I have just now heard that her Hannah hopes to be soon well enough to attend her young lady, when in London. It seems the girl has had no physician. I must send her one, out of pure love and respect to her mistress. Who knows but medicine might weaken nature, and strengthen the disease?—As her malady is not a fever, very likely it may do so—But perhaps her hopes are too forward. Blustering weather in this month yet— And that is bad for rheumatic complaints. (554)
Lovelace has been plotting and scheming, and manipulating everybody before, but this is the first time he contemplates sending an assassin (i.e., a doctor who would administer a poison) to do in an inconvenient person. But perhaps this is just an empty talk: he is simply kidding, keeping up the image of the All-Powerful Rake he's been cultivating in his letters to Belford. But does he know that he is kidding? Reading the passage, we get the unsettling impression that Lovelace might have temporarily lost the ability to experience the difference between the world as imagined by Lovelace—in which he is indeed the most gorgeous, powerful, and dangerous man alive, with corrupt doctors at his disposal and no law to stop him—and the world outside of his imagination. This impression becomes even stronger as we read on and realize that Lovelace implies that God
10: Richardon's Clarissa
himself, by ensuring that the weather stays "blustering," is helping Lovelace along in his plans.
Again, knowing Lovelace's lively sense of humor (of which he is inordinately proud, too), we may hope that he is joking when he makes God one of his agents. The passage, however, gives no positive reassurance to our hopes. Had Richardson intended to provide such a reassurance, it would have been easy enough. Lovelace could have added to his musings about Hannah, physicians, and blustering weather something to the effect of, "or so I tell myself as I sit here and figure out how to subdue this proud beauty" (i.e., Clarissa). Because he does not say anything like it, we as readers have two options. We can make our lives easier and insist—in spite of the absence of any clear textual evidence—that Lovelace is ironic and knows it. We can remind ourselves that, after all, he is writing a letter to one of his friends and admirers and thus has to sustain his tone of swaggering self-assurance in order to impress his addressee. We can hope that this addressee, John Belford, is such a close friend that Lovelace can count on Belford's knowing which of his bizarre claims should be taken at their face value and which should not. Thus, with a bit of effort, we can read all this comforting information into the text and decide that Lovelace is joking. Alternatively—and much less comfortably—we can remain suspended in a state of uncertainty, not quite understanding how seriously we should take anything that Lovelace says at this point.
Moreover, as the story goes on, Richardson begins to downright ply us with similar instances of Lovelace's conflating his version of reality with reality itself and forcefully imposing his conflation on his audience. (One effect of such a conflation is that we begin to experience a feeling of mental vertigo not dissimilar to the one induced upon Clarissa, who is not able to tell, at least for a while, what is really going on around her.) Soon after the failed Miss Partington ploy, Lovelace conceives of another stratagem, different in design but tending to the same end. The women of the house are instructed to start a small, manageable fire in the middle of the night, a fire that could be easily put out, but not before the terrified and half-dressed Clarissa unlocks her door and steps out, afraid of being burned. Then Lovelace can enter her room on the pretence of saving her and calming her down, and stay in that room for the rest of the night.
At the appointed hour, as Lovelace sits at his writing-desk rereading a letter from his friend, he hears a commotion outside his rooms, the first stirrings of the "fire" scenario that he had himself carefully planned with the women of the house. Here is Lovelace's account of his immediate reaction:
Soft, oh virgin saint, and safe as soft be thy slumbers!—
. . . But, what's the matter! What's the matter! What a double—But
the uproar abates! What a double coward am I?—Or is it that I am taken
in a cowardly minute? for heroes have their fits offear; cowards their brave
moments; and virtuous ladies, all but my Clarissa, their moment
critical—
But thus coolly enjoying thy reflections in a hurricane!—Again the
confusion's renewed!—
What! Where!—How came it!—
Is my beloved safe!—
Oh wake not too roughly my beloved!—(722)
To understand how the passage works our metarepresentational ability, we first need to realize that Lovelace is uncharacteristically nervous about the immediate prospect of forcing himself into a young woman's bed. Hence every mention of "confusion," "hurricane," and the "uproar" can be read as describing both the fake turmoil among the inhabitants of the house prompted by the fake fire and the real turmoil in Lovelace's soul.
