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

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СКАЧАТЬ be undutiful.4 And when, again like Allestree (298), he includes gratitude as a reason for obedience, he tacitly acknowledges that filial gratitude requires parental kindness. This is not, however, to say that Delany does not take children’s duty (sermons VIII–IX) seriously. In one point, he goes even further than AllestreeAllestree, Richard, stating that “I have often admired it, as a glorious instance of discipline in the Jewish commonwealth, that an undutiful child was to be stoned to death by the people” (149). The term ‘admiration’ is clearly not meant in the sense of ‘wonder’ – in the next passage, Delany continues to call this law “the wisest institution that ever obtained in any nation” (150).5

      Sermon X is concerned with servants’ duties to masters, its counterpart, XI, with masters’ duties to servants. Sermons XII–XIII are concerned with more general relationships among men, particularly the duty of paying debts. Based on the same quotation, DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson goes on, in sermon XIII, to discourse on the duty of love. Sermon XIV concerns the duties of a ruler toward his subjects, a topic which AllestreeAllestree, Richard had refused to discuss – a difference which may be explained in the different political situation. Allestree, a royalist writing shortly before the Restoration, had reason enough to complain that most people were “already much better read” in the “duty of their Supreme” than in their own (291; Sunday XIV). Delany’s final sermon, XV, concerns the “[m]utual Duty of Princes and People”. Remarkably, this sermon, “Preached on the Anniversary of the Martyrdom of KING CHARLES I” (299), unites in its title reverence for a king who believed in the absolute authority of kings with an emphasis on reciprocity.6 Despite the explicit admiration of Charles as possessing “more personal virtues, than perhaps any one Prince recorded in history” (305), an equal emphasis is awarded to the (English) ruler’s function as “the guardian of the liberty and rights, religious, and civil, of his people. This is his true character, and the only foundation of his power” (304). Without going so far as to explicitly condone rebellion, Delany here leaves some ground for the supposition that the breach of duty in one party may justify rebellion in the other. The contrast to his attitude to the parent-child relationship is striking: the concept of absolute obedience appears more resilient in private than in public life (cf. KayKay, Carol 169).

      Despite their differences, both AllestreeAllestree, Richard and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson ground their system of moral duty in a combination of reciprocity7 and patriarchy – the system which Richardson draws on for the moral dilemmas played out in his novels. Hierarchical structures overlay more egalitarian ones of brotherhood (or, in Richardson’s novels, bonding among women), and the authority at the top is envisaged as male and based on fatherhood.8 Reciprocity is equally crucial. Insistence that the breach of duty in one party does not cancel the other’s duty goes hand in hand with the presumption that undutifulness commonly amounts to ingratitude. What is missing in the moral tracts, however, is a detailed response to conflicts of duty, although Allestree and Delany present the individual as enmeshed in a network of obligations. In the case of the former, this network appears particularly complex: alms-giving, for example, is owed on two different grounds: “He that is in poverty and need, must be relieved by him that is in plenty; and he is bound to it, not only in charity, but even in justice” (283; Sunday XIII)9. Similarly, good counsel is due to a spouse, to friends and even enemies (significantly, it is not mentioned as a filial duty10), and, finally, every duty to one’s “neighbour”, and even to one’s self, is tied up with duty to God. With regard to servants, for example, AllestreeAllestree, Richard writes: “God has commanded Servants thus to obey their Masters; and therefore the obedience they pay is to God” (335; Sunday XV). Yet although he acknowledges the possibility that a person in authority may issue “unlawful commands”, and although he insists that these must not be obeyed, he provides little to no framework for dealing with conflicts of duty.

      It is, perhaps, more a symptom than a cause of this that the word ‘reciprocity’ so frequently mentioned in Richardson’s novels is used in a two-fold sense. “It is my notion, that one person’s remissness in duty, where there is a reciprocal one, does not absolve the other party from the performance of his”, Harriet Byron writes, commenting on Sir Thomas’s domestic tyranny (1:315). She makes a similar point when discussing Lady L.’s secret correspondence with her later husband: “Ought you not to have done your duty, whether your father did his, or not?” (1:333). The severity of the remark is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it is not addressed to Lady L. directly, but occurs as an apostrophe in a letter to Lucy Selby. In contrast, Lovelace makes a very different use of the term. Thus, when he writes to Belford concerning his uncle Lord M.’s public criticism of him, he comments: “He is very undutiful, as thou knowest. Surely, I may say so; since all duties are reciprocal” (415). Clearly, what differentiates the usage of ‘reciprocity’ by the heroine of Grandison and the villain of Clarissa, respectively, is more than their good or bad intentions. Rather, their concepts of reciprocity are different. For Harriet, reciprocal duty means a stable relationship between two parties who are each obliged to do some specified good to the other. For Lovelace, reciprocity means an exchange of goods as in a contract. Thus, if his uncle “rave[s]” at him, he may be called undutiful in return (415). Whether he talks of duties or of voluntary benefits, exchange is at the heart of Lovelace’s concept of reciprocity, and he takes care to be the one who has more to give. Significantly, he is too proud to accept financial help – and, in consequence, “control” – from his relations (50).

      The sociologist Alvin GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W. provides the vocabulary to problematize the system of reciprocity underlying AllestreeAllestree, Richard’s and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson’s as well as Richardson’s works. In his classic article “The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement” (1960), he distinguishes between complementarity and reciprocity. A little confusingly, he first enumerates four types of “complementarity”, before specifying that “[p]roperly speaking, complementarity refers only to the first two meanings”, while the last two “involve true instances of reciprocity” (57). I quote his definitions and examples in some detail because their relevance to Richardson’s works (as well as to Allestree’sAllestree, Richard and Delany’sDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson) becomes thus immediately apparent:

      Complementarity 1 may mean that a right (x) of Ego against Alter implies a duty (- x) of Alter to Ego. […] The interesting sociological questions, however, arise only when issues of empirical substance rather than logical implication are raised. For example, where a group shares a belief that some status occupant has a certain right, say the right of a wife to receive support from her husband, does the group in fact also share a belief that the husband has an obligation to support the wife? Furthermore, even though rights may logically or empirically imply duties, it need not follow that the reverse is true.

      Complementarity 2 may mean that what is a duty (- x) of Alter to Ego implies a right (x) of Ego against Alter. On the empirical level, while this is often true, of course, it is also sometimes false. For example, what may be regarded as a duty of charity or forbearance […] need not be socially defined as the right of the recipient. (56)

      Intriguingly, GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W.’s two examples concern cases very much at the heart of Richardson’s work. Indeed, it is of vital importance to differentiate between ‘right’ and ‘duty’. Although, as Gouldner implies, there are many cases when the right of one party and the duty of the other amount to the same thing, such a connection is by no means inevitable.

      Adam SmithSmith, Adam notes the distinction in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, using the “trite example” of “a highwayman” who, “by the fear of death, obliges a traveller to promise him a certain sum of money. Whether such a promise, extorted in this manner by unjust force, ought to be regarded as obligatory, is a question that has been very much debated” (330; VII.iv.9). One of those who has “debated” it is Lovelace. Beginning to suspect Clarissa of a lie, he complains to Belford that “it is a sad thing for good people to break their word when it is in their power to keep it”. Belford, of course, may have an СКАЧАТЬ