'the Tendency of all I have written is to exalt the Sex,' but we must be suspicious of an exaltation that necessarily involves exposing an imaginary heroine to the most protracted sexual abuse.
However dubious his motives, Richardson does at least take rape seriously, as many recent feminist and deconstructionist critics appreciate. As a physical event, a single penetration during a drugged coma -96- might not seem a matter of life and death-so Lovelace insinuates when he compares Clarissa to the suicidal Lucretia: 'Is death the natural consequence of a Rape?' But Clarissa understands what Lovelace pretends to deny, that rape is primarily a symbolic act, an attempt to shatter the whole edifice of female identity. As Terry Castle puts it, 'A kind of demented fatality leads Lovelace from hermeneutic violence against her to actual sexual violence: his very literal infiltration of Clarissa's body is intimately related to that infiltration of sign systems he has already effected in order to control her… Clarissa's celebrated 'long time a-dying' becomes, thus, a methodical self-expulsion from the realm of signification.' The entering of her body means total violation, not only because it destroys her technical virginity (barring her forever from conventional marriage), but also because she has been robbed of every other space to call her own, bullied out of her inheritance, imprisoned first in her father's house and then in the brothel contrived by Lovelace. What he calls her «pride» in bodily integrity was the last self-possession left to her, and now only by starving that alienated body to nothing can she regain her 'father's house.' The psychological association of penetration and death-a natural link, perhaps, for an author whose six sons all died in infancy-recurs throughout the novel: in dreams, Clarissa is stabbed by Lovelace and tumbled into a mass grave; in real life she turns knives on herself or begs Lovelace to 'let thy pointed mercy enter!' In her will (read out to the whole family) she forbids any surgical opening of her body and imagines Lovelace 'viewing her dead, whom he ONCE before saw in a manner dead' (letter 507). Lovelace meanwhile (in yet another instance of the weird compatibility that underlies their conflict) fantasizes about having her corpse opened-sending the bowels to her father and keeping the heart himself 'in spirits'-since only he can truly «interpret» and «possess» her.
Richardson's greatest gift, as Diderot rightly perceived, was the uncanny psychological accuracy that allowed him to enter the most private recesses and the most extreme experiences like an invisible magician. But his novelistic imagination sometimes undermines the consistency of the moral system he claims to be presenting. For example, Richardson preaches domesticity, 'family values,' and absolute submission to patriarchal authority, but he shows the actual family as a Gothic nightmare, worse than anything in Frankenstein because it is realistic enough to be typical; well might Diderot hail Clarissa as a terrifying new Gospel that hews apart man and wife, daughter and mother, — 97- brother and sister. Again, the stomach-churning Swiftian description of Mrs. Sinclair's physical decay is meant to drive home the central moral of the book: that the rake cannot possibly «reform» to make a good husband, that nothing can cleanse this abomination but 'a total revolution of manners' (letter 499). We admire this militant refusal to compromise, until we remember that these lines are delivered by Belford, Lovelace's fellow rake and confidant. Not only does Belford reform, he receives the highest honors, marries well, inherits Lovelace's fortune, and earns such respect from the dying Clarissa that she appoints him executor of her will (therefore guardian of those papers that survive to constitute the novel); he becomes in effect the authorized narrator for the last three volumes. Richardson thus accommodates precisely the reformist doctrine he attacks most fervently, just as he «accommodates» his moral intention to the corrupt form of the novel. And Lovelace raises another good question about this new hero: since he was privy to all the evil inflicted on Clarissa, why did he not intervene earlier, like a knight rescuing a damsel from the giant's castle?