Lovelace is surprised by his feelings—"What's the matter? . . . What a double coward am I?"—and wants to rally his spirit. One way of psyching himself up for going through with his plan is to work himself into the state of mind of somebody who is as surprised and frightened by the fire as Clarissa herself is. If Lovelace can convince himself that he and Clarissa were thrown together in the middle of the night by the accident and not by his premeditated plan, it would be easier for him to act more naturally in Clarisssa's room, thus taking some edge off his presently unbearable anxiety. (Believing in one's own lie could be cognitively liberating because it frees up the energy spent on processing that extra level of metarepresentational framing stipulated by oneself as a source tag.) Consequently, when Lovelace wishes "soft slumber" to his Clarissa, he knows well that her slumber will be rudely interrupted this very minute, and yet he endeavors to sound as if he did not know it. Similarly, when Lovelace perks up at the noise and asks anxiously, "What's the matter? "What's the matter?" and then, when he does not hear anything else for a couple of seconds and notes with relief that "the uproar" has apparently "abated," he is faking the natural reaction of the person disturbed by strange sounds around the house but then lulled back to the feeling of security by the temporary quiet. When the "confusion's renewed," Lovelace responds as a man frightened and surprised anew ("What! Where!—How came it!"), moreover as a man who is so dedicated to his "beloved" that her safety is the
10: Richardon's Clarissa
first thing that comes into his mind even when his own life is apparently in danger ("Is my beloved safe!") and who is determined to spare her any unnecessary anxiety upon this life-threatening occasion ("Oh wake not too roughly my beloved!").
This sequence of spontaneous and noble emotional responses is, of course, the exact opposite of what must be really going on through Lovelace's head, for the whole point of the "fire" plot is to terrify and disorient Clarissa to such a degree that she would have no strength to withstand his sexual attack. But again, as in the earlier episode, in which Lovelace contemplates sending an assassin to Hannah, the text offers us no reassurance that he is consistently aware of his role-playing. He might be so in the beginning of the scene, when he comments first on his nervousness and then on his ability to "coolly" enjoy his "reflections in a hurricane"; but toward its end ("What! Where!—How came it!"), he has, as far as we know, completely taken on his make-believe personality. It might be that by the time Lovelace begins to implore some figment of his imagination ("Oh wake not too roughly my beloved"), he is thinking to himself, as it were, "I pretend that I am a perfect lover caught unawares by fire"— a metarepresentation with himself as a source of representation. But as readers we get very little indication that he is thinking this, and we see instead a man who appears, at least for the time being, to sincerely believe his own lie, an unreliable narrator par excellence.
One of the most striking instances of this elimination of himself as a source of his fantasies comes when Clarissa, shortly after the fire episode (which, indeed, frightens but does not subdue her) escapes the hateful brothel a
nd breaks free of Lovelace. Though desperate at first at having lost the object of his obsession, Lovelace is soon cheered up by finding out that she is residing in the neighboring town of Hampstead (Clarissa cannot simply go back to her family because she has completely antagonized them by eloping with the rake). Lovelace is even disappointed at the ease with which he has located his victim: had she concealed herself better, his game of pursuit would have been more exciting.
As he is getting ready to go to Hampstead to retrieve Clarissa, Lovelace calls for the assistance of one of his numerous agents, a "vile and artful pander" to his "debaucheries" (38), Patrick MacDonald, a wanted criminal, kept from prosecution only through the intervention of the rich and well-connected Lovelace. MacDonald has earlier appeared before Clarissa in the guise of a respectable gentleman, one Captain Tomlinson, presumably sent by her uncle, Antony Harlowe. As the fake "Captain Tomlinson" claims, Mr. Harlowe wants to see his niece respectably married to the man (i.e., Lovelace), who, for all that the world knows, has already seduced her, as a prerequisite to negotiating the truce between Clarissa and her estranged parents. Mr. Harlowe has thus asked his dear old friend, the Captain, to meet with Mr. Lovelace and Clarissa and find out how the matters stand between them. All these are lies, of course, invented by Lovelace to subdue Clarissa. Lovelace brings in the sham Captain because he desperately needs Clarissa to still want to marry him, if no longer out of love for him, then as the means to be reconciled with her beloved uncle and later the rest of her family. As long as she still wants—for any reason— to become his wife, he can have some source of emotional power over her.
