100 Significantly, Allestree cites *Proverbs* as an antidote to the behaviour of young people who "cannot abide to submit to the counsels and directions of their Elders, and therefore to shake them off, are willing to have them pass for the effects of dotage, when they are indeed the fruits of sobriety and experience" (297; Sunday XIV). The applicability of this to Lovelace is obvious.

Incidentally, Lovelace's suggestion that Belford "put [his uncle] out of his misery" occurs in the same letter in which he complains about his own uncle's love of proverbs; aggression against the one seems to be transferred to the other (611). Lovelace even tries to cite a precedent for such a murder/euthanasia "in the Bible, or some other good book", although he has trouble remembering his source.

101 For a quotation of the entire poem and a (comparatively) detailed discussion of it, see Mangano 68–9.

Lovelace's misreading, therefore, throws a bad light on his notions of friendship. Since they apparently do not derive from a Christian context, they must be wrong at the core.

Since the libertines' friendship has no firm moral basis, their rules of corre‐ spondence – while superficially similar to those between Anna and Clarissa – enable openness, but ignore moral improvement. Allestree argues that true friends – as opposed to mere companions – are benevolent critics of each other's actions:

And sure we should in this respect [of alerting friends to their faults] account our friends as our own Souls, by having the same jealous tenderness and watchfulness over their Souls, which we ought to have of our own. It will therefore be very fit for all that have entred any strict friendship, to make this one special Article in the agreement, that they shall mutually admonish and reprove each other; by which means it will become such an avowed part of their friendship, that it can never be mistaken by the reproved party for censoriousness or unkindness. (334; Sunday XV)

This is precisely what Anna and Clarissa have agreed to do, and what is, at first, missing in the friendship between Lovelace and Belford. When friendly expostulation occurs nevertheless – or when Lovelace ventriloquizes his friend's expostulation – it is seized on as an opportunity for self-vindication. As Lovelace writes to Belford after 'Captain Tomlinson' has tried to intercede (half-heartedly) for Clarissa:

To pretend to *convince* a man, who knows in his heart that he is doing a wrong thing!—He must needs think that this would put me upon trying what I could say for myself; and when the excited compunction can be carried from the heart to the lips, it must evaporate in words. (837)

Lovelace often impersonates his friend's voice to pre-empt it of significance. By imagining Belford's questions, arguments and pleadings ('saving' him the trouble of formulating them himself) only to counter them with his arguments, he provides himself with an opportunity of reiterating his own position, while at the same time discouraging further advice. The main rule of their correspondence is thus not mutual improvement, but the forbearance Lovelace sees as the necessary part of the "woman spirit" in any friendship: They have a rule of never taking amiss anything written in the "Roman style" (142, 'editorial' footnote). In contrast, the rule between Anna and Clarissa – formulated by themselves as well as Colonel Morden – is "to be thankful for the freedom taken" (1450) when either friend criticises the other. While both have failings which they may not "wish[…] to mend" (131), both nevertheless take each other's censure seriously.

Anna is thus a foil for Lovelace in friendship – and as a lover. Her relationship to Clarissa is fervent and occasionally almost eroticised; "[s]o intense is Anna's love that she feels enveloped in her beloved. 'You are me,' she constantly avers" (Todd 49). While the male lover will eventually dominate his beloved – either as husband or seducer – Anna's identification with her friend expresses true equality. Her gifts are unselfish, in contrast to Lovelace's attempts to dominate Clarissa by laying her under obligations. Although the heroine refuses even Anna's pecuniary help, this may in fact be an expression of equality – she accepts her friend's advice and sympathy, which she can return, but not gifts which would disturb the balance of their relationship. Clarissa's refusal of Anna's assistance has been understood to indicate her secret preference for Lovelace. Indeed, Anna herself tries to make Clarissa accept her help by telling her friend that she must choose between Lovelace and herself. When Clarissa plans to escape from Harlowe Place, for example, Anna asks pointedly "'Whether you choose not rather to go off with one of *your own sex*; with your ANNA HOWE—than with one of the *other*; with Mr LOVELACE?'" (356). If Clarissa elopes, she can choose between two helpers – her friend and equal, with little power either to protect or oppress her, or the man who hopes to gain authority over her. Clarissa absolutely refuses Anna's offer, since it will endanger her friend. Moreover, as Clarissa points out, Anna owes obedience and respect to her own mother; she must not make sacrifices for her friend which clash with filial duty (359–60). If Clarissa's wary preference of Lovelace's support to Anna's is to be understood in any other terms than unacknowledged desire, it must probably be in the context of the system of duty. Anna is not morally free to act as she would like. Were she married to Mr. Hickman – who admires Clarissa – she could offer her friend a refuge; in that case, the heroine says, she would gladly profit from her friend's help (335). However, accepting support which should not be offered is out of the question.

In contrast to Anna, Lovelace is a free agent, who owes no special obligations to anyone. His support of Clarissa does not clash with his duty to others – instead, it is dangerous because it may interfere with Clarissa's own obligations to be obedient and chaste, as we have seen above. This is why she refuses his offer to buy her clothes. Clarissa's resistance to accepting Lovelace's money and to his staying in the same house becomes much less pronounced after she has agreed to his proposal of marriage (after her father's curse). His support is now that of a prospective husband, who has a duty to provide for his wife – and thus, the general danger of accepting pecuniary obligations from a young man appears lessened, contained in the system of duty rather than of gift or contract.

Still, Clarissa's refusal of Anna's financial support remains disturbing, partly because the latter is herself evidently disturbed by it. Anna continues to remind Clarissa that their friendship legitimates any help she can provide. Rejecting her support is unjust to their relationship: "I beg, my dearest Miss Harlowe, that you will not put your Anna Howe upon a foot with Lovelace, in refusing to accept of my offer" (407). Clarissa promises that she does *not* put them "upon a foot", and, indeed, this is true – even though she continues to refuse Anna's money while tacitly agreeing to let Lovelace pay for the lodgings they share. Anna and Lovelace will never be the same to her, for only the female friend can be an equal. Lovelace is either a seducer who must be shunned or a prospective husband who offers legitimate support. If the former, "[her] soul is above" him (646), if the latter, she must eventually defer to him. Once Clarissa's family reject her and she has to hide from her former acquaintance, Anna is the one friend with whom Clarissa can uphold an equal relationship, to whom she need not defer, who constitutes no threat, and to whose offers she can respond with "free will" – and which, therefore, she can reject.

The ties between Anna and Clarissa are thus the epitome of loving equality, their "friendship […] the most complete relationship in the novel" (Bueler 121). Shortly before her death, Clarissa affirms this relationship when she takes "from her bosom, where she always wore it", Anna's picture and symbolically takes leave of her friend: "*Sweet and ever-amiable friend—companion—sister—lover*! said she—and kissed it four several times, once at each tender appellation" (1357). Anna shows what Lovelace (and Arabella) should be to Clarissa. Some of her faults, as well as her qualities, are shared by him. Both are plotters – Anna tries to enlist a smuggler's help to hide Clarissa from Lovelace – but Anna's plans are mostly formed with her friend's knowledge and consent and are always meant for her good. Anna's passion, shrewdness, and spirit for intrigue are potentially beneficent; if she is associated with rakishness, this reflects on Lovelace's character more than on her own – she demonstrates that his qualities could be employed for good actions. In that sense, she foreshadows Sir Charles, whose similarity to Lovelace has been remarked on by several critics: "Lovelace, one could say, is Sir Charles's evil twin" (Robinson 176).

Both Anna and Lovelace dislike and despise most members of Clarissa's family; both of them except (occasionally) her mother from their criticism. Anna even calls Clarissa "[her] mamma's girl" – a double-edged term, for it implies helpless passivity as well as (praiseworthy) gentleness (67).102 Both, also, humiliate James Harlowe in ways characteristically feminine and masculine. While Anna has refused his marriage proposal "with a disdain […] too much of kin to his haughtiness" (55), Lovelace humiliates him with his superior wit and his easy victory in their duel. Similarly, both keep up a secret correspondence with Clarissa against her family's prohibition. However, on Lovelace's side, this is a ploy for power. Almost every letter he writes is sent either against her prohibition and/or contains half-truths and lies. Anna's letters, in contrast, exchange openness for openness, advice for advice. Nor is there a difference in power: while Lovelace threatens to confront Clarissa's family if she ceases to write to him, Anna can make no threat which Clarissa cannot return.

The most direct juxtaposition between Anna and Lovelace occurs after Clarissa's death, when Anna reacts with near-frenzy and Lovelace succumbs temporarily to madness (characteristically, the most destructive grief is reserved for the guilty party). Anna goes to Harlowe Place for a last sight of Clarissa's body. After passionately calling out to the dead Clarissa and kissing her, she turns to Colonel Morden:

But why, sir, why, Mr Morden, was she sent *hither*? Why not to *me*?—She has no father, no mother, no relations; no, not *one!*—They had all renounced her. I was her sympathizing friend—And had not I the best right to my dear creature's remains?— And must names without nature be preferred to such a love as mine? […] (1403) [… W]e had but one heart, but one soul, between us: and now my better half is torn from me—*what shall I do?* (1404)

Anna's lament is reminiscent of Richardson's description of the love of an old married couple; the parting of these friends is a parting of souls, which leaves the survivor incomplete (cf. 1.5). It is an indictment, as well, of the system of duty, where "names without nature" are preferred to deep, freely-given love. Lovelace had insisted on his right to Clarissa's body in similar terms: "Her cursed parents, whose barbarity to her no doubt was the *true* cause of her death, have long since renounced her. She left *them* for *me*. She chose *me* therefore: and I was her husband" (1383–4). Yet Lovelace's mad demands also echo the Harlowes' claims that they have a right to Clarissa's obedience. Clarissa must be somebody's; her own, she cannot be: "Whose was she living? Whose is she dead, but mine?", Lovelace exclaims (1384). His early promises to regard her

102 As the situation worsens, Anna's assessment of Mrs. Harlowe becomes less sympa‐ thetic: "I pity nobody that puts it out of their power to show maternal love and humanity, in order to patch up for themselves a precarious and sorry quiet, which every blast of wind shall disturb!" (583).

"free will" have always covered his view of her as property to be obtained; now that her soul is out of his reach, he is still trying to gain power over her body. In a dark parody of Anna's claim that she and Clarissa's shared "one heart between us", Lovelace in his madness demands Clarissa's heart to keep. The seemingly parallel claims of Anna and Lovelace thus transpire to stem from opposite longings: in the one, it is a desire for possession, in the other, it is a longing to transcend all social obligations which are not based on mutual love. In Clarissa's last solemn apostrophe to her friend, the heroine confirms and meets that longing.

Within *Clarissa*, such a transcendence remains Utopian. Although true friendship may soften the effects of the abuse of the system of duty – and although it may deviate from it on occasion, as in the prohibited correspondence between the friends – it cannot negate or control that system. Attention to the claims of others makes Clarissa draw back. Indeed, Janet Todd remarks on "her uneasy fear of 'unbridled' friendship" (55). This "coldness" should not be read as distrust of friendship as such. Rather, it indicates that justice to everyone within one's network of duty requires a certain amount of control of each relationship. The value of Anna's friendship is, in part, precisely that it allows Clarissa to exert this control, however much it may cost them to respect these limits of their love.

## **2.5 Male authority and the disruption of relationships**

The obligations of friendship are part of the system of duty, but also provide a radical counter-model to it. Similarly, solidarity between women offers an alternative model of relationship to that between men and women – one based on affection, influence and council rather than on authority, on equality rather than hierarchy (cf. 3.5). Other relationships – notably the one between a mother and her child – are firmly situated within the system of duty, but partake of the more egalitarian, affectionate nature of ties between women. It is the mark of authoritarian men in each novel that they interfere in these relationships, while one of the salient characteristics of Sir Charles – but also of the finally reformed Mr. B. – is that he helps to establish family relationships and friendships between women. Lovelace, as the most Satanic villain, corrupts and distorts such relationships both practically and when he writes of his actions. The prostitutes Sally Martin and Polly Horton are the most salient example of his corruption of women – the clearest sign of which is their desire to drag down Clarissa to their own level: "You owe us such a lady!" (522).

As several critics have observed, Lovelace is uncomfortable when it appears that women's bonds might be stronger than his own attractions. He "stren‐ uously opposes the friendship of Clarissa and Anna", tampering with their correspondence, threatening to rape both, and casting them in roles of his own making – as when he imagines Anna as a rake manqué, or presents Mrs. Bevis to Anna's messenger as a false Clarissa (Todd 59, 62). With regard to this particular friendship, Lovelace's success is short-lived, however; he can affect their confidence in each other only while he prevents direct communication between them. A number of fantasies make up for this lack of real power. For example, when he imagines their friendship as strong and lasting, it is usually in the context of rape or seduction fantasies concerning Anna (e. g. 637, 922); the relationship thus comes to serve his own 'needs' rather than theirs. In a more extreme, elaborate imagined scene of abduction, rape, and trial which is only hinted at in the first edition (671), he gives himself not only full power over Anna's body, but imagines her as a publicly humiliated victim: the women who attend his fantasized trial, even more than the men, are on his side.103 And when he describes his plans for raping Clarissa a second time as a dream vision, this includes the staging of a scene of (faked) female confidence and support. The bawd Mother H., he determines, shall lure Clarissa into her 'protection' and her bed, where the latter will tell her story. In the course of the night, Lovelace will change places with the bawd and rape Clarissa once more just after she has imaginatively re-lived his first assault. Not content with mastering her body, Lovelace also "contemplates his mastery of the bonds of female commiseration and solidarity, fictional bonds he has created in order to have the imagined pleasure of destroying" them (Gwilliam 98).

