Читать книгу One Great Family: Domestic Relationships in Samuel Richardson's Novels - Simone Höhn - Страница 10

The problem of (reciprocal) duty appears most prominently, and most problematically, in Richardson’s second novel, although it also features in various discussions in Grandison. The presentation of few fictional heroines is as focused on universal “duty” and usefulness as that of Clarissa Harlowe. In contrast, Richardson’s Harriet Byron is shown in those social relationships and moral struggles which are least connected to status duties, and Clementina’s struggles are, for the most part, far removed from quotidian duties, let alone household tasks. It is unclear if either of them takes part in managing the house, while much is made of Clarissa’s housekeeping. Pamela is closest to Clarissa in that especially her life after marriage centres on her responsibilities as mistress of a family and wife of a rakish man. The presentation of duty and of conflicts of duty, however, is quite different (cf. part II).

At the same time, it should be emphasized that, if few heroines are defined by dutifulness and useful self-organization as Clarissa is, there are also few as explicitly intent on guarding both their “free will” and their private time and space (cf. also SpacksSpacks, Patricia Meyer, Privacy 16–8). With regard to the first, Clarissa goes so far as to accuse Solmes of intending her dishonour, “if endeavouring to force a free mind is to dishonour it!” (323). (At this point, she still refuses to consider the possibility that her “honour” may be threatened in a more conventional sense). Throughout most of the novel, Clarissa also defends her private space, not only as a sanctuary from her family’s and Lovelace’s oppression, but as a space of meditation and (epistolary) communication. Michael SuarezSuarez, Michael F. draws attention to the fact that Lovelace “understands that what she really wants is autonomy; accordingly, he routinely promises Clarissa the freedom that she is denied at home” (75). In marked contrast to his promises, one of their earliest quarrels is brought on when he grudges her the time she spends writing to Anna – an issue which comes up repeatedly (420).

After Clarissa’s death, Anna describes her usual distribution of her private time before the conflict with her family. Significantly, the division she makes is based on a “self-set lesson” and includes considerations of duty as well as of pleasure (1470). Her short night – six hours of sleep only, like Lovelace (74) –, Anna explains, is for her a cordial rather than a mortification: “She thought herself not so well, and so clear in her intellects (so much alive, she used to say) if she exceeded this proportion” (1470).1 Most of her hours are allotted to social engagements in the broadest sense (including household management and visits to the poor), yet the first three are for “closet-duties” and letter writing. Despite the apparent strictness of Clarissa’s self-imposed system, she is always ready to “borrow, as she called it, from other distributions” (1470) in order to gratify her family or visitors. Her – or Anna’s – terminology highlights the way in which such accommodation constitutes private time: her hours are Clarissa’s to distribute and manage, just as she manages the money from which she donates alms. Her daily schedule is in accordance with contemporary conduct books for women (cf. KukorellyKukorelly Leverington, Elizabeth, “Domesticating the Hero” 157), yet the emphasis is consistently on “choice”. Indeed, Clarissa emphasises that she does not regard her strict time-keeping as a duty, “but when it is more pleasant to me to keep such an account than to let it alone; why may I not proceed in my supererogatories?” (1472). This is one of the ways in which the system of duty is presented as one which enables good women: Clarissa expresses her individuality through acting on the best rules known to her. Like Richardson’s other heroines, she “defines herself through the ability to make moral and rational choices, and this is true even when the power of acting on such choice is obstructed” (LatimerLatimer, Bonnie, Making Gender 71).

Like modern ‘positive thinking’ and self-improvement, this kind of (female) agency is double-edged: it has the potential to empower the individual, but may also deflect attention away from larger social problems by focusing on individual responsibility. Incidentally, if strict time-keeping is not, as Clarissa admits, a duty, the formulation calls attention to the fact that a considerable part of life is precisely that. However, duty can also enable resistance. Thus, Pamela’s steadfast rejection of her master’s advances is justified by the duty of chastity. Her self-defence – which includes her spreading knowledge of his behaviour to parents and potential helpers as well as her using ‘impertinent’ language – requires her to be actively disobedient. AllestreeAllestree, Richard’s idea of “passive obedience” (2[90]; Sunday XIV) – that is, refusing to act on unjust commands, but without taking precautions to evade punishment – is here out of the question. If the consequence of obedience to Mr. B. is the sin of debauchery, then the consequence of disobedience without self-defence is her rape. Yet Pamela verbally turns the tables on Mr. B. When he asks, after having kissed her in the summer house, what harm he has done to her, she answers: “You have taught me to forget myself, and what belongs to me, and have lessen’d the Distance that Fortune has made between us, by demeaning yourself, to be so free to a poor Servant” (23). Pamela manages to rhetorically change his position (Mr. B. is now closer to her, having debased himself) and simultaneously to rebuke him for not living up to his status (which, ordered by Fortune, should be stable), even while blaming any impertinence she might commit on his “teaching”. According to AllestreeAllestree, Richard, teaching his inferiors morality is a crucial branch of a master’s duty (cf. 338; Sunday XV). Thus, when Pamela accuses Mr. B. of leading her astray (even if only to impertinence rather than lewdness), her words are a reminder of the duties he should fulfil. Moreover, she has changed the ground from a discussion of her own misbehaviour to his – she will not claim to behave perfectly herself, but the worse her actions are, the worse are his for tempting her to commit them (as we will see, after their marriage it is Mr. B. who employs a similar strategy).

