Читать книгу One Great Family: Domestic Relationships in Samuel Richardson's Novels - Simone Höhn - Страница 12

The complex relationship between authentic feelings and feelings as performance can be exemplified with the topos of the masquerade. At a masquerade, anything bad can happen. Pamela’s Mr. B. starts an affair there – although he claims it never really passes the limits of “Platonick Nonsense” (Pamela in her Exalted Condition 457) –, Harriet Byron is abducted from one, and even Henry Fielding’s Tom JonesFielding, Henry, who can find trouble anywhere, is entangled worse than ever when he follows Lady Bellaston home from a masquerade. “[F]oolish, irrational, and corrupt” (CastleCastle, Terry, Masquerade and Civilization 2), a masquerade in early eighteenth-century fiction constitutes a gathering of the weak and the wicked. The best which a virtuous person can hope for if she (rarely he) attends one inadvertently is to escape with a sense of disgust and boredom. Curiously, the frequent denunciation of masquerades as a diversion that can offer no real pleasure seems to fit ill with the danger they are assumed to pose to virtue. Harriet’s assurance that the masquerade which proved so nearly fatal to her never gave her pleasure (1:426) is psychologically plausible. However, such accounts raise the question as to what the attraction of masquerades is in the first place, and why they can exist at all so as to entice innocent people to their own ruin. More sympathetic accounts emphasise the unusual freedom a masked ball provides, especially for women:

It is delightful to me to be able to wander about in a crowd, making my observations, and conversing with whomsoever I