However, Lovelace's tendency to distort as well as disturb women's solidarity is as strong, if less apparent at first sight, when he follows Clarissa to Hampstead. Indeed, his report of events there may be his most subtle and powerful bid to reach out to the *readers* of the novel and affect their view of women. In Lovelace's account, his experiences with women – except Clarissa – reveal their weaknesses: lust thinly veiled by propriety (Mrs. Bevis), greed (Mrs. Moore), officious curiosity (Miss Rawlins). He easily acquires the information he is after, receives help to disguise himself or to intercept Anna's letter to Clarissa, and passes around his own version of their story. His apparent success at Hampstead has led Judith Wilt to observe that this place is simply a respectable version of the

103 For extensive quotations and a discussion of this scene, see Gwilliam 78–81. In the first edition, Richardson merely states that Lovelace, "*to show the wantonness of his invention, in his next gives his friend an account of a scheme he had framed to be revenged on Miss Howe […]. But as he does not intend to carry it into execution, it is omitted*" (671).

London brothel (25). Beneath Lovelace's account, however, lurks an alternative version in which women respond more strongly to women's distress than to men's attractiveness. In the inn where Clarissa makes her first inquiries in Hampstead, Lovelace is at first able to tell his story of the patient husband suffering from a capricious, albeit virtuous, wife. The proprietors help him disguise himself – yet his obvious skill at impersonation is recognised and correctly interpreted by the land*lady,* who tells her husband: "He's a good one, I warrant him!—I dare say the fault lies not all of one side" (766).

Later on, Lovelace wins Mrs. Bevis's favour easily enough, but his dealings with Mrs. Moore and Miss Rawlins are fraught with tension. When Mrs. Moore and Miss Rawlins seem ready to side with Clarissa even after he has told them she is his wife, he notes in frustration: "I imagined that I had made myself a better interest in these women". He comforts himself with the thought, however, that they give her information on possible escape routes only because "the whole sex love plotting; and plot-*ters* too" (792). One moment, he exults in his skill in playing on people's weaknesses, such as Mrs. Moore's desire for money, the next he is disappointed when she hesitates to let him lodge in her house. Similarly, his contempt for Miss Rawlins's 'curiosity' serves to distance her, in his account of events, from other women who are "*so notified* for prudence, that none of her acquaintance undertake anything of consequence without consulting her" (764). If Clarissa confides in Miss Rawlins, he fears, all will be lost. Lovelace's official version highlights male influence on women; his anxiety, however, reveals that female solidarity is the natural response.104 Thus, I disagree with Judith Wilt's claim that, in *Clarissa*, "the real enemy of woman is woman".105 I

104 Lest the reader trust too implicitly in Lovelace's version of characters and events, it is instructive to note his behaviour at the Smiths' house, where Clarissa lodges during her final illness. When Lovelace comes to visit Clarissa only to find her gone, he walks through the house and alternately threatens, insults, flatters and tries to amuse the Smiths and Mrs. Lovick. He writes optimistically that "my courteous behaviour to [Mrs. Smith and the widow Lovick] will, on their report of it, procure me the favour" of an interview with Clarissa (1223). Instead, Clarissa is shocked at Lovelace's "astonishing vagaries" (1246). Although the reader is given no direct access to the Smiths' and Mrs. Lovick's report of the villain's behaviour, it is clear that their impression of him must have been unfavourable. Similarly, Belford's positive report of Hickman contradicts the ridiculous impression given by Lovelace.

Morris Golden has suggested that Richardson put much of himself into Lovelace (cf. 162), yet it seems at least as likely that, in Lovelace's encounter with these characters, the author identified with the serious-minded tradespeople and the good, if somewhat inept, Mr. Hickman, allowing the aristocratic rake to ridicule them only in order to show the hollowness of this sort of triumph.

105 Several critics have made similar, albeit more reserved statements, including London, who claims, like Wilt, that a "greater capacity for wickedness [is] assigned women over

concur, however, with her statement that this is "the *lesson* Lovelace has *insisted upon all along*" (27; my emphasis). It is the mark of the perverted patriarch to be uncomfortable at the solidarity of women, and to desire to be not only the centre, but the *sole* focus of their attention – hence not only Lovelace's denigration of Clarissa's friends, but also his acute discomfort at finding that the "women below" (690) have, in fact, their own plans for Clarissa, which differ from his (cf. Wilt 27).

Clarissa, throughout the novel, expects women to show solidarity with other women, and she is rarely mistaken. Within her family, only Arabella is genuinely against her, and when Clarissa lies dying, her sister shows more readiness than James to take her back. Arabella's cruelty is associated by Clarissa with masculinity:

[…] she has been thought to be masculine in her air, and in her spirit. She has then, perhaps, a soul of the *other* sex in a body of *ours*. And so, for the honour of *our own*, will I judge of every woman for the future who, imitating the rougher manners of men, acts unbeseeming the gentleness of her own sex. (309–10; cf. Todd 32)

Repeatedly Clarissa shows herself more capable of judging other women's characters than Lovelace expects, objecting not only to the "masculine" Mrs. Sinclair, but also to Sally, Polly and the "specious Partington", a woman he has selected specially to impose on the heroine as a bedfellow. Interestingly, she is far more easily imposed on by Lovelace's male helpers, like Captain Tomlinson or Mr. Mennell, than by his female ones. The only exceptions are the false Lady Betty and Charlotte Montague – a deception which Lady Echlin found unbelievable and helped prompt her to write her own version of the ending.106 It seems plausible, however, that Clarissa would find it easier to believe

men in Richardson's fiction" (41). However, she rightly observes that the evil committed by the prostitutes takes the "place of that *natural* sympathy which consolidates women's friendship as a defense against an alien male world" (43; my emphasis). Although women in Richardson's fiction have a capacity for evil as well as solidarity, the latter tendency is more pronounced. Dussinger cautiously supports the view that "throughout this story women are seen to be locally worse enemies than men", but notes that this attitude – voiced by Belford as well as Lovelace –"conveniently overlooks the male-dominated economic system that prompts such competitive behaviour between women in the first place" ("Truth and storytelling" 49).

106 Lady Echlin thought that "at Hamstead, [Clarissa's] conduct is quite inconsistant with her character, – […] she cou'd not be so unpardonably silly as to accompany [Lovelace] to London, with two flirting strumpets, who, tho' they had assum'd the names of his kindred, their affected airs, & over acted part, wou'd not suffer Clarissa to imagine them, the real, well-Bread Ladies of quality" (Sabor, *Correspondence* 984–5; opening of her alternative ending).

that Lovelace would try to rape her than that he would hire prostitutes to impersonate his own female relations. Moreover, Clarissa's desire for *female* support – "I submit not [my cause] to men" (827) she tells 'Captain Tomlinson' – helps deceive her.

Interestingly, while Lovelace – and to some extent Belford – emphasize the malice of fallen women as feminine and beyond the vice of vicious men, Clarissa is consistent in holding men in far greater horror than women – her term of contempt to Belford is "MAN" (1066). The only seeming exception, Mrs. Sinclair, has a "masculine air" – which means, incidentally, that she is ugly, like so many bad women in literature (cf. McMaster, *Reading the Body* 65). Her very body, it seems, denies that she is truly a part of the so-called 'fair sex'. She is thus a monstrous hybrid between all that is bad in women *and* men, the only woman to actively further Lovelace's violence without having been corrupted by him first. It is also Mrs. Sinclair who is singled out for the most extended, horrible scene of a sinner's death, where she sinks, in Belford's description, to a beastlike creature. Clarissa, then, refuses to learn the lesson prepared for her – her distrust of men is consistently stronger than that of women.

If the abuse of male power *outside* the home tends to corrupt women, it sows division inside it. Within the family, the opposing tendencies between authority and solidarity, hierarchy and network are most clearly embodied in the presentation of fatherhood and motherhood. The figure of the father has received much and early attention. Keymer, to name a prominent example, carefully traces the links between Clarissa's "father's house" as the house of her progenitor and the house of her maker (*Richardson's* Clarissa 105–20). In contrast, her relationship to her mother has received little in-depth treatment.107 Mrs. Harlowe's connection to her daughter, of course, 'lacks' the subtle but crucial associations with scriptural texts. Nevertheless, in the light of gender studies, it is interesting how little attention this 'good', but passive woman has received in comparison both to the men in *Clarissa* and to more outspoken women like Anna Howe. Strikingly, Clarissa's relationships to other women are as numerous and as crucial as those she has to men. Within her family, the

107 Dorothy Van Ghent sees "a dramatic vision of family life" as part of the "*Clarissa*-myth" (57–8), with the relationship between the godlike father and the rebellious/obedient child at the core of this family life (59–60). Indeed, Florian Stuber has written an entire article "On Fathers and Authority in *Clarissa*", and Janice Haney-Peritz has contributed an article on *Clarissa* to a volume on daughters and fathers. More recently, Lynda Zwinger has included a study of *Clarissa* in her monograph *Daughters, Fathers, and the Novel*.

Mrs. Harlowe, in contrast, has received little critical attention, although Todd discusses her alongside other female characters in *Clarissa*.

four despotic males – father, two uncles, James Harlowe junior – are balanced with four women: her mother, aunt, sister and cousin Dolly, three of whom are at least partially sympathetic to Clarissa, while the fourth seems at least less unrelenting than James towards the close of the novel. Clarissa further has two mentor figures, Dr. Lewin and her nurse and maternal friend Mrs. Norton. Shortly before her death, in the house of the Smiths, "she is for finding out something *paternal* and *maternal* in everyone" (1082). Even on her way to her eternal "father's house", then, her desire for human relationships is balanced between that of the father – implying, in its positive aspects, protection – and that of the nurturing mother.

Mrs. Harlowe may at first glance seem like the mother in Locke's *Two Treatises*, present to supplement and comment on the authority of the father in some way, but prone to disappearing in the course of the argument. Yet if Mrs. Harlowe 'supplements' fatherly authority, she does so in a way which highlights the value of femininity. The father, for Clarissa, commands respect. Kneeling to a father constitutes an appeal for mercy, while his kneeling to a child is both a shock to propriety and a last act of constraint (as Clementina argues, cf. 3:59–60). Indeed, Clarissa writes that she "had deserved annihilation had [she] suffered [her] father to kneel in vain" (506).108 Fatherly authority appears inflexible, leaving room only for binary oppositions: Clarissa is either "in her father's house" or banished from it. For his part, she either is his daughter or is not, is fully obedient or not; for her part, the closest approach to criticising him is to claim that she *cannot* criticise him, or to lay down her pen as she finds herself unable to defend or excuse him. Mrs. Harlowe, in contrast, is closer to the 'heart' on all counts. If the father has an absolute right to demand or forbid action, the mother, as we have seen, works through and asks for interiority, even when she is at her most demanding (cf. 1.3).

When Clarissa has eloped, she is horrified to have fled her "father's house" and to be, like Eve, an outcast from paradise (Keymer, *Richardson's* Clarissa 114); she is still more horrified at her father's curse. However, soon she appears to accept Anna's comfort – it can have no force because it is unjust – and she begins to fear it again only when it seems to have been partly fulfilled. Nevertheless, her mother's attitude, although apparently less important with regard to her eternal welfare, remains important to Clarissa throughout. When, in one of her happier moments, she expects marriage to Lovelace and a reconciliation with her family, she looks forward to being "lightened from the all-sinking weight

108 I am therefore inclined to disagree with Stuber when he suggests that Clarissa is shocked at her father's curse mostly because "it is completely at odds with her idea of a loving father" ("On Fathers and Authority" 566).

of a father's curse" but goes on to dwell on her mother – "this blessed mamma" – and her love (695). Later, when Lovelace tells her that his aunt and cousin are coming to see her in Hampstead, she replies: "Nobody but Miss Howe, to whom, next to the Almighty, and my own mother, I wish to stand acquitted of wilful error, shall know the whole of what has passed" (853). And on the day before her death, when told that her cousin Morden has arrived but "feared to surprise" her, she replies: "Nothing can surprise me now, except my mamma were to favour me with her last blessing in person. That would be a welcome surprise to me even yet" (1353). Her earthly father seems unimportant now his curse is lifted, but the mother, like her friend, remains close to her heart to the last (cf. also Todd 63). In this context, it is interesting to note that Clarissa uses the metaphor of "weaning" to express her gradual detachment from human affections as she prepares for death. Human affections are thus associated with the mother/nurse-child relationship.109

Mrs. Harlowe, on her part, is ready enough to sacrifice Clarissa's interests to peace – as she also sacrifices her own. During one lengthy debate on the subject of Solmes, she embraces her sobbing daughter. While holding her in her arms, she makes a speech which starts with a confession, or rather complaint, of her own difficult situation, continues through not-so-subtle hints that Clarissa's resistance cannot succeed, then, after "loosing her arm", ends with a gentler version of the father's curse:

You know, my dear, what I every day forgo and undergo, for the sake of peace. Your papa is a very good man and means well; but he will not be controlled, nor yet persuaded. You have seemed to pity *me* sometimes, that I am obliged to give up every point. Poor man! *his* reputation the less for it; *mine* the greater […]. You would not wilfully break that peace which costs your mamma so much to preserve. Obedience is better than sacrifice. […]  (89)

Mrs. Harlowe repeats her covert threat a few lines (and minutes) later: "I charge you *besides*, on my blessing, that you think of being Mrs Solmes" (89). Clarissa understands the implication; to be deprived of a mother's blessing is little better than to be cursed by a father. Her body responds promptly – she faints.