Duty, then, can be perceived as the foundation of power of the person owing the duty. This is true to different extents in confrontations with people who do, or who do not, acknowledge the system of duty. Pamela’s main antagonist, Mr. B., may choose to live according to common practice rather than Christian morality when trying to seduce his servant, but this does not mean that he rejects Pamela’s standard entirely (cf. KayKay, Carol 163). Indeed, his conversion is brought about to a large extent through his recognition that Pamela’s virtue is genuine rather than affected. Richardson’s rival Henry Fielding indirectly testifies to the power of this standard in his parody: in order to depict his anti-Pamela, ShamelaFielding, Henry, as a hypocrite, he makes her not only cunning and designing, but unchaste (so much so, in fact, that she is finally “caught […] in bed with Williams”; 344). Deviation from Christian morality to rakish practice must be justified through the alleged insincerity of the desired woman.

Clarissa’s problem, in contrast, is that the system of duty does not clearly privilege her position over that of her parents. She and her family agree that a child should obey, and in general, Clarissa is “the most dutiful daughter anyone in her world has ever known” (ZwingerZwinger, Lynda 14). Yet now that their interests clash, they find that “no law interprets itself” (KayKay, Carol 163). Even if it is acknowledged that a daughter may passively resist some commands, and possibly voice criticism in some cases, the point at which this happens is subject to interpretation and contention. For AllestreeAllestree, Richard, such a point is almost literally unmentionable. In the case of wives – whose relation to a husband, as indicated above, is more equal than that of child to parent – he specifies that, if they are commanded “something, which though it be not unlawful, is yet very inconvenient and imprudent […] it will be no disobedience in her, but duty, calmly and mildly to shew him the inconveniences thereof” (324; Sunday XV). Although they must yield if they find their husband unpersuadable, duty not only justifies, but almost compels, some resistance; Pamela acts on this principle when she tries to persuade Mr. B. to let her nurse their son herself (cf. part II). However, Allestree gives no similar justification for exhortation to children, who must obey every command which “is either good, or not evil” (301; Sunday XIV). DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson is somewhat more alert to the possibility that a child may need to resist parents, although this admission is carefully placed in the midst of an exhortation to children to show reverence: “Respect is a natural restraint upon us […] even when we are obliged to reason and remonstrate against [parents’] conduct. Such is that earnest intercession of Jonathan to his father Saul, for the life of David his friend” (144; Sermon VI).2 Anna – whose friendship with Clarissa is compared by the latter to Jonathan’s – justifies her conflict with her mother by her duty as a friend (477).

DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson’s cited exception to the rule of obedience, however, is based on duty to others. When it comes to resistance as self-defence, he is even more reticent. He acknowledges only implicitly that unquestioning obedience may be relaxed, but not dispensed with, in the case of marriage. Significantly, he does so while discussing parental, rather than filial, duty (thus, once more, evading the question of children’s rights). Addressing parents’ authority in the question of marriage, he condemns not only violence, but also over-persuasion, reminding parents that a dutiful child may be led to not mention her justified, or at least involuntary, aversion to a proposed marriage partner: “But although they [parents who persuade] act with less appearance of violence, may be as guilty; and by insinuations and artful address prevail over fearful and modest minds, and obtain a consent, when they have not courage or assurance enough to resist or contend on such an occasion” (135; Sermon VII). He does not go so far as to say a child may speak out without the parents’ invitation, or even point-blank refuse to obey. However, by stating that the most dutiful children may be silent until urged by the parents to voice their feelings, he leaves room to assume that a respectful resistance is not condemnable.