Obeying Lovelace's urgent summons, MacDonald, a.k.a. Captain Tomlinson, hastens to Mrs. Sinclair's house ready to accompany Lovelace on his trip to Hampstead. Lovelace's description of Captain Tomlinson's arrival and their subsequent conversation emerges as downright surreal if we keep in mind that every person in the house knows who MacDonald really is and what he is doing here, and the only "spectator" who would have benefited from keeping up the pretence is Clarissa, and she is gone. In the long quote below, I have interspersed Lovelace's full account of the Captain's entrance and their subsequent trip to Hampstead with my comments in italics:
A gentleman to speak with me, Dorcas?—Who can want me thus early?
[Dorcas is one of Lovelace's "agents" employed to keep an eye on Clarissa and posing, for Clarissa's benefit, as a poor relative of Mrs. Sinclair. She certainly knows who the "gentleman" is, and Lovelace knows that she knows. Why then does he keep up the pretence in front of her?]
Captain Tomlinson, sayest thou! Surely he must have traveled all night!—Early riser as I am, how could he think to find me up thus early? [MacDonald certainly did not travel all night, for he resides nearby to be on hand when Lovelace needs him to play his role in front of Clarissa, and he is here "thus early" because Lovelace woidd have destroyed him had he not obeyed his summons immediately. Again, Dorcas knows all this, and Lovelace knows that she knows, and yet the role-playing goes on.]
. . . Dear captain, I rejoice to see you: just in the nick of time . . . Strange news since I saw you, captain! Poor mistaken lady!—But you have too much goodness, I know, to reveal to her uncle Harlowe the errors of this capricious beauty. It will all turn out for the best. You must accompany me part of the way. I know the delight you take in composing differences. But 'tis the task of the prudent to heal the breeches made by the rashness and folly of the impudent.
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[Lovelaces pretence in front ofMacDonald does have one logical explanation: he needs to "instruct"him on how to view what has happened between Lovelace and Clarissa, that is, on how the real Captain Tomlinson, had such a person existed, might have perceived the situation, without knowing what is really going on. We may say, thus, that Lovelace performs the role of the bridegroom injured by his capricious bride in fivnt ofMacDonald to make it psychologically easier for the latter to later perform his role of a respectable peace?naker in
front of Clarissa. Still, when we read this passage—for I am concerned here primarily with the effect that Lovelace's deep play has on the reader—we cannot help feeling that on some level Lovelace believes in what he is saying.]
And now (all around me so still, and so silent) the rattling of the
chariot-wheels at a street's distance do I hear!—And to this angel of a lady
I fly!
Reward, oh God of Love (the cause is thy own); reward thou, as it
deserves, my suffering perseverance!—Succeed my endeavors to bring
back to thy obedience, this charming fugitive!—Make her acknowledge
her rashness; repent her insults; implore my forgiveness; beg to be rein
stated in my favour, and that I will bury in oblivion the remembrance of
her heinous offence against thee, and against me, thy faithful votary.
[This is Lovelace's "prayer" as he is ready to board his chariot to go to Hampstead. This part is particularly unsettling because here Lovelace is presumably speaking to himself and thus truly has no reason to pretend that Clarissa is the one who was rash, insulted him, and needs to implore his forgiveness, and not the other way around. It is possible that, as in the earlier episode with the fake fire, Lovelace is nervous about his forthcoming meeting with Clarissa and needs to work himself up into the state of mind of the injured bridegroom; that is, he needs to temporarily forget that he himself is the source of his representation, "I am an injured bridegroom." Hoivever, we get no direct textual evidence of his nervousness, and all we see instead is a manfully committed to his version of reality. Richardson explicitly and brilliantly articulates here, for the first time in Western literary history, the mental stance of the stalker. This stance is crucially bound with the stalker's tendency to eliminate himself as a source of his representation, "She loves me and she wants me, but she is coy and she is hurting me by her excessive coyness, so she needs to be punished and then
forgiven," and instead perceive this representation as an objective reflection of what is going on.]