Yet Mrs. Harlowe never casts her daughter off entirely; indeed, as she complains in a secret letter to Mrs. Norton, "A mother […] cannot forget

109 The metaphor of "weaning" was used also, however, by Thomas Edwards in a letter of 1756 to Richardson, which suggests that this may have been a familiar phrase – although it is also possible that Edwards was echoing Clarissa's words (cf. Taylor, *Reason and Religion* 141, n.114).

her child, though that child could abandon her mother; and in so doing run away with all her mother's comforts!" (1158). Self-pityingly meek, she suffers intensely because her brand of selfishness is still consistent with genuine love for her child. Richardson was ambivalent about her; in the list of "principal characters", he described her as "mistress of fine qualities, but greatly under the influence not only of her arbitrary husband but of her son" (37). Ironically, the very qualities that should qualify Mrs. Harlowe for an exemplary wife and mother – her good education and gentleness – turn out to disqualify her from "exert[ing]" the influence that her youngest daughter feels she is entitled to (54). Her character illustrates the crux that *Clarissa* and *Sir Charles Grandison* thematise, yet also gloss over: that the good wife must exert influence even while submitting. As Sarah Fielding commented,

from this Character of Mrs. *Harlowe*, we may draw a noble and most useful Moral; for as in the Body, too rich Blood occasions many Diseases, so in the Mind, the very Virtues themselves, if not carefully watched, may produce very hurtful Maladies. Meekness therefore, and a long Habit of Submission, is often accompanied by a want of Resolution, even where Resolution is commendable. (*Remarks* 10)

The diagnosis seems quite appropriate – and it describes not only Mrs. Harlowe's case, but simply the perversion of the system of duty as displayed in its effect on a wife and mother. Through her obedience, Mrs. Harlowe contributes to a pattern that confirms, instead of softens, her husband's authoritarianism.110 The strains of compliance are visited on her body: even before Mr. Solmes has made his proposals, Mrs. Harlowe falls ill with "a very violent colic", which Clarissa interprets as the consequence of family strife and of her mother's fears of another duel (54). Clarissa nurses her through it – the last time that mother and daughter spend together peacefully.

Within Richardson's novels, the mother's natural role is presented to be that of the mediator. However, the hierarchy inherent in the husband-wife relationship is frequently allowed to suppress other strands of the network of duty. If this tendency is most pronounced in *Clarissa*, it is also very present in the sequel to *Pamela*. Significantly, the heroine's major conflicts with Mr. B. in

110 In Paul Watzlawick's terms, Mr. and Mrs. Harlowe form a prototypical "complementary" couple – self-assertion on one side is consistently followed, and thus strengthened, by submission on the other: "It is at once apparent that many systems of relationship […] contain a tendency towards progressive change. If, for example, one of the patterns of cultural behaviour, considered appropriate in individual *A*, is culturally labelled as an assertive pattern, while *B* is expected to reply to this with what is culturally regarded as submission, it is likely that this submission will encourage a further assertion, and that this assertion will demand still further submission" (49).

their married life involve her duty to and her relationship with her first child.111 Their first disagreement occurs because she wishes to breastfeed her son. When Mr. B. objects, Pamela tries to engage her parents as mediators. Her husband agrees to let her write a letter, but tells her that he will not change his decision based on their advice. Predictably, and in agreement with moral writings in general, the Andrewses confirm Pamela's opinion about her duties as a mother, but advise her to submit, since she will otherwise estrange her husband. Pamela then yields – unconvinced, but "chearfully" (318), although she has to retire first to her chamber to cry. The conflict shows the very limited power a wife has to counter her husband's will. Pamela uses the earnest 'expostulation' encouraged in such situations, and she draws on communal opinion and on moral writings. Mr. B., on the other hand, can avoid considering his own duties altogether. Both Pamela and Mr. B. draw on a variety of arguments – including medical authorities and biblical precedents, and the particular circumstances of their own individual situation. Surprisingly, one common denominator is the system of duty, but the use they make of it is diametrically opposed. Mr. B. stresses his right as a husband to make void even a wife's vow, that is, his right to shape the duties his wife has to fulfil. Thus, while Pamela sees herself as having to negotiate a network of duties, her husband considers himself as the authority which controls *other people's* duties. By denying his wife's obligation to their child, moreover, he obscures his own responsibility as a father.

Pamela argues that it is a mother's natural duty to nurse her own child; therefore, the husband should not interfere despite his equally natural authority. She therefore rejects the "Dean's Opinion", which is "That if the Husband is set upon it, it is a Wife's Duty to obey":

But I can't see how that is; for if it be the *natural* Duty of a Mother, it is a *Divine* Duty; and how can a Husband have Power to discharge a Divine Duty?—As great as a Wife's Obligation is to obey her Husband, which is, I own, one Indispensable of the Marriage Contract, it ought not to interfere with what one takes to be a superior Duty: And must not one be one's own Judge of Actions, by which we must stand or fall?— (*Pamela in her Exalted Condition* 309)

Pamela here draws on similar arguments which she had used successfully before her marriage. Taunted by Mrs. Jewkes's suggestion that she will be married to Mr. Colbrand, who will then sell her to Mr. B., she had rejected the possibility that a husband's authority can replace divine authority and constrain a wife to

111 For discussions of Pamela's motherhood, see also Chaber, "'This Affecting Subject'", and Davies.

commit adultery (179–80, 194). Now that she *is* a wife, however, she finds that Mr. B. brandishes ideas similar to Mrs. Jewkes's. "[…] you seem not to have a right Notion of the Obedience which a Wife naturally *owes*, as well as voluntarily *vows*, to a Husband's Will" (313), he writes, reminding her of Numbers 30 – a text which Richardson went on to quote with approval in *Clarissa* (cf. 2.2). David Graham said of Clarissa that she always remembers "all the duties resulting from the several relations of social life" (cf. 1.2); while Pamela does so too, her husband effectively forbids her to act accordingly unless he gives her leave. Thus, a wife's duty can "swallow up" a mother's obligations.

Pamela's difficulty is that Mr. B. uses the same grounds of argument that she does, but to opposite effect. He can do so because, like the Harlowes, he concentrates not on his own duties, but on hers. He is not concerned to show her what they as a married couple and parents ought to do, but rather to prove that she has to submit to his will whether or not that is compatible with his own duty as husband and father. Indeed, Mr. B. uses the argument from Numbers only *after* he has made clear his motivations for prohibiting Pamela to nurse her child. Conceding that a new-born child needs "the first Milk", he agrees that Pamela may nurse hers "for one Month, or so", if no nurse can be found who can supply colostrum. He immediately insists, however, that she may not extend this time, "for I shall not care to have my Rest disturbed; and it may not be quite so well, perhaps, to lay us under the Necessity of separate Beds" (312). Mr. B. desires unlimited access to his wife's body, as well as unrivalled attention and importance: he will not allow "even a Son and Heir" to be a "Rival" (312). By requiring Pamela to put wifely duty before all her other obligations, he ensures this precedence. And Pamela, bound by the requirement to do her own duty rather than enforce her rights or insist on the duties of others, must give in. Mr. B.'s obligations as a husband escape close scrutiny.

The respective positions of husband and wife here are typical of conflicts in other relationships – the one Lovelace imagines for himself and Clarissa, the one between the Harlowe parents, and the one (only hinted at) between Sir Thomas and Lady Grandison. At the same time, Pamela's conflict with B. provides a rare inner view of the obedient wife. Pamela's 'cheerful' obedience, it is clear, is an effort of self-control, and one, moreover, which does not cancel out her inner conflict. Although she successfully masters her emotion, continues to fulfil her duties within the range allowed by her husband, and loves him as before, her letter to her parents records her unchanging position as to the matter in question. Pamela demonstrates the strength that a good woman needs if she is under the authority of an imperfect father or husband: to yield when she needs to while still relying on her own moral perception. "[S]he can see her duty as a mother and as a wife, even if Mr B cannot see his as a father and husband. Her judgement and action are separate – but both morally validating, because she understands the requirements of motherhood but also the regrettable necessity for wifely submission" (Latimer, *Making Gender* 83). Mrs. Harlowe, in contrast, is unable to do so – she vacillates between pleading for her daughter openly, conniving at that daughter's secret correspondence, and rejecting her unconditionally. Her somewhat erratic behaviour indicates her inability to identify and act on her responsibilities within the narrow bounds of the system of duty.

In contrast, it is Pamela's ability to retain her own perception of morality even while submitting to B. which allows her to insist on her role as a mother in two more (potential) conflicts with her husband. The first of these does not, at the outset, involve their child directly. Mr. B. takes his pregnant wife to a masquerade, meets an attractive woman of high rank, and starts a flirtation. Pamela, unable to suffer patiently according to conduct book script, resolves to return him his freedom and offers to withdraw so that he can live with her rival, although she hopes the adulterers will in time recognise and renounce their sin. However, she is determined to take her son with her. Even though she presents her confrontation with her husband as an indictment of herself in a court of justice, she reserves her right to her child (albeit aware that she has no actual power to keep him against her husband's will). The relationship of mother and child, for her, exists in its own right, not as an extension of the father's power over both.

Luckily, the actual legal situation does not become important, for Mr. B. is touched by her speaking out, tells her that he never committed adultery, and promises to reform entirely. His reformation is proved in another potential scene of conflict, where he sanctions his wife's notions of the mother-child relationship. When her son falls ill with the smallpox, Pamela asks to be allowed to nurse him through his illness. Mr. B., who had objected to her breastfeeding as it would restrain his access to her body, now (after some hesitation) allows her to risk that body – life and beauty – in order to fulfil her duty as a mother. When he decides to restrict her access to her child after all, it is out of "cruel Kindness", and he then takes her place in the child's room (461).  His agreement signals that he has finally come to value Pamela's mind above her body, virtue over pleasure. The natural consequence of his reformation is that he is able to conceive of himself, and of his wife, as parts of networks of duties.

Like Mr. B. and the Harlowe men, Lovelace is unwilling to allow relationships which centre on anyone other than himself. More subtly than in Mr. B.'s case, this is expressed through his fantasy of Clarissa nursing her children (cf. 1.5), "the pious task continued for one month, and no more" (706). Lovelace functions, in this instance, as the author's mouthpiece to promote maternal breastfeeding, although his strict limitation also signals that, like B., he is jealous of his wife's body and attention. Unlike Mr. B., however, Lovelace also envisages his children as extensions of himself, as "eager hunter[s]", whose need forces Clarissa to look up to him for help, as the only one who can legitimate her children (706).112 The mother, in his vision, is bound to the father through her children, yet without the power to defend them against his despotism. Indeed, Lovelace's term for his children – "a twin Lovelace at each charming breast" – signals precisely not their name, since their father has not yet, and perhaps never will, "deign to legitimate". Instead of showing their right to a place in the Lovelace family, it turns them into mere extensions of their father's power, powerless in themselves. The scene, which "resembles the model sentimental family", is in fact "a test" for Lovelace (Kukorelly, "Samuel Richardson's Visual Rhetoric", 278, 279). The vision which he conjures up should evoke paternal feelings in him; by failing to respond to the plight of his wife and children which he himself conjures up (first in thought, then, as far as his power goes, in reality), he shows that "he is beyond reformation" (279).  Men, Clarissa ponders at one point, in excuse of her uncles' unforgivingness, are less gentle than women, at least until they "ha[ve] their masculine passions humanized by the tender name of FATHER" (992). Figures like Lovelace and Sir Thomas, and even the reformed Mr. B. and the respectable Mr. Harlowe, put into question even that moderate hope.