Nevertheless, admitting that there are cases where parents should not insist on their authority does not automatically clarify how such a situation should be negotiated. All the Harlowes, including Clarissa, agree that she should obey those commands which are neither impossible nor immoral. However, as GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W. notes, the fact “[t]hat the norm commonly imposes obligations of reciprocity only ‘when the individual is able’ to reciprocate does not guarantee agreement concerning the individual’s ‘ability’” (66). After all, Clarissa says she cannot honestly marry Solmes; her family say she can – but who is to judge? And how can Clarissa voice her opposition with due respect if her parents do not allow her to speak? The difficulty of doing so is, ironically, highlighted by comments of sympathetic critics who admire her resistance. Janet ToddTodd, Janet, for instance, approvingly notes that “[i]t seems that she is overtly obedient then, while covertly recalcitrant” (12). Clarissa would not have been comfortable with this assessment of her behaviour, for it implies that she is a rebel, just as her family claim – not an obedient daughter faced with an impossible command, as she herself argues.

In order to justify her resistance to hierarchy, Clarissa draws on the network of duties. Within the novel that bears her name, she is the most determined spokesperson for general duty. At one point – disgusted by the selfishness she perceives both in Solmes and in her own relations – she writes wistfully: “And yet, in my opinion, the world is but one great family; originally it was so; what then is this narrow selfishness that reigns in us, but relationship remembered against relationship forgot?” (62). Her statement is based on the system of duty, with its insistence on the mutual ties which bind all men to each other, but it is also a daring revision of it. If “family” is just another term for “mankind”, then there is no place for absolute (human) authority, no justification for privileging the demands of one person over the interests of all others.

Such a conviction puts into question not only the attitude of the Harlowes, but that of others who wish to claim a privileged position with regard to the heroine – including Lovelace and Clarissa’s best friend Anna. Thus, ToddTodd, Janet notes with some regret that “Clarissa cannot wholeheartedly return Anna’s love, seeing it detracting from the primary love of family” (54). She identifies “a coldness here that speaks not only of Clarissa’s distress at Anna’s awkward aid but of her uneasy fear of ‘unbridled’ friendship” (55). Despite these misgivings about Clarissa’s apparent lack of fervent friendship, Todd also suggests that the heroine’s death is in part a response to a world which does not accept single-minded devotion to a friend. Clarissa, according to her, “now understands that to live is to live for more than her friend and to be forever in conflict” (58). However, the heroine has always known that she must live for more than either her friend or her family. Indeed, the fervency of her friendship with Anna takes such prominence precisely because she is cut off from most of her other relationships in the course of the novel. Far from wishing to confine her sense of duty and relationship to any one person, Clarissa yearns for a world where all relationships can work together, rather than against each other.

At least one of Richardson’s early readers clearly recognised this aspect of Clarissa and spelled out the implications of diversity of duties. In a letter dated 22 April 1750, David GrahamGraham, David, correspondent of Richardson, then a student at Cambridge (Schellenberg 11 n.1), writes about misreadings of Clarissa’s behaviour. Readers who criticise her for disobedience, lack of self-assertion, prudery, or coquetry, fail to appreciate her, he thinks, because her behaviour

is not leaven’d with their [own] infirmities: Their mistake proceeds from their ignorance of the grand rule of morality; which seems to consist in an unreserved obedience to the divine will: In which, as in a fix’d point, all the duties resulting from the several relations of social life, like lines drawn in a circle, so as not to interfere with each other, should ultimately center. But ’tis the privilege of few to be able steadily to keep their Eye on that mark, without being misled by those delusions, which education and custom have sanctified by the name of Virtue […]. (Schellenberg, Correspondence 14–5)

In accordance with moral writers, GrahamGraham, David, correspondent of Richardson notes that at the centre of one’s conduct stands not any single human relationship, however important, but the “divine will”. In contrast to them, however, he continues to show that in order “to keep one’s eye on that mark”, the individual herself needs, as it were, to take a step back from any single relationship as well as from “those delusions” attached to common conceptions of virtue. Besides implying that the performance of duty necessitates not only good intentions but clear perceptions, he includes the impediments to truly moral behaviour: false preconceptions, but also, if only by implication, the possibility that the “lines drawn in a circle” might, despite everything, “interfere with each other”. If one reverses Graham’s image by putting into the centre the individual who needs to act, rather than the (sun-like) God, and if one combines this with a parallel image of other individuals, a network forms – and, almost inevitably, the lines will indeed “interfere with each other”. GrahamGraham, David, correspondent of Richardson’s imagery, moreover, puts all duties on one level; they all equally derive from God. The logical implication – which, unsurprisingly, he does not spell out – is that unlimited human authority cannot easily coexist with diversity of duties. Thus, the necessity of judging for oneself, rather than obeying blindly, is justified on an abstract conceptual level.