The chariot at the door!—I come! I come!—
[Lovelace is fully in his role of an eager bridegroom on the way to attend his beloved, who, he is joyfully confident, will soon make everything right between them.]
I attend you, good captain— Indeed, sir—
[This is MacDonald speaking.]
Pray, sir—civility is not ceremony.
[We infer from this exchange that Lovelace is treatiyig the fake Captain with an exaggerated courtesy, perhaps bowing and politely inviting him to walk through the door before himself. Had MacDonald been who he and Lovelace pretend he is—a respectable gentleman who does not approve of Lovelace's libertine ways but has to deal with him to oblige his old friend, Antony Harlowe—Lovelace's humble behavior would have made some sense. Given, however, that Lovelace is a rich aristocrat and MacDonald a proscribed criminal, sold to Lovelace soul and body, Lovelace's obeisance looks decidedly out of place. It is possible that Lovelace is ironic, but, considering the overall tone of the scene, it is also possible that the fictitious scenario that he has created has temporarily replaced a?iy other reality for him.]
And now, dressed like a bridegroom, my heart elated beyond that of the most desiring one (attended by a footman whom my beloved never saw), I am already at Hampstead! (761)
This last sentence introduces an interesting variation on Lovelace's delusional reasoning. Lovelace is still stubbornly treating his own fantasy of the passionate romance between him and Clarissa as a true representation of reality. At the same time, his interjection about the footman whom his "beloved" never saw shows that he is aware that Clarissa will not be happy to see her "bridegroom" at all. Lovelace knows that the moment she saw her torturer's servant at Hampstead, she would flee again—hence his precaution about taking along the man she has never met. As any successful stalker, Lovelace thus retains some ability to see the world through the eyes of his victim, even though on a certain level
his capacity for monitoring the source of his representations is compromised. And, contrary to what we often assume, seeing the world through another's eyes does not necessarily translate (it certainly does not in Lovelace's case!) into feeling compassion for that person. As cognitive psychologist Robert W. Mitchell observes in a related argument about the relationship between a successful deceiver and his/her victim:
Surprisingly, such ability to take the part of the other demonstrated in acumen need not result in any sympathetic or compassionate response to another's turmoil at being deceived. The deceiver can invent reasons why the other deserves to be deceived even while the deceiver recognizes that
10: Richardon's Clarissa
the victim would be psychologically better off without the deception. So the same imaginative propensity which allows someone to take the perspective of the other also allows the person to imagine the other from a perspective which discounts the other's perspective.6
Though coming from a different research angle, Mitchell's observation about the possibility of a "perspective which discounts the other's perspective" is compatible with the present argument about the "selectively compromised" metarepresentational ability of a stalker such as Lovelace. Richardson makes Lovelace constantly balance between making accurate assessments of given situations and pointedly ignoring the possibility that some parts of his assessment reflect primarily his own wishful thinking about what is going on. To a degree, we all engage in such balancing acts in our everyday life, which is why, when taken to the extreme, as in Clarissa, they remain both emotionally alien and unsettlingly recognizable.
Let me clarify the stakes of my twofold claim that Lovelace's metarepresentational ability is selectively compromised and that the novel cultivates the scenes that make the reader uncertain of whether Lovelace is fully aware that his representations of other people's mental states are, at least on some level, his own self-serving inventions. As I have pointed out earlier, I am not interested in diagnosing Lovelace as slightly schizophrenic. Neither am I invested in figuring out exactly which version of reality Lovelace truly believes in. Lovelace does not exist. The reader does exist, however, and so does the novel as massive and focused experimentation with that reader's cognitive adaptations. Thus, from the perspective of cognitive theory, the ultimate reason that Lovelace goes through his elaborate and peculiarly flawed mind-games is that it allows the narrative to engage, train, tease, and titillate our metarepresentational ability. Our brain is the focus of the novel's attention, its playground, its raison d'etre, its meaning, whereas Lovelace, Clarissa, Dorcas, MacDonald, and all other characters are but the means for delivering this kind of wonderfully rich stimulation to the variety of cognitive adaptations making up our Theory of Mind.
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