*Grandison* provides two contrary examples of (biological) fatherhood. The hero's father, despotic toward his motherless children, is not shown directly

112 Blackstone specifies that children must be born "after lawful wedlock" in order to be legitimate (443; bk. I, ch. XVI); exceptions are possible only "by the transcendent power of an act of parliament" (447). Possibly, Lovelace imagines that he can obtain such an exceptional favour; in another fantasy (or rather dream, although the two are difficult to distinguish), he imagines that his illegitimate children by Clarissa and Anna "intermarry" and inherit "by Act of Parliament" (922). Mr. B., more modest as well as more responsible, excludes this possibility. One of his reasons for desisting from his scheme of tricking Pamela into a sham-marriage is that "it would be out of my own Power to legitimate" his children by her (269). He also provides for his illegitimate daughter by Sally Godfrey as soon as she is born.

opposing their mother's wishes on behalf of them. Yet his presence looms over the scene where Lady Grandison takes a final leave of her daughters, stating that she did not feel justified in leaving anything to her daughters, and advising them to look to their brother for protection (cf. 3.2). Here, the father's authority is sufficient to circumscribe the mother's love even without direct interference. Although Lady Grandison 'gives' to her daughters a male who actually will protect them later, she takes no other measures to secure their future happiness. The contrast to this kind of fatherhood is offered by Lord G., Charlotte Grandison's somewhat effeminate husband who is enraptured at the sight of his wife nursing their daughter. Although the scene is presented in comic terms, his enthusiasm signals the proper response of the loving father-husband to the wife's maternal role. The fact that their child is a daughter is perhaps a nod to gender stereotypes – if a son is potentially worth more than a daughter, the saucy Lady G. and her not-quite-masculine-enough husband can hardly be rewarded with a son for their first child. At the same time, however, it is intriguing to note that Richardson's only detailed scene of a mother happily nursing her child is also a depiction of a relationship between two females, appreciated, but not *initiated,* by a man (cf. also 3.1).113

The mother's position in the family is thus liminal, situated between love, honour, authority, and duty. The network of responsibilities which she has to negotiate includes at least husband and children. Her lesser authority as compared to a father's constrains her, but it also leads to a freer relationship with children. While Anna's bantering with her mother may be faulty, it also enables her to influence her mother in a potentially beneficial way. (Clarissa criticizes Anna's impudence in the incident of Antony Harlowe's proposal of marriage, but she does not say Mrs. Howe should have actually accepted it; the outcome may well be desirable). A mother's authority has much weight, but it is not as indisputable as a father's. If a father is associated with protection, his authority is also more dangerous when he abuses his position.

The divergent roles of father and mother can be summarized in a juxtaposition of Clarissa's and Sir Charles's relationship to them: Clarissa's father stands for protection (which he could, but does not, afford), divinely sanctioned authority, and tyranny, her mother for love and weakness. Sir Thomas, too, holds authority,

113 At least in a social sense – biologically speaking, he has of course contributed to it. However, the image of Actaeon surprising Diana, which Charlotte uses to describe the scene, rather obscures this.

expressed in his son's almost limitless deference and his earnest endeavour to copy everything which he can without acting imprudently or immorally (expressed mainly in his perfect swordsmanship and his "rich" dress).  Her influence is highlighted by her daughters and Harriet, but less so by Sir Charles himself – precisely because it depends so much on her individual behaviour, and less on her status. Moreover, her influence is so far-reaching, so prevalent in all his actions, that he need not emphasize it – Sir Thomas's, in contrast, can be followed honourably only in few situations, and is therefore explicitly acknowledged. While emphasising his father's magnificence and spirit, his commendation of his mother can be summed up in a single sentence: "She is always before my eyes" (2:42).114 Lord W., to whom this is spoken, instantly recognises the appropriate difference between Sir Charles's appreciation for his father and his mother, respectively, and intimates that he will no longer object to the hero's commendations of Sir Thomas, "because I see it is all from principle."

Lady Grandison's gentle influence is opposed to her husband's neglect, cruel raillery of his daughters, and selfish use of fatherly power. One method, and effect, of the behaviour of each is their structuring of relationships. Sir Thomas severs them, Lady Grandison knits and strengthens them. Thus, Lady Grandison distributes charity in the name of her husband. As she is dying, her last advice to her daughters, and her last wish to her son, is that they should love each other. In contrast, Sir Thomas, who has already caused her death – and thus divided his children from their mother – goes on to divide the family further.  To prevent his daughters from criticizing him, he moreover prohibits his children's correspondence. This is a version of the more familiar command that a wife abandon her friendships so that she will not expose her husband.115 It is, if

114 Sir Charles's emulation of his mother has even led Dussinger to argue that the community "at Grandison Hall is strongly matrist" ("Love and Consanguinity" 521). The remark ignores the crucial importance of the father-figure; nevertheless, it also reflects important aspects of the text. It is notable, for example, that Sir Charles greatly admires and loves the Marchioness della Porretta; perhaps this is a sign of his longing for a mother-figure, similar to Clarissa's longing for something "paternal and maternal" in those around her.

115 Exemplified, for instance, in Mirabell's demand in *The Way of the World*, and in the story of Mrs. Morgan in *Millenium Hall*, quoted as epigraphs by Todd. The first of these characters is sympathetic, the second is not.

possible, even more extreme, since it has the potential effect of severing family bonds, while the exclusion of friends could theoretically strengthen them.

The same general effect results when Sir Thomas first hires a governess against the will of his daughters, then seduces her (cf. 1:319). He thus deprives Mrs. Oldham of the respect of good women (and his children by her of the right to inherit), while leaving his daughters without a female advisor. (Sir Charles will later do his best to rectify the situation, helping Mrs. Oldham and teaching his sisters to treat her with compassion.) The father's division of the family, it is shown, could lead to a continuance of misbehaviour in the next generation. Thus, although Harriet approves of the sisters' spirit in opposing the return of the seduced Mrs. Oldham, she rather distances herself from their opinion that they are in no need of a governess at the ages of almost sixteen and nineteen, respectively – and indeed, she later on apologizes for instances of 'improper' behaviour in them by reminding herself that they lost their mother early.

If the Grandison sisters do not realise that they sustain a loss when Mrs. Oldham is seduced, they are very much aware that their father's behaviour deprives them of their brother. Sir Charles, they fear, may be estranged from them through the prohibition to correspond (1:322). There is no hint in the novel that Harriet or the sisters believe this has actually happened. Yet although Sir Charles returns full of affection, there is a perceptible distance: the sisters feel awe as well as love for their brother, and Sir Charles, who had asked them for their opinions in difficult situations *before* the prohibition, now goes for advice to Dr. Bartlett. Indeed, although Sir Charles once claims to Jeronymo that he may have hopes of Harriet through his sisters' mediation, he does not tell them of his proposal to Harriet until it has been accepted – so little direct communication is there now between him and them (cf. 3:11, 3:21). At this point, it seems that equal, unreserved communication between good men and women has been effectively disturbed. The hero takes upon himself both his mother's legacy – love – and his father's – distance and authority. In the passages leading up to Sir Charles's revelation of his history with Clementina, only his repeated complaints about the distance between himself and his sisters can make an equal interchange of confidence and advice seem even possible – through the hero's regret at its absence.

This very history, however – which has been kept from his sisters and thus signals his distance from them – also supports, or even initiates, the novel's drive toward far-reaching, international and cross-gender networks of relationships (as friends as well as relations real and imagined). The love triangle between Sir Charles, Clementina and Harriet enables them to transcend the dangers of love and jealousy, overcoming both in order to create lasting friendships. In the process, relations and friends of each are welcomed into a growing 'family'. The periphery of these networks even provides space for such characters as Lady Olivia – urged by Sir Charles to "cultivate […] the friendship of" Mrs. Beaumont, a friend of the della Porrettas (2:643) – or for Sir Hargrave, who, after vacillating between reform and viciousness, names Harriet his heir when he dies.

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## **3.** *Grandison* **and utopia**

As has been demonstrated in the previous chapters, Richardson's novels en‐ visage various structures, and bases, of relationships. None of them comes without risks. The supreme problem of them all, however, is that they are interconnected, but often contradictory. To the extent that relationships are envisaged as networks, they require individual agency; to the extent that they are hierarchies, they limit that agency. For the individual caught on a lower scale of the ladder, conflicts of duty are nigh-insolvable, for there is no clear indication that, and when, the individual may rebel against tyranny. Most frequently, it is women who are most exposed to the consequences of conflicting duties and abuse of power. Richardson addresses this problem by creating, in his last novel, a powerful man who acts up to his responsibilities, thus enabling those around him to do the same.

In the preface to *Grandison*, Richardson explains that this narrative is the response to readers' demands: "[I]t was insisted on by several of his [the 'editor's'] Friends who were well assured he had the Materials in his Power, that he should produce into public View the Character and Actions of a Man of TRUE HONOUR" (1:4). Some of these "materials" may have been proposed by the insisting friends themselves. As Richardson wrote his final novel, he solicited his correspondents for advice, although he did not always use their ideas in the way they expected. One friend who contributed a number of suggestions was the clergyman Philip Skelton. "Let [your hero] suffer […], and that greatly, both in respect to the severity of the suffering, and the manner of bearing it. Your good man will be out of nature, if he is not persecuted: nay, he will be no very good man, if the world do not give him this testimony" (Schellenberg, *Correspondence* 52; 10 May 1751).116 Such suffering on the hero's part, however, would have emphasized the problem which pervades *Clarissa*: that virtue cannot always defend itself. Indeed, virtue may even draw on itself its own punishment. As Clarissa's friend Anna observes, "[t]he person who will bear much shall have much to bear all the world through" (69), for the less worthy will trespass on their patience. Worse, as Kay argues, the virtue which should inspire emulation

116 Skelton might have been better satisfied with the hero of the German comedy *Minna von Barnhelm* in this respect. G. E. Lessing creates a good man who is indeed persecuted, for a time, because of his virtue. His generosity to the losing side in a recent war appears too good to be true; he is suspected of having accepted bribes, discharged from the army, and forced to await his trial almost penniless.

may have the opposite effect. Thus, the heroine's siblings, instead of succumbing to "Richardson's favorite moral mechanism, the influence of good examples […] envy the praise of Clarissa" (Kay 168). The force of example may fail.

The mere depiction of a good man, then, is no adequate answer to *Clarissa*, where tragedy grows out of an allegedly harmonious family in a peaceful neighbourhood. The faults of the Harlowes, while many, are each of them in themselves quotidian. Their interest in money, for example, is a feature they share with Mrs. Howe, who manages ultimately to maintain a loving relation‐ ship with her daughter. Jealousy among siblings, too, is not uncommon. Clarissa is shocked to discover that Arabella's envy is "of […] long standing" (195), but, realistically, the latter's hostility becomes open only when her seemingly perfect younger sister seems to betray faults of her own – the "obstinacy" and preference of a rake of which the Harlowes accuse Clarissa. And Mrs. Harlowe's weakness, her offer of sympathy instead of help, is a kind of maternal love which might even look speciously attractive in different circumstances. Catastrophe strikes not because Clarissa's family is so much worse than average but because the system of duty has no in-built structures of de-escalation in the case of parent-child conflicts. The absoluteness of fatherly authority encourages Mr. Harlowe to arrange a marriage before asking his daughter for her consent, and when Clarissa vehemently refuses, a retreat on his part seems unthinkable to everyone. Moreover, the daughter's duty to obey allows the rest of the family to hide their own motives – envy, greed, cowardice – behind the simple rule of paternal right. Indeed, their arguments were convincing enough for some early readers to feel that in the conflict with Clarissa, their position is only too justifiable (cf. Keymer, *Richardson's* Clarissa 128).

Having illustrated, therefore, that every-day mis-use of the system of duty can lead to tragedy even in the case of a respectable family, Richardson now needs to show how systematic good deeds will lead to the spreading of virtue and to the building of a community where it can prosper. *Grandison* sets about to solve, or at least contain, the conflicts depicted in the previous novels – not by legitimizing rebellion, but by demonstrating how the very conditions that create double-binds can also provide double insurance of good relationships. "In *Grandison*, Richardson returned to his roots, as it were, allowing readers to experience, as he had 13 years earlier in *Pamela*, what is required for 'virtue' to be 'rewarded' in the temporal world of everyday, lived experience" (Taylor, *Reason and Religion* 61). This time, however, he does so focussing on a protagonist who wields real power – someone who not only occupies a high position within the system of duty, but who is able to cement it as a giver of gifts, a negotiator of contracts, and as a friend.

