managed properly, turn only too easily into the seeds of rebellion against the system of duty.

      Many critics have discussed interiority with regard to Richardson’s novels. Often, these discussions centre on the characters’ hidden motivations. Thus, Pamela notoriously delays her departure from her predatory master (cf. KeymerKeymer, Tom, Richardson’s Clarissa 20). Clarissa, although the heroine of a much more sophisticated novel perhaps informed by the Pamela controversy, has similarly been detected to be a less than transparent character. In this regard, Samuel JohnsonJohnson, Samuel, correspondent of Richardson’s remark that “there is always something which she prefers to truth” is probably the most often-cited contemporary example (Johnsoniana 72).1 John DussingerDussinger, John A., who opens his essay “Truth and storytelling in Clarissa” with Johnson’s quotation, sums up the reasons as follows: “Clarissa’s sincerity as storyteller, we have seen, is in doubt not only because she may have something to hide but, more significantly, because language inevitably leaves something out” (49). Indeed, as Keymer has shown, Clarissa’s thoughts remain inaccessible in the absence of an omniscient narrator, for her letters are, he argues, “more immediately concerned with influencing her readers than with representing the truth” (Richardson’s Clarissa 133). It seems that few critics can envisage a heroine who is both truthful and assertive. Thus, ScottScott, Sarah Paul GordonGordon, Scott Paul argues that Clarissa “protects her actions from the taint of self-interest by eliminating her will entirely, by denying that she has an interest to pursue” (Power 209). Wendy Ann LeeLee, Wendy Anne, meanwhile, is one of the few critics who credits the heroine both with active purpose and with truthfulness. She argues that Clarissa, in fact, aims at absolute objectivity. In her view, the coldness of which this heroine is accused as often as of hypocrisy is, in fact, the result of her aiming at Lockean “indifferency”, a detachment which allows her to judge with impartiality.

      Each of these accounts elucidates important aspects of Clarissa. However, one aspect of the novel seems curiously absent from these discussions. Assembling evidence that “Clarissa’s narrative is misleading” (134), KeymerKeymer, Tom draws attention to several places where the heroine defends herself from Anna’s suspicion that she secretly loves Lovelace but hides this from her friend:

      When she talks of keeping in mind as she writes ‘what it became a person of my sex and character to be and to do … where the imputed love is thought an undutiful, and therefore a criminal, passion’, or of her ‘desire of appearing … the person СКАЧАТЬ