However, once the individual leaves this abstract level to deal with a specific situation, matters become complicated. Within the system of duty, Clarissa must obey any command by her father that is not in itself “unlawful”. If her situation is perceived to be mainly about filial duty, her options shrink to the simple binary opposition of obedience or rebellion. If, in contrast, her dilemma is interpreted as a conflict of duties, the situation becomes more complex. As she repeatedly argues, she cannot marry Solmes without disregarding the just claims of many others. For example, Solmes proposes to settle all his money irrevocably on her and her family. This would deprive his own relations of “their just expectations”; therefore, she is justified in refusing him (81). In addition, since “he is not only narrow, but covetous”, he would interfere with her charity to the poor (153). More importantly, her avowed fear that she will be unable to love and respect Solmes – and thus to fulfil her marriage-vow – in her view even compels her to resist marrying him. MulsoMulso, Hester, correspondent of Richardson agreed with her: the very weight of the marriage vow, she thought, calls for female self-determination before marriage. In her debate with Richardson, she at first argued that marrying a man one does not love is a breach of the marriage-vow and therefore sinful (206). In this specific case, she could even have drawn on The Whole Duty of Man for support, for AllestreeAllestree, Richard explains that, if someone thinks erroneously that the action he is going to commit is a sin and does it nevertheless, this “may make an indifferent action that is in itself no sin, become one. For though my Conscience should err in telling me such a thing were unlawful, yet so long as I were so perswaded, it were sin for me to do that thing” (74; Sunday III).

Richardson eventually brought MulsoMulso, Hester, correspondent of Richardson to partly retract her statement and concede that the marriage vow is not a statement of present love, but a promise to “endeavour to love” (219). In a world where daughters have little power to evade a forced marriage, it is to some extent reassuring to believe that Clarissa, had she yielded to her parents, would not have been guilty of perjury. On the other hand, this interpretation could be a justification for forced marriage, as Mulso was quick to notice. Richardson seems to have suggested to her that Clarissa would have loved Solmes had she married him.3 MulsoMulso, Hester, correspondent of Richardson reacted with shocked indignation:

[…] I did not expect […] of Mr. Richardson, that however strong your aversion may be to your lover, you can’t fail of loving your husband; as if the ceremony of marriage could […] remove the natural antipathy between worth and baseness, between good sense and folly, between the grovelling, dirty little soul of a Solmes, and that of the almost divine Clarissa. (215)

She therefore still insisted that Clarissa, and in fact “every woman”, “as a rational creature, […] must have a right to refuse to shackle her conscience with a vow, if she does not choose it” (245). After all, Clarissa herself describes the traumatic aspects even of a happy marriage in a moving plea to her uncle John:

To be given up to a strange man; to be engrafted into a strange family; to give up her very name, as a mark of her becoming his absolute and dependent property: to be obliged to prefer this strange man to father, mother—to everybody: and his humours to all her own—Or to contend, perhaps, in breach of a vowed duty for every innocent instance of free will: to go no-whither: to make acquaintance: to give up acquaintance—to renounce even the strictest friendships perhaps; all at his pleasure, whether she think it reasonable to do so or not. Surely, sir, a young creature ought not to be obliged to make all these sacrifices but for such a man as she can approve. (148–9)

Since the status of wife entails a re-construction of the bride’s entire network of duty and of her very identity, it should never be forced on a woman.