#### 3. *Grandison* and utopia 165

The project of creating and spreading virtue links *Grandison* to a genre which Alessa Johns discusses in her book *Women's Utopias of the Eighteenth Century*. Texts featuring such utopias – like Sarah Scott's *Millenium Hall* – differ in crucial ways from classic utopian visions. In introducing the work of "female utopian authors", Johns speaks of "a 'partial vision,' one that eschewed a comprehensive, totalizing plan" (1). The kinds of Utopia which tended to appeal to male writers were "non-places", situated in far-away and fictional lands.117 Female writers, in contrast, preferred ideal communities imagined as contemporary, situated in foreign countries which really existed, or even in unspecified, but recognizably English, locales (Johns 11). Moreover, instead of being opposites of contemporary society, these communities develop in "a gradual utopian process rather than the sudden imposition of an ideal state along the lines of Thomas More's *Utopia*" (2). Notably, this gradual process is one potentially available to any individual with influence. It does not require an uninhabited island or an army, but can be begun in the midst of the English countryside. This form of utopia is, therefore, one in which women can play an active role. Indeed, Johns links this form of utopia to images which are in accordance with women's domestic occupations, but which lead beyond them:

Women's utopias of the eighteenth century […] figured the globalization of utopia through a process of reproduction, or a kind of self-perpetuating replication. I therefore use "reproduction" in its broadest sense, encompassing not only the birth and education of children in order to expand and multiply utopias but also the propagation of utopian ways of life and behavior through imitation and circulation, moral conversion, transcription and duplication (even to the point of plagiarism), and literary mitosis. (2)

All of these features play a role in *Grandison*, and, indeed, many, though not all, of the "feminist utopists" whom Johns discusses were influenced by Richardson's fiction.118

117 Johns specifies that "classical utopias were largely written by men, but not all men wrote strictly traditional utopias" (11).

118 The two non-English examples of female Utopian fiction discussed by Johns are Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumont's *The New Clarissa* and Sophie von la Roche's *Events at Lake Oneida*. The latter's more famous novel, *Die Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim*, whose plot and epistolary form are clearly influenced by *Clarissa*, includes reformist schemes which fit well enough into the pattern outlined by Johns, although she calls it "less reformist" (3). The question of influence is less obvious in the case of the English writers discussed – Mary Astell, Sarah Fielding, Sarah Scott, and Mary Hamilton. However, some of Astell's ideas are advocated in Richardson's novels, and Sarah Fielding was a friend of Richardson's.

Although the hero of *Grandison* returns from his travels seemingly perfect, outshining his companions, the 'reforms' he starts are taken in small steps. Most of the many episodes of this sprawling narrative, as well as parts of its central plot – the double love of the hero –, are preoccupied with the spreading of virtue. This is brought about precisely through acts of imitation; indeed, the language of the last few volumes emphasizes the 'duplication' which results from virtuous imitation. Emily, Sir Charles's ward, becomes "a second Harriet" to the heroine's family, restoring to them their niece and granddaughter (3:321). Harriet herself arrives in her new home as the new Lady Grandison; her married name is not merely the normal sign of her new status, but symbolises her emulation of the last Lady Grandison, the hero's mother (cf. Shepherd 228). And the hero's two love interests, Harriet and Clementina, are constantly identified until they seem to become one: "My Harriet is another Clementina! You [Clementina] are another Harriet! *Sister*-excellencies I have called you to her, to all her relations", Sir Charles exclaims (3:343).

Virtuous actions and reports of them, love and friendship, letters and gifts, circulate in this novel – not excluding literary imitation (for example, through the explicit reference to *Clarissa*, which both Harriet and Charlotte have read, 1:229). By the end of the novel, most of the characters named, even minor ones, are part of a closely woven network of relationships. Even Sir Hargrave's wine-merchant, for example, turns out to be Edward Danby, one of the earliest people to profit from the hero's benevolence (cf. 1:451, 3:142). Sir Hargrave's desire to receive Sir Charles's advice and moral support during his final illness is thus based, on the one hand, on his direct knowledge of him, but is reinforced, on the other hand, through other beneficiaries of the hero's goodness. And through Sir Charles's Irish possessions and Italian connections, the possibility of a "globalizing" virtue becomes real. When, at the end of the novel, three women have recently given birth and the heroine is pregnant, this is only the 'embodied' symbol of a continual process of reproducing virtue, begun long before the start of the novel and continued indefinitely. As Richardson makes clear in one of the appendices to his novel, the novel's final events lead almost seamlessly to the reader's present (3:467). The reform of society has thus already begun and is being continued – ideally with the reader's assistance.

Another aspect of feminist utopianism identified by Johns is its focus on "themes that are subordinated in the mainstream tradition, such as love and friendship, education, and cooperation" (7). These are also themes which are present in all of Richardson's novels, but especially in *Grandison*. In the continuation of *Pamela*, as well as in large portions of *Grandison*, these themes supply the place of plot in the more traditional sense (just as plot

#### 3. *Grandison* and utopia 167

is limited in *Millenium Hall*). The gradual forming of social bonds between the women surrounding Sir Charles, for example, modifies and sometimes almost pushes to the side the connection he may or may not form through marriage. Similarly, extended debates on gender relationships, social duties, politeness and similar topics acquire a value in themselves which far exceeds the importance of the conclusions reached when such a debate ends, or rather, is suspended.

Johns differentiates between four different forms of women's utopias. The first of these are "'intimate utopia[s]'", "writings focusing on love and friend‐ ship" (7) – often, in fact, "a single instance of female friendship" (8) – while neglecting "socioeconomic and organizational elements" (8). Secondly, "plans for systematizing women's learning", such as Astell's *A Serious Proposal to the Ladies*, constitute "educational utopias" (9). Thirdly, texts like Delarivier Manley's *New Atalantis* belong to the category of "anti-utopian satire" (10). *Grandison* corresponds most closely to Johns's fourth type and the focus of her study, "'invented societies'" (7), small communities, often under the leadership of benevolent aristocratic women, who reform society through the gradual reform of the individuals that come into contact with them. These societies

take into account the full range of human needs—material, economic, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual; they construct environments, beautiful and efficient, that are to foster happiness and convenience; they posit social, economic, and emotional systems that are to offer fulfilling human ties; and they establish means to perpetuate the society. [… T]heir authors seek first and foremost to represent a world that offers satisfactions in many areas and for whole groups of people, and they delineate how that world can be instituted within their own. (10)

*Grandison* differs from this model in several ways, most crucially by assigning the leadership to a man rather than a group of women. Furthermore, the novel does not contain "[p]lans for such complete societies" (10). In contrast to texts like *Millenium Hall*, no community with a framework of rules is instituted, and the network of relationships which is formed is based on ties of family and friendship. The people that come under the hero's spell are his relatives and dependants; they meet him on the Grand Tour or, at the most adventurous, on the road to be saved by him, like Jeronymo or Harriet. He institutes no new societies; instead, his endeavour is to guard and extend his heritage – material as well as non-material (in the case of his mother's legacy). However, as in Johns's invented societies, the influence of Sir Charles spreads steadily. Unlike Fielding's heroes, who withdraw from a vicious world to the countryside, Richardson's hero uses Grandison Hall as the centre from which he keeps mutually beneficent contact with the world. Moreover, the novel shares the invented society's emphasis on universal benevolence, the desire to shape the existing community – the country estate – in such a way as to benefit all, and the focus on "fulfilling human ties" which, it is implied, will long outlast the end of the novel.

As a male writer – and one embracing patriarchy – Richardson's vision is hardly a "feminist" utopia. However, Johns's work on female utopists helps de‐ fine the features which make his novels, especially *Grandison*, attractive even to those women who took issue with some of his moral strictures. Although Sir Charles is the dominant reforming figure, ordering his landed estates and initiating contact between most of the novel's protagonists, other characters participate actively and spontaneously in the development of the community. Indeed, Sir Charles himself has been formed by his mother's example, and the (not always so) subtle pressure he exerts on people needing reform, although efficiently backed up with the authority of money and masculinity, takes forms which can be copied by any individual, offering a model for female reformers as well. By creating a male, patriarchal centre to the novel, Richardson emphasised the need for patriarchal authority. However, this authority works in subtle ways; instead of regulating (female) behaviour through strict rules and unceasing surveillance, Richardson's paragons – male as well as female – "work with the personalities in the group" (Johns 15). Johns contrasts "ideas of divine right and patriarchal authority" with concepts of "a constitutional monarchy and commercial economy" (19), which, according to her, formed the basis for feminist utopias. However, *Grandison* proves that this opposition is not absolute; indeed, patriarchy and feminism can be mutually contingent (cf. also Taylor, *Reason and Religion* 91). The affirmation of patriarchy in *Grandison* is combined with emphasis on individual (female) agency and (mixed gender) reformative group solidarity. Richardson constructs a double vision of patriarchy and feminism, subordination and empowerment – in short, a better, utopian, world.119

119 Intriguingly, the patterns of this utopian world correspond quite closely to patterns detailed in Deborah Tannen's study of behavioural differences between contempo‐ rary American men and women, published in 1990. According to Tannen, men tend to strive more for freedom and respect while women strive for intimacy. Sir Charles, the independent and respected man of action, as well as judge of others' actions, achieves the first, while the women around him achieve the latter.

## **3.1 The harmonious body**

The joyous, utopian atmosphere of *Grandison* is indicated already by the first few letters. For Dussinger, "[s]exual love radiates its force mysteriously in the text, charging every material thing with erotic significance – clothing, food, and even pen and ink" ("Love and Consanguinity" 525); this statement, which he uses with regard to Richardson's novels in general, is especially apt for his last. McMaster agrees: "[t]he equivalent for me of the drama and the sensational interest that balance the overt moralizing is the felt presence of the body" ("*Sir Charles*" 248).120 Indeed, the body is enlisted in the business of "moralizing". "The proper relation of mind to body" (249) is shown to consist not in the negation of physical desires but in the acknowledgment of the body, combined with virtuous control of both mind and "person", or outward beauty (*OED*, "person, *n.*" 4). As McMaster notes, *Grandison* (and indeed Richardson's other novels) is "remarkably explicit about the body" (250). However, this explicitness is not tied to corruption, although the celebration of physical love affords some of the satisfactions one would normally associate with amatory fiction (and although the diseased body is not excluded from the picture). Instead, it is enlisted to celebrate the rewards of virtue in an ideal world. Virtuous characters can enjoy the body because it *is* virtuous, just as the love of Milton's Adam and Eve is innocent before the fall.121

The novel starts with a situation faintly reminiscent of that in *Clarissa*, but without the threatening overtones. Like Clarissa, Harriet Byron is the paragon of the neighbourhood, able to choose between several (if rather unattractive) suitors. And like Clarissa, Harriet's fame has spread far beyond her own neighbourhood. However, if Clarissa's fame is in part the cause of her tragedy, Harriet's is, at the most, a nuisance to herself as she has to fend off unwelcome suitors. Lovelace was attracted by Clarissa's reputation and then compelled to test its foundations – for him, the reputed "angel" cannot coexist with the mere "woman". Harriet's lovers, in contrast, believe in the possibility of a harmonious relationship between body and soul. Indeed, the novel begins with Mr. Greville's praise of Harriet's harmonious "mind and person", expressed not only in her

120 Ian Watt's classic *The Rise of the Novel* probably reacts to similar aspects in *Pamela* when claiming that it "gratified the reading public with the combined attractions of a sermon and a striptease" (179). Somewhat surprisingly, Watt also makes the claim that "the new ideology granted [most women] a total immunity from sexual feelings", and that Pamela becomes the prototype of the literary heroine who "is devoid of any feelings towards her admirer until the marriage knot is tied" (166, 167).

121 Indeed, the happy marriage between Pamela and Mr. B. evokes "the Happiness of the first Pair before the Fall" (*Pamela in her Exalted Condition* 225).

smiles and open countenance, but also in her singing and dancing. Strikingly, the rakish Greville associates these comparatively sensual accomplishments with her inner worth. Following praise of her fine hands and their skill at pen, needle, and harpsichord, he continues to his female correspondent: "O Madam! women *have* Souls. I now am convinced they have. Given us for temporary purposes only, I dare own to your Ladyship, that once I doubted it.—And have I not seen her dance! Have I not heard her sing!—But indeed, mind and person, she is all harmony" (13).122 The harmonious body has replaced the angelic mind threatened by the tainting body, even for a rake.

Even the display of Harriet's body in masquerade dress, which becomes momentarily disgusting to Harriet after her abduction, ultimately leads to a union of minds – as Sir Charles says in answer to Harriet's confession that she had loved him before he loved her, he himself had fallen in love with her at first sight. The hero himself is celebrated in terms of body as well as mind when Harriet describes his beauty in details reminiscent of a *blazon.* 123 "What is beauty in a man to me?"  In contrast to the good looks of Lovelace, the hero's body, like the heroine's, is also an expression of his beautiful mind.