For better or worse, Richardson aspired not merely to entertain or mirror contemporary life but to transform it; even in Familiar Letters he claims to present 'rules to think and act by, as well as forms to write after.' Yet this didactic, exemplary function does not fit well with the imperatives of narrative art. The means by which a novelist commands «extraordinary» attention frequently subvert the end-instruction in Christian piety and social duty. Capturing the reader requires excitement, arousal, the imposition of will, the intermingling of emotive and creative power. And if all successful novels work a kind of seduction, then Clarissa, which compels the reader to witness voluptuous cruelty at astonishing length, seems to draw us into a sadomasochistic bond. In his correspondence Richardson equates himself with Pygmalion, but (as Lady Bradshaigh points out) Pygmalion gave life to his creation, not death. Richardson, like Lovelace, assumes that 'my Girl' must be put through a mounting series of trials as an experiment; how does this differ from the urge to «sport» with Clarissa's sufferings, condemned in those who call for a happy ending? It is a kind of torture to read page after page of Lovelace's plots and deceptions, knowing that Clarissa, in the next room, cannot see them. But is the reader a fellow victim or the torturer's accomplice? The power of this author's cruelty is recognized by no less an expert than the Marquis de Sade: 'If after twelve or fifteen volumes the immortal Richardson had virtuously ended by converting -98- Lovelace and having him peacefully marry Clarissa, would you… have shed the delicious tears which [he] won from every feeling reader?' The novelist's supreme goal is to create 'interest,' de Sade continues, and this is best achieved when 'our souls are torn,' when 'virtue crushes vice.'
A psychoanalyst might assume that Richardson really resembled Lovelace and repressed this side of his psyche, but it would be more accurate to say that the agency of the novelist-what the author does to the reader- resembles what Lovelace tries to do to Clarissa. Richardson himself seems to exploit the parallel at times. His correspondence and prefatoria glisten with playful hints that he too is an «Encroacher» or a 'Designer.' He often defends Lovelace, quotes him as an authority, or confirms his libertine theories of 'Women,' triumphantly flaunting his female readers' indulgent response to Lovelace as evidence for their corruption-just as Lovelace flaunted his sexual conquests to make the same point. Circulating his manuscript in a female coterie (reminiscent of that group he served at thirteen?) allowed Richardson to run his emotional experiments, provoke an intense reaction, and then ride over the protests, violating the will of lady after lady. Responsive fans like Lady Bradshaigh replied in kind; as each new volume is pressed upon her she cries 'Would you have me weep incessantly?… I cannot, indeed I cannot!' Richardson «teaches» the male reader to 'gain his horrid ends,' Bradshaigh complains, and reduces the female reader to a trembling victim: 'I am as mad as the poor injured Clarissa, and am afraid I cannot help hating you.' 'A tender heart' could not possibly draw such 'shocking scenes'; he must be one of those 'detestable wretches' who 'delight in horror,' like the artist who had a man tortured so that he could paint a more authentic Crucifixion. After a night of weeping over Clarissa, 'what must I say to the Man who has so disappointed and given me so much Pain? Why that I admire him for the Pain he gives, it being an undoubted Proof of his Abilities.' After the rape she declares 'you now can go no farther'-echoing the very words that Lovelace uses to announce the outrage itself.
Artistic power lies in extremity; so Bradshaigh implies and de Sade later confirms. The imagination must press into the cavern until it can 'go no farther.' This, according to de Sade, is precisely what Richardson bequeathed to the novel. In Sir Charles Grandison, however, Richardson refused to follow this «extraordinary» path. Here damsels are inevitably rescued and libertine giants reduced to dwarves. Erotic tension yields to the faintly prurient display of magnanimity ('Her -99- bosom heaved with the grandeur of her sentiments'). The robust feminism of Harriet and Charlotte lapses into self-deprecation, feminine 'delicacy,' and compliance. The hero, splendid as a rational manager, does not throb and suffer enough: as Taine put it, 'his conscience and his peruque are intact'; we can only canonize him and then 'have him stuffed.' Grandison unfolds in a dreamworld of elective affinities, where real parents have been conveniently killed off. Significantly, when we do learn about Sir Charles's and Clementina's family we encounter episodes of monstrous cruelty, abused authority, and heart-rending suffering-and it was precisely these scenes that pumped the tears from readers like Wortley Montagu, Diderot, and Stendhal. This study of sensibility without obsession, sublimity without abjection, only proves de Sade's disturbing thesis: ever since Clarissa, the novelist is bound to explore, not virtue alone, but the uttermost capacities of vice, the deepest «folds» of the human heart.