Besides the diversity of duties, Clarissa (and her creator) draw on her general dutifulness as evidence for her good motives in this case. As both Anna and Lovelace observe, and as the Harlowes themselves occasionally complain, it is they who are blamed in their contention with Clarissa. From the first letter, it is clear that Clarissa is both “the subject of the public talk” and “the public care” (39). Indeed, as Anna formulates it, “[e]very eye, in short, is upon you with the expectation of an example” (40). Despite her integration into her family and the community as a whole, Clarissa’s merits have singled her out, disposing people to take side with her (at least in theory), but also ensuring the inconveniences of public talk – which will enrage, but not otherwise influence, the Harlowes. (Lovelace, too, has been attracted by public talk about Clarissa’s virtues, cf. 143). While the “family union” (80) lasted, Clarissa’s reputation reflected positively on the Harlowes (584). However, once she resists one of their commands, the “union” is broken, and the contention invites comparison between the relative merits of the different family members. Thus, if Clarissa is in the right, it follows that blame must attach to the other Harlowes, and if she is in the wrong, then the family paragon must have feet of clay. To compel her to obey, the Harlowes quickly confine Clarissa’s sphere of action. She is ‘discouraged’ from attending church (62), an action which in itself casts doubt on the purity of their motives, as “no man must […] absent himself [from public worship] without a just cause” (AllestreeAllestree, Richard 49; Sunday II; cf. also LatimerLatimer, Bonnie, Making Gender 144).

Given their negligence of the duty of public worship, it is not surprising that the Harlowes also confine Clarissa’s actions in the worldly sphere and limit her opportunities to fulfil her duties to her ‘neighbours’. The keys needed for, as well as symbolising, her housekeeping are taken away; servants are discouraged from talking to her; she is forbidden to visit, leave the house or correspond. The only freedom left to her is that of going into the garden – a freedom which, on the level of the ‘real author’, is necessary for the continuance of the story. On the level of the diegesis, it is motivated by the Harlowes’ trust in their servants’ watchfulness (cf. 164) and Clarissa’s continuing ‘prudence’. More than this, however, it highlights the way in which Clarissa is less confined to a place than barred from places, people, and action. Her imprisonment involves a sudden stop not only of her socialising (although, as Uncle Antony taunts her, she was never “fond of” visiting anyway; 155), but of her visits to the poor, of alms-giving, of advising and being advised by her friends or mentors. She loses the opportunity of doing active work in the household or of teaching the servants. That she has done the latter is implied by the gullible, treacherous servant Joseph Leman, who tells Lovelace (and himself) that he has “kept my young lady’s pressepts always in mind” (386) at the very time that he has become the villain’s agent. If Clarissa’s “precepts” have done little good in this case, they are at least preferable to the Harlowes’ choice of Leman as a spy on Lovelace – something which gives the latter an opportunity to corrupt him.

By reducing her scope of action to the one duty they want her to perceive, Clarissa’s family hope to subdue her strength. Succeeding in cutting off Clarissa’s correspondence out of the house would amount to a restriction of her field of action to private prayer and meditation, on the one hand, and to her duty as a daughter, on the other. They basically set the form of hierarchy – the almost unlimited duty of child to parent – against the form of the network. It is James Harlowe junior who expresses this point most openly: “But, sweet child! as your worthy mamma Norton calls you, think a little less of the matrimonial (at least till you come into that state), and a little more of the filial, duty” (223). There is an element of hubris to such an enforced reduction of Clarissa’s sphere of action: the Harlowes – even while neglecting some of their own duties – place themselves at the centre of Clarissa’s obligations, a place which is due only to God. As the novel plays out and Clarissa’s sphere of action is further reduced, she does indeed focus her duty on its ultimate source: “GOD ALMIGHTY WOULD NOT LET ME DEPEND FOR COMFORT UPON ANY BUT HIMSELF” (1356). Thus, by preventing Clarissa from attending to all her duties, both the Harlowes and Lovelace force on her a single-minded attention to God, the ultimate source and centre of all duties. However, even here, Clarissa does not neglect any subsidiary duties, as is shown, among other things, in her meticulous inclusion of everyone connected to her in her will, and in her gradual, conscious “weaning” (cf. 1306, 1372) herself of even her dearest friendships.

As the Harlowes attempt to confine Clarissa, they also confine themselves. A little over a month after she herself has been stopped from church-going (cf. 62), the heroine can remark: “Nobody, it seems, will go to church this day [April 9]. No blessing to be expected perhaps upon views so worldly, and in some so cruel” (362). More charitable constructions would be possible; after all, the family had been shocked and frightened by Lovelace’s appearance at their church not long ago (where, significantly but “happily”, Clarissa’s brother was absent; 140). Nevertheless, their voluntary absence is an indication that they set their aims concerning Clarissa above public worship – she, in contrast, never voluntarily stops going to church, even at the risk of falling into the hands of her parents, after the elopement, or of Lovelace, after her first escape from him. The Harlowes’ negligence is at least more harmless than Lovelace’s attitude, however: when Clarissa prepares to go to church for the first time in London, he is surprised and almost comically unprepared: “Who could have dreamt of such a whim as this?” (538).

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

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