The celebration of the beautiful body is supported by the celebration of physically expressed affection. The parts of the body which can be seen and touched by the chaste are caressed; friends and relations offer their hands, embrace each other, and kiss. Critics disagree over the extent to which physical contact was 'normal' in the eighteenth century. Simon Varey states that "[s]ocial contact is not usually physical contact" (204), while McMaster claims that customs like the "routine 'saluting' […] keep[…] before us the very frequent body contact in genteel society" ("*Sir Charles*" 251). Whatever the norm outside the novel, within it Sir Charles leads the way in appreciating (decorous) physical

122 John Gregory would caution his readers that "Many a girl dancing in the gaiety and innocence of her heart, is thought to discover a spirit she little dreams of" (57–8). Richardson would perhaps have agreed, but there is no hint of this anxiety in his novels. For a discussion of music in *Grandison*, cf. Doody, *A Natural Passion* 352–64*.*

123 Blazons had appeared both in *Pamela in her Exalted Condition* and *Clarissa*, but with rather more disturbing overtones. Lovelace's of Clarissa, which describes her appearance when she opens the garden door to him (399–400), prefigures his attempt to possess her body (cf. Shepherd 155). Mr. B.'s comparative blazon of his wife and the Countess Dowager (451–3) is more ambiguous – it functions both as flirtation and as a safe-guard against seduction, since he gives a (slight) preference to Pamela. His praise of his wife leads to the Countess Dowager's visit to the B.s' home, which triggers their marital crisis and its happy resolution.

contact. It is a mark of special disfavour when Sir Charles refuses to give his "assisting hand" (2:53) to the kneeling Mrs. Giffard, his uncle's kept mistress whom he helps dismiss genteelly. When he approves of women, he regularly takes their hands, as when he leads Miss Danby, the niece of a dead merchant friend, into his study to talk in private and sits down next to her, still holding her hand (1:452). He is gratified when she, at taking leave, "gratefully returned the pressure [of his hand]; but in a manner so modest (recollecting herself into some little confusion) that shewed gratitude had possession of her whole heart, and set her above the forms of her Sex" (1:456). Sir Charles's touch, both modest and attractive, can be safely enjoyed even by those women who would draw back from the approach of rakes. In a conversation on "Love and Courtship", Sir Charles represents himself as a connoisseur in this respect:

For my own sake, I would not, by a too early declaration, drive a Lady into reserves; since that would be to rob myself of those innocent freedoms, and of that complacency, to which an honourable Lover might think himself entitled; and which might help him [Don't be affrighted, Ladies!] to develop the plaits and folds of the female heart. (1:429; brackets original)

The parallel to Lovelace's playful but anxious searching of Clarissa's feelings, or to Sir Thomas's brutal taunts of his daughters, is obvious. However, whereas the rakes' approaches constitute threats, Sir Charles's chaste use of his power turns courtship into a safe yet erotic game. The "reformed rake" was perceived as attractive because he "retain[ed] the wit, manners and sensuality that allowed him to fulfil that role in the first place" (J.A. Smith 1). Sir Charles, without ever having been a rake, nevertheless possesses the same qualities.

Some of the most extended and intense descriptions of physical proximity, however, are reserved for family relations – as, indeed, blood relationship, friendship and love converge in this novel.124 When Sir Charles returns to his home after his father's death, the first meeting between the siblings is described with an intensity surpassing even many of the love scenes. As Harriet reports the Grandison sisters' first impression,

[t]he graceful youth of seventeen, with fine curling auburn locks waving upon his shoulders […] they remembred: And, forgetting the womanly beauties into which their own features were ripen'd in the same space of time, they seemed not to expect that manly stature and air, and that equal vivacity and intrepidity, which every one who sees this brother, admires in his noble aspect […]. (1:359)

124 Wendy Jones has even suggested that Charlotte is in love with her brother (98).

The siblings, separated for years, meet almost as strangers, but strangers with attractive, potentially erotic bodies. Overcome by a mixture of joy and fear – after all, Sir Charles had written to their father that his sisters' reportedly undutiful behaviour should "receive no countenance from [him]" (1:352) – Caroline almost faints, while Charlotte flees into the adjoining room, displaying an intensity of emotion which is usually reserved for encounters with fathers or lovers.125 Sir Charles follows Charlotte,

his arm round Miss Caroline's waist, soothing her; and, with eyes of expectation, My Charlotte! said he, his inviting hand held out, and hastening towards the settee. She then found her feet; and, throwing her arms about his neck, he folded both sisters to his bosom: Receive, my dearest sisters, receive your brother, your friend; assure yourselves of my unabated love.

That assurance, they said, was balm to their hearts; and when each was seated, he, sitting over-against them, look'd first on one, then on the other; and taking each by the hand; Charming women! said he: How I admire my sisters! You *must* have minds answerable to your persons. What pleasure, what pride, shall I take in my sisters! My dear Charlotte! said Caroline, taking her sister's other hand, has not our brother, now we see him near, all the brother in his aspect? His goodness only looks stronger, and more perfect: What was I afraid of? (1:359)

By the end of this passage, the Grandison siblings form a triangle, their mutual love expressed through their connected bodies. Although Sir Charles has "all the brother in his aspect", his admiration of his sisters' bodies, and through them their minds, his loving support and his caresses, promise well for the "sister" – as he calls both Harriet and Clementina many times – whom he will finally choose as his wife.

Similar tableaux recur throughout the novel, often involving the hero either as participant or as spectator. One example is the scene after Clementina, partly recovered from her madness and officially allowed to marry Sir Charles, rejects him instead. For once, Sir Charles is almost overcome, "[his] mind tortured; how greatly tortured! […] Never was I so little present to myself, as on this occasion". His distress, however, is still surpassed by Clementina's, who fears that he is "offended with her" (2:567). In their mutual distress and admiration, the lovers meet and touch in a sentimental tableau:

I kneeled to her, as she kneeled; and clasping her in my arms, Forgive you, madam! Inimitable woman! More than woman!—Can you forgive me for having presumed, and for still presuming, to hope such an angel mine!

125 See, for example, the eponymous heroine's reunion with her father in Burney's *Evelina* (317–20).

She was ready to faint; and cast her arms about me to support herself. Camilla held to her her salts:—I myself, for the first time, was sensible of benefit from them, as my cheek was joined to hers, and bathed with her tears.

[…]

I raised her; and leading her to a chair, involuntarily kneeled on one knee to her, holding both her hands in mine as she sat; and looking up to her with eyes that spoke not my heart, if they were not full of love and reverence.

Camilla had run down to the Marchioness—O madam! it seems she said—*Such* a scene! Hasten, hasten up. They will faint in each other's arms. Virtuous Love! how great is thy glory! (2:567–8)

"Virtuous love" has here the power to transform the dangerous "warmth" of the earlier novels into an image which celebrates the power of love and the attraction of bodies at the very time that virtue triumphs over erotic love. The scene demonstrates, moreover, the momentary equality of hero and Italian heroine, expressed in the similar choreography of their motions: "I kneeled to her, as she kneeled", "I myself […] was sensible of benefit from [her salts]", "They will faint in each other's arms". The hero's intense bodily reaction testifies to the sincerity and depth of his love, which is usually under such control that it requires sophisticated speculation to determine to what extent he is in love with either Clementina or Harriet.

After the intense eroticism of Sir Charles's and Clementina's anguished farewell, Harriet's claims as his true love need to be re-established. There is a curious gap between the fifth and sixth volumes, as the high-strained emotion of the Italian scenes is replaced with written discussions of Clementina's wishes to enter a nunnery. Although it becomes clear very quickly that Sir Charles will now make his addresses to Harriet – as the reader has suspected –, the hero's actions are at first reported from some distance.  My grandmamma Shirley has seen his Ghost; and talked with it near an hour; and then it vanished" (3:15). Soon, however, this "ghost" materialises. He enters into details of the financial transactions of the projected marriage, and explains his "double Love" (3:76) to Harriet and her family: "The heart of the man before you, madam (to [Harriet]) in sincerity and frankness, emulates your own". Therefore, "something […] may be necessary to be said, in this audience, of the state of my own heart" (3:53). Sir Charles's detailed description of his feelings for both Clementina and Harriet at different times explain his earlier actions, but his careful distinctions also have some of the effect of Mr. Collins's infamous recapitulation of his "reasons for marrying" Elizabeth Bennett (Austen, *Pride and Prejudice* 103). The orderly account which he is able to give of his emotions is unsatisfying after his impassioned reaction to Clementina's rejection of him. Once again, it is the body which must speak for him.

Repeatedly, he embraces and kisses Harriet; often, this occurs in the context of negotiating for the wedding day (Sir Charles is eager for an early date, Harriet wants to wait), or in the context of Harriet's fears that Clementina may repent of her rejection of the hero:

Let me have reason to think [Harriet says], that my happiness will not be the misfortune of a more excellent woman, and it shall be my endeavour to make the man happy who *only* can make me so.

He clasped me in his arms with an ardor—that displeased me not—on reflexion—But at the time startled me. He then thanked me again on one knee. I held out the hand he held not in his, with intent to raise him; for I could not speak. He received it as a token of favour; kissed it with ardor; arose; *again* pressed my cheek with his lips. I was too much surprised to repulse him with anger: But was he not too free? Am I a prude, my dear? (3:101)

Another time, leading Harriet "into the Cedar-parlour to talk to her",

I am jealous, my Love, said he; putting his arm round me: You seemed loth to retire with me.  Before I could recollect myself, he withdrew his arm; and, resuming his usual respectful air, it would have made me look affected, had I then taken notice of it. But I don't remember any instance of the like freedom used to Lady Clementina. (3:142)

Sir Charles's "fervency" expresses the sincerity of his love for Harriet – and this love clearly includes sexual desire (expressed also in his eager comment on the night of the wedding: "My Harriet […] returns not this night", 3:237). In the safe relationship of honourable courtship, the "warmth" of the rakes Mr. B. and Lovelace can be enacted without bad consequences. Indeed, Harriet's surprise, and her mixed feelings – embarrassment, pleasure, even mortification ("I don't remember any instance of the like freedom used to Lady Clementina")126 – testify not only to her modesty, but also to the affinity between Sir Charles's advances and those of a Lovelace. The paragon of male virtue, who appeared as a sentimental lover vis-à-vis Clementina, now shines as a "moderate rake".127

126 McMaster, however, interprets Harriet's comment as simple satisfaction that Sir Charles becomes more intimate with her than with Clementina ("*Sir Charles*" 260–1).

127 In a letter to Lady Bradshaigh, Richardson asked: "And, were I to attempt to draw a good man, [… m]ust he be a moderate rake? – Must he qualify himself for the ladies'

There is clearly some danger in advances which the surprized woman cannot repulse. The hero's very physical courtship of Harriet comes as close as possible to "warm scenes" in amatory fiction without surpassing the bounds of virtue.

Nevertheless, the warmth of physically expressed affection is not reserved merely for relationships between men and women. The love between women is similarly expressed in physical terms, although somewhat less fervently. For example, shortly before Harriet's wedding, Emily cries and is comforted in the heroine's arms. At this moment, Sir Charles and other family members enter.

Sir Charles went to the two young Ladies. Harriet kept her seat, her arms folded about Emily; Emily's glowing face in her bosom.

Sweet emotion! said he, my Emily in tears of joy!—What a charming picture!—O my Miss Byron, how does your tenderness to this amiable child oblige me! I sever you not; clasping his generous arms about them both. (3:207)

This "picture" anticipates a family tableau, with the father/husband embracing his future wife and their "child". However, a similar tableau occurs later between the hero and the two heroines for whom he felt his "double love":

Then, taking my [i. e. Harriet's] hand; And will *you*, Lady Grandison, said [Clementina], be my Sister? Shall Sir Charles Grandison be my Brother? Will you return with us into Italy? Shall we cultivate on both sides a family-friendship to the end of our lives? I threw my arms about her neck, tears mingling on the cheeks of both: It will be my ambition, my *great* ambition, to deserve the distinction you give me—My Sister, my Friend, the Sister of my best Friend, love him as he honours you; and me for his sake, as I will you for your own, as well as his, to the end of my life.

Sir Charles clasped his arms about us both. His eyes spoke his admiration of her, and his delight in each. Angels he called us. Then seating us, he took the Count's hand; and, leading him to her, Let me, madam, present to you the Count of Belvedere, as a man equally to be pitied and esteemed. He yields to your magnanimity with a greatness of mind like your own. Receive then, acknowledge, the *friend* in him. He will endeavour to forego a dearer hope. (3:392)

This scene is rich in associations. Shepherd has shown how the hero of *Grandison* arranges those around him into "pictures", including family pictures and conversation pieces. Like the patriarchs on family paintings of the time, he arranges, participates in, and enjoys these images (cf. 217–8). Comparing

favour by taking any liberties that are criminal?" (Sabor, *Correspondence* 170; 14 Mar. 1751). His discomfort stemmed both from Lady Bradshaigh's tendency to like Lovelace too much (shared even by her more serious sister, Lady Echlin), and from his friend Colley Cibber's incredulous laughter at the idea of a "male-virgin" for a hero (170).

this scene with those discussed above, we can also see how the novel starts with images of eroticised family intimacy, leads over to love scenes, and then re-channels erotic love into friendship. Clementina, once Harriet's rival and the hero's love interest, is now a "sister" to both. However, the tableau – a "triangular composition" frequent in this novel (Shepherd 219–20) – is open. It has the potential to encompass the rest of the Porretta family ("Shall we cultivate on both sides a family-friendship") and even Clementina's suitor, the count of Belvedere. Sir Charles leads him to Clementina as a "friend". We have seen, however, how family relationships tend to be eroticised. Conversely, both Harriet and Sir Charles establish 'family relationships' to those who desire connections through marriage; Harriet, for example, calls the dowager Lady D. her "mother" when she rejects her proposals on behalf of her son, and Sir Charles initially calls Harriet his "third sister". This use of family relationship opens a space for friendship between those who, due to gender difference and erotic interest, should otherwise avoid any close relationship. If Sir Charles now presents the count to Clementina as her friend, just after having confirmed the 'blood relationship' between himself, his wife, and the woman who might have become his wife, this 'introduction' has the potential to be associated with any of these relationships. The hero's hope, it is clear, is that Clementina will accept the count as her husband, but in the meantime, his status as "friend" enables her to allow and perhaps enjoy his company without immediately accepting him as a lover.

Finally, it should be noted that the *initial* impulse of the tableau comes from the two women. Although Sir Charles later takes control of the picture, he appreciates and confirms the validity of Clementina's and Harriet's wishes for their relationship. Male approval and endorsement of women's relationships and desires is a running theme in this novel and provides a strong contrast with the earlier two novels (and the past of this one, represented by Sir Thomas) where, as we have seen, men tend to interfere with relationships between women and their friends or children. It would therefore be reductive to read the novel's presentation of the eroticised female body, viewed by an approving male spectator, simply as a covert expression of women's objectification and male control.

The harmonious body encompasses – and perhaps is epitomized in – the maternal body, now presented as healthy, life-giving and safe, rather than as tainted and jeopardised. Indeed, the woman whose pregnancy and motherhood is depicted in some detail – Lady G. – is also very robust (Harriet remarks that she rarely needs smelling salts, 1:402). In the often-discussed breastfeeding scene towards the end of *Grandison*, bonds between mother and child, father and child, and husband/lover and wife are mutually strengthened. Charlotte's nursing of her daughter is initially an act confined to the female sphere: "I intended that he should know nothing of the matter" (3:402). Lord G.'s unexpected intrusion recalls earlier instances where his caresses are resented as too public and ill-timed by his wife; now, with barely covered breasts and a baby to take care of, Charlotte is more vulnerable than before (cf. Chaber, "'This Affecting Subject'" 245). Lord G., "trembling however", removes the handkerchief which covers her breast (3:403). The "wretch", as his wife calls him on describing the scene, recalls an eager lover when he uncovers a beautiful woman's breasts, leading Albert Rivero "to wonder whether Lady G.'s newly discovered love and respect for him stem from her discovery that her seemingly meek husband is a rake at heart, that she has after all lucked out and married a Lovelace rather than a Mr. Hickman" (219). Another image – Acteon surprising Diana – briefly evokes associations of sexual transgression as well as (male and female) aggression and violence. Yet Lord G.'s gaze is drawn not merely to the bosom as the site of erotic attraction but also – primarily – to the sight of maternal tenderness and care: "Let me see you clasp the precious gift […] to that lovely bosom". Charlotte, indeed, is "not half angry enough" (3:403). The scene leads to the fullest and tenderest exchange of mutual appreciation and understanding between Lord and Lady G.

Critics are divided in their evaluation of the episode. As the most rebellious woman among the cast of 'good' female characters, Charlotte must undergo a process of reform; in the most pessimistic readings, the breastfeeding scene functions "in a taming-of-the-shrew paradigm" (Chaber, "'This Affecting Sub‐ ject'" 242). For Lois Chaber, it is part of a "punitive trajector[y]" and, according to her, Charlotte is "silenc[ed]" (238, 242). Similarly, for Gwilliam, the scene shows that Charlotte "is ultimately entangled in the domestic world of submission, childbirth, and maternity" (144). More optimistic readings see Charlotte's development as desirable, taken all in all. McMaster, for example, comments on the scene:

In setting out to justify an arranged marriage for an intelligent and rebellious woman, and to convince us that even such a woman may become happy in her male-dominated society through a full integration of her active mind with her own physical processes, Richardson took on a difficult task. On the whole, he succeeds rather well. ("*Sir Charles*" 266)

The cautious terms of McMaster's positive appraisal are very much to the point. Charlotte is not – and cannot be – allowed to play the role of shrew to the end. Once she is married, the question is not whether she will continue to rebel against her husband, but whether she can fulfil her role as wife in such a way as is beneficial to all – including herself. Chaber has stated with regret that, "[a]s a consequence of this episode, Charlotte is defined totally in terms of her services to others", and this is mostly true ("'This Affecting Subject'" 246). However, this 'fate' is surely one which Lady G. shares with the hero himself, who is defined almost entirely in terms of his role as "the best of HUSBANDS, […] the most dutiful of SONS; […] the most affectionate of BROTHERS; the most faithful of FRIENDS" (3:462). As Latimer observes, "[t]he creation of obligation is key to success in this novel". If Charlotte manages to "perform motherhood graciously and visibly", she, like her brother, has found this key (Latimer, *Making Gender* 183–4). Indeed, she is never literally silenced: she continues to write letters very much in her old style, even as she "is a charming nurse", "admire[d] of all women" by her brother's friend Jeronymo, and thoroughly approved of by Harriet (3:460).

In *Pamela* and *Clarissa*, a jealous husband and lover, respectively, interfere with maternal duty either in practice or imagination. The danger of being prevented from doing one's duty is the most painful consequence of women's subordinate status, and nowhere more painful than when it interferes with the relationship between mother and child, as the examples of Pamela and Mrs. Harlowe suggest. It is significant, therefore, that Lady G. *chooses* to breastfeed her daughter, a decision which she makes without consulting her husband, and indeed without his knowledge. Nevertheless, Lord G., in this respect a better father not only than Lovelace, but than Mr. B., spontaneously feels and acknowledges the merit of her act.128 It is noteworthy that it is his aunt "Lady Gertrude [who] had taught him to wish that a mother would *be* a mother" (3:403). Female and male agency converge in this scene. In her role as mentor, one woman – Lord G.'s maiden aunt – "teaches" him correct values; another woman, Lady G., decides to act upon the same values. The two women's behaviour causes the man's exemplary use of his power. Lord G. can only endorse the choice which has already been made, but, through this action, he both justifies and confirms his authority. As Charlotte states at the end of her letter:

What a scene is here!—I will not read it over. If it requires a blush, do you, my dear [Harriet], blush for me: I am hardened—And shall not perhaps, were I to reperuse it, my *maternity* so kindly acknowleged, so generously accepted, by my Lord G. be able to blush for myself. (3:404)

128 For a juxtaposition of the imagined breastfeeding scene in *Clarissa* and the actual one in *Grandison*, see also Kukorelly, "Samuel Richardson's Visual Rhetoric" 278–80.

 On his part, he is able to recognise the good wife in the tender mother: "You never, never, had malice or ill-nature in what I called *your* petulance" (3:403). Recognising "the mother", moreover, does not lead to the rejection of sexuality; indeed, Charlotte's playful comments on blushing signify both the erotic nature of the scene she has just recorded and her awareness that, as a wife, she is entitled to enjoy this. The maternal body is sexualised here as it is in *Clarissa* – but unlike *Clarissa*, this does not lead to lust and death. Instead, it contributes to increased intimacy and tenderness between *all* members of the nuclear family. In Levine's terms, the hierarchy envisaged by Lovelace gives way to a vision of a network so closely-knit that it is transformed into a harmonious whole.

## **3.2 Cross-gender solidarity**

How can this eroticised mind-body exist in safety? And how can it grow out of the same world in which Clarissa suffered? The world of both novels is essentially the same, and some of the characters, as well as some of the plot lines, are consciously shaped as parallels. Thus, Richardson conceived of Harriet as a happier Clarissa (cf. Shepherd 201), and the story of the virtuous Lady Grandison's marriage to the rakish Sir Thomas re-imagines a storyline which could have been Clarissa's. Indeed, one of Richardson's correspondents had suggested that the very best cautionary tale against the proverb that a reformed rake makes the best husband would be to depict precisely such a marriage (cf. *Selected Letters* 123; 21 Jan. 1748/9, to Solomon Lowe). Clarissa, giving her reasons why she will not marry Lovelace after the rape, anticipates the sufferings of Sir Thomas's daughters; she cannot marry a man, she explains, who will be a bad father (1116). And Richardson himself anticipated Lady Grandison's continuing love for her unworthy husband when, in one of his letters, he insists that Clarissa would have made a good wife even to the brutish Solmes, despite her aversion to him (cf. 1.2). The same conflicts, too, threaten to emerge on the margins of *Grandison*, as Sir Thomas's daughters face the same pressure to marry for money as did Clarissa, but the mercenary and violent nature of the compulsion is even more obvious here, and, apparently, the Grandison sisters lack even the ineffectual help of a Mrs. Harlowe or a Mrs. Hervey. More in the foreground, Clementina's conflict with her family is another, happier, version of the Harlowes' conflict (cf. Latimer, *Making Gender* 178). These similarities, however, result in happy marriages and family unions, as one character after the other either dies or voluntarily adopts virtuous behaviour.

Virtue is safely established in *Grandison*, but it depends on those who safeguard it – most importantly, on the hero and his mother. Crucially, the spreading of virtue is brought about through the cooperation of men and women, and of 'masculine' and 'feminine' values. The hero's mind is formed through the agency of a good woman, who also prepares her daughters to accept the guidance of the good man she has helped to form. The mutual encouragement of good men and good women creates a world where it is no longer necessary to shun men, "a world where an angel can comfortably unfurl its wings and be confident of having an influence" (Clery 155). In the following, I will trace the ways in which cross-gender relationships in both *Clarissa* and *Grandison* lead to virtue and happiness. While expressions of solidarity between men and women tend to be muted in the former novel, they move into the foreground in the latter.

Writing of gender relations in *Clarissa*, Varey notes that "Clarissa's resistance to Lovelace certainly becomes woman's opposition to man, as Clarissa's will poignantly underlines: her corpse 'shall not be touched but by those of my own sex'" (193 n.24). Likewise, Todd explains that "Anna is so insistent on the single life for herself and Clarissa because she sees all dealings between the sexes as warfare" (52). How necessary this is in *Clarissa* is shown, for example, by one of Lovelace's many comments which use his relations with Clarissa as a starting point for social comment. His musings come after he has been moved to tears ("I even sobbed", 695) with Clarissa's joy at the prospect of a reconciliation between her and her family, which, she hopes, will take place after her marriage to Lovelace. He then ponders:

But this effect of her joy on such an occasion gives me a high notion of what that virtue must be (what other name can I call it?) which in a mind so capable of delicate transport, should be able to make so charming a creature in her very bloom, all frost and snow to every advance of love from the man she hates not. This must be all from education too—must it not, Belford? Can *education* have stronger force in a woman's heart than *nature*?—Sure it cannot. But if it can, how entirely right are parents to cultivate their daughters' minds, and to inspire them with notions of reserve and distance to our sex; and indeed to make them think highly of their own? For pride is an excellent substitute, let me tell thee, where virtue shines not out, as the sun, in its own unborrowed lustre. (695)

Characteristically, Lovelace is looking for something other than "nature" to explain the virtue which has moved him. Equally characteristically, he uses the supposed "pride" of all, or most, "virtuous" women to end his account of Clarissa's joy. By calling into question the reality of the virtue he has witnessed, he prepares for his admission, at the outset of his next letter, that 'Captain Tomlinson', who has given Clarissa hopes of a reconciliation, is, in fact, his tool Patrick McDonald. For Lovelace, women's false virtue, based on pride, neatly complements men's manipulation of appearances. In such a situation, clearly, "reserve and distance" are necessary for women. Towards Sir Charles, they become *un*necessary (even Lady Olivia, who offers to become his mistress, is saved from dishonour by the hero's refusal, cf. 2:646–7). On the other hand, "pride", as we shall see in a later chapter, is out of the question vis-à-vis such a paragon of a man. Nevertheless, even in *Clarissa*, as will appear, there are hints that the heroine's personal tragedy does not imply that the world is uniformly evil.

Several discussions of Richardson's second novel have focused on its bleak‐ ness. Eagleton, for example, comments that the dying Clarissa "has understood well enough that this is no society for a woman to live in" (76).129 The "malevolent world" of the novel provides no safe space for a truly virtuous woman (Todd 11); this, in turn, amounts to an utter condemnation of this world, according to Belford: "the decree is certainly gone out. The world is unworthy of her!" (1299). However, in many ways, poetic justice is observed meticulously at the end of the novel. The bad are punished, the good are rewarded, and if the good suffer through being deprived of Clarissa in this world, they are at least comforted to know that their loss is her gain, since she must now be in heaven. Her exemplary death provides assurance of her eternal happiness, as well as an example to all those who are good already or who are capable of reform. Yet Clarissa's influence is shown to reach to this life as well. Her last will emphasises the worth even of material goods (including various works of art), as well as distinguishing those who have been kind to her (cf. Reeves). Her legacy, however, reaches beyond those material gifts.

Before Clarissa's death, Belford muses that her suffering is an indication that heaven exists, since otherwise, Clarissa (and Socrates) could not have suffered as they do. This reflection is a motive for turning to religion. It is, however, little calculated to inspire optimism concerning this world; taken to its extreme, this thought might well lead to an entire rejection of it – to saintly death rather than a saintly life. What is needed is an assurance that virtue can spread, something which Belford, as we have seen earlier, is inclined to doubt. His early pessimistic

129 The BBC film version similarly emphasises the depravity of *Clarissa's* world by cutting many of the characters who offer help or sympathy to the heroine, as well as by suppressing the momentary remorse shown by many of Lovelace's associates.

attitude towards the spreading of virtue runs counter to the biblical injunctions that men and women should "[b]e fruitful, and multiply" (Genesis 1.28). If marriage and procreation lead only to death and physical as well as moral decay, then the relationship between the sexes is, perhaps, best conceptualised as a 'warfare' indeed. And while the first part of Paul's injunction that "the man [was not] created for the woman: but the woman for the man" (1 *Cor.* 11.9) corresponds well enough with the attitude of the men in *Clarissa*, the second part may reasonably be doubted, since these same men are usually unable truly to 'profit' from the virtue of the women they (wish to) call their own.

It is, however, Belford himself who finally provides the assurance that a different kind of relationship between the sexes is possible by "becom[ing] at once the Executor of *Clarissa*'s Will, and […] the Heir to her Principles" (Sarah Fielding, *Remarks* 40)*.* Surprisingly, the ending of *Clarissa*, with its generally dark perspective on male authority figures, also provides an example of successful cross-gender friendship and influence. Although the exercise of virtue and its spreading through example are shown as precarious, the growing respect between Belford and Clarissa signals a way in which good can survive in an imperfect world (cf. Reeves 608). Like Pamela and Sir Charles, Clarissa is shown to be essential to the community she is a part of. Her tragedy leads to a loss to the community, and her increasing serenity at the approach of her death corresponds with her attempts to make it up to those connected to her – not only by a distribution of her possessions, but also, explicitly, by passing on her responsibility for others. As she writes to Belford in one of her 'posthumous' letters:

And now, sir, having the presumption to think that an *useful* member is lost to society by means of the unhappy step which has brought my life so soon to its period, let me hope that I may be an humble instrument in the hands of Providence to reform a man of your parts and abilities; and then I shall think that loss will be more abundantly repaired to the world, while it will be, by God's goodness, my gain […]. (1368)

Clarissa has, as she claims, weaned herself from the world; even her love for Anna begins to turn to the expectation of future, eternal, companionship and away from their worldly friendship. Her fear of damnation has given place to her confident expectation of God's mercy. Yet Clarissa's eagerness for death is not, in the end, a denial or despair of life, however much this may be so initially. On the contrary, in her practical preparations for death, she re-affirms the very worldly bonds from which she weans herself. In her will, she mentions almost every single person the reader knows her to have been connected to, and her bequests are measures either of her duty to the benefited, of their merit and her love of them, or of each of these. Clarissa's will, however, is not confined to what remains – instead, it leads to what may become dynamic, developing good. Her poor's fund will be a source of continuous charity. As the editor assures us in the afterword, it becomes the vehicle for other benefactresses to channel their good offices.

In her last – written – words to Belford, Clarissa points to a perhaps more crucial influence: by being instrumental in reforming a rake, she makes up her loss "more abundantly". Her words are perhaps conventionally self-deprecatory, yet they can take on more specific meaning. Belford has been a rake; his reform will mean *both* that less evil is committed and that more good will be created. The good example of a reforming rake will complement the warning Clarissa's fate provides. As Richardson expresses himself in the Preface, "one of [the rakes] actually reform[s], and antidot[es] the poison which some might otherwise apprehend would be spread by the gayer pen and lighter heart of the other" (35). As a (wealthy) man, moreover, he has more far-reaching powers to do good than had Clarissa. At the same time, the fact that Clarissa is instrumental in bringing about change points to the importance the virtuous have irrespective of their sex. Virtue, it is suggested, can spread, and it can cross gender boundaries. Belford's reform is one of the central counterforces to the tragic drift of the novel.

For Clarissa herself, a happy death may be enough to ensure a happy ending. However, with regard to the world she lives in, the move to tragedy is inevitable unless virtue can be found and propagated in others besides the heroine. It is interesting to compare the casts of Richardson's novels with those of Fielding's in this respect. In *Joseph Andrews*, *Tom Jones*, and *Amelia*, happy endings are achieved largely by the good characters gathering together and establishing, far from the crowd of opportunistic or evil characters, a small community of goodness and happiness. Such a community, it is suggested in one of his sister's novels, is fragile: if virtue, as in *David Simple*, or as in Henry's works, is to be found but not created, the failure of money will quickly destroy the Utopian community, as "Volume the Last" shows, where almost all the good characters die young and in poverty. Conversely, *Clarissa* ends with the heroine's death, but not with the failure of virtue, for virtue is not situated in her alone, though she may be its most shining paragon. The margins of the novel are peopled with moderately good or even exemplary people, from Clarissa's less intimate friends to the Smiths and Mrs. Lovick. The last of these is invited by Belford to live with him, thus further strengthening the cross-gender relationships which lead to virtue and the confirmation of social bonds, realising "a vision of social reformation that hinges on eternity's immanence" (Reeves 605).

The forming of (non-sexual) bonds between men and women, who assist each other in cultivating and spreading virtue, is supported through the novels' form. *Clarissa*, the story of a woman, is not only authored by a man, but also 'edited' by Belford. This framing of a woman's voice by an approving man corresponds to the behaviour of Richardson himself, who encouraged women to publish (cf. Taylor, *Reason and Religion* 78). As Taylor has argued, Richardson may have been particularly eager to include the bluestocking Elizabeth Carter's "Ode to Wisdom" in *Clarissa* because he believed the author – whom he knew to be a woman, although he could not identify her – to be connected to John Norris, who, in his turn, had corresponded with and encouraged Astell, whose suggestion for "protestant nunneries" Richardson endorsed (cf. *Reason and Religion* 81ff.). In this *mise-en-abyme*, Richardson has his heroine endorse the poetry of another woman and set it to music (which Richardson paid for); this other woman was, he may have thought, connected to another man, Norris, who was eager to promote the writings of virtuous and intelligent women. It is no wonder, then, that Mulso, despite refusing to agree with Richardson against her judgment, ends her third letter with the wish "to think with you on all subjects; […] because I am ambitious enough to wish to emulate the excellence in heart and head of my dear papa Richardson" (247). While the expression of her admiration may owe something to her desire to mollify him after their (largely friendly) debate, this desire must be based on her perception that he was "a constant advocate for *the reading and writing ladies*" (243),130 as well as opposed to "tyranny" (239).

Another friend of Richardson's, John Duncombe, cast Richardson in the role of women's protector in his own *Feminiad* (1754). This poem opens with a general call to men to defend women's "genius": "Rise, rise, bold swain; and to the list'ning grove / Resound the praises of the sex you love" (l. 9–10). The poem is addressed to Richardson:

To these weak strains, O thou! the sex's friend And constant patron, RICHARDSON! attend! Thou, who so oft with pleas'd, but anxious care, Hast watch'd the dawning genius of the fair, With wonted smiles wilt hear thy friend display The various graces of the female lay; Studious from folly's yoke their minds to free, And aid the gen'rous cause espous'd by thee. (l. 15–22)

130 The italics and the immediate context seem to indicate that Mulso is quoting Richardson here.

In Duncombe's apostrophe, Richardson seems to occupy at once the role of the inspiring muse and of the judging friend, who will approve the "weak strains" which are, nevertheless, employed for the cause which he supports. At the same time, his "anxious care" casts him in the role of a father of "the sex", who watches with pleasure as his charges prove themselves worthy – just as Sir Charles likes to gaze on Emily or Harriet. Like Richardson, Duncombe encourages women of "genius" to publish. In the "advertisement" to the poem, he states as one of his aims in publishing it that "the public Curiosity" may be excited and so encourage the women he mentions to have their works printed.131 Similarly, Richardson liked to emphasise that his debates with women were meant to encourage them to voice their own thoughts:

When I love my correspondents, I write treatises, you know, Madam, rather than letters. What care I for that, if I can but whet, but stimulate ladies, to shew what they are able to do, and how fit they are to be intellectual, as well as domestic, companions to men of the best sense! (Sabor, *Correspondence* 153; Dec. 1750, to Lady Bradshaigh)

In *Grandison*, this intermingling of male and female voices becomes, if possible, more pronounced. The title page states that this is the "history of Sir Charles Grandison", a man. Yet the story does not start with the hero; instead, it focuses on Harriet Byron. Even after the hero's appearance late in the first volume, most of the letters are written by female correspondents. Out of seven volumes, only one contains more letters written by men than by women.132 In most volumes, far more than half of the numbered letters are sent by female correspondents. Some of these enclose lengthy letters by male correspondents, which raises the actual proportion of 'male' writing. Nevertheless, the fact that some of the letters by Sir Charles or Dr. Bartlett are framed by comments from Harriet and other women points to the importance of the female perspective. If these men's accounts of events sometimes comprise the bulk of the heroines' letters, it is because they are worthy of female approval. Indeed, the hero's voice tends to be doubly framed. His letters are edited by his mentor Dr. Bartlett before being enclosed in Harriet's correspondence with her friends. Although Sir Charles proves his qualities through benevolent and heroic actions, these are rarely allowed to speak entirely for themselves.

However, if the narrators are predominantly female, the author-'editor' is male. The female voices comprising the bulk of the narrative are (really) created and (ostensibly) collected by a man – who, however, applied to his female

131 For Duncombe and the *Feminiad*, see also Clery 165–7.

132 Volume V, which follows Sir Charles's experiences in Italy trying to heal Clementina's madness.

acquaintance to help him form a perfect man. One of these, at least – Catherine Talbot – felt that the women's contribution had been substantial; in a letter to Elizabeth Carter, she compared herself and her friend to "two Pigmalionesses", ready to fall in love with their own creation, Sir Charles (qtd. in Clery 162). In this web of male and female voices, it is difficult to define who is speaking at any given moment, and the question of the effect of this intermingling is a vexed issue. If it is a male voice we hear, is it demanding female subordination or, on the contrary, giving value to the female experience it presents? If the voice is female, is it advocating 'proto-feminist' values or rather reinforcing patriarchy by showing women subscribe to male authority? These two options – patriarchy and (proto-)feminism – are often seen, or at least presented, as mutually exclusive. But in order to understand the 'double narrative' of *Grandison*, it is necessary to envisage the possibility that the same person – man or woman – can endorse patriarchy as well as values which we recognise as (proto-)feminist. The focus of *Grandison* is not combat, but cooperation between the sexes. Thus, 'proto-feminism' is expressed less in hostility to men than in women's esteem for women, a sentiment which is, in this novel, finally endorsed by men.

Which character can be interpreted as "a champion of the downtrodden woman of her day", as Jean Hagstrum describes Clarissa for her resistance to a forced marriage (206), depends on the emphasis given to specific criteria. If scorn of men and parental tyranny is highlighted, then Anna and Charlotte are much more radical than Clarissa. However, even they subscribe to female submission in many cases and concede, for example, that the marriage vow is of binding force. Anna may (be-)"little" that "piddling part of the marriage vow, which some prerogative-monger foisted into the office to make that a *duty* which he knew was not a *right*" (277–8). Nevertheless, she later explains her reluctance to marry as the result of her respect for this same vow – she fears owing obedience to a husband regardless of his fitness to lead (cf. 1456). Similarly, Charlotte initially objects to a church marriage precisely because the location will reinforce, in her own mind, the importance of her vow. Although both Anna and Charlotte retain aspects of their rebellious tempers, they accept the husbands approved by their relations and find happiness with them.

In contrast, the more respectful and 'feminine' Clarissa holds out against her family's pressure and, after the rape, refuses Lovelace's 'amends', even though marriage to him would be the easiest way of regaining her place in society. Just as the 'gentle' heroine of *Clarissa* proves more courage than the 'rakish' Anna, Harriet exceeds the 'feminist' Charlotte both in word and deed. While Charlotte combines her impatience of masculine domination with mockery of women, Harriet rejects compliments that seem to elevate her as an individual by criticising women in general (cf. 3.5). Charlotte, who frequently voices her reluctance to marry and her regret at being married, is ironically the one who mocks the very 'old maids' whose comparative independence might, from a feminist standpoint, seem attractive. When quoting the unmarried Lady Gertrude's opinion that a single woman with money can be more beneficial to society than one who marries a bad man, she frames this vision – which seems to describe what Anna and Clarissa have longed for – in slightly mocking terms (3:408). Once again, it is Harriet who notes the injustice of such mockery, reminding Charlotte that, if the single state is so terrible, she ought to be more grateful to her husband for saving her from that fate (2:662). Both Charlotte's and Harriet's views find some confirmation in the novel. Aunt Eleanor or "Nell" is faintly ridiculous (although far more sympathetic than many comparable characters in Henry Fielding's or Smollett's novels), but Mrs. Shirley's dead friend, Mrs. Eggleton, provides a counter-example of a wise old maid. Both positions may have their origin in Richardson's correspondence with Lady Bradshaigh – she wrote mockingly of old maids while Richardson defended them (cf. Taylor, *Reason and Religion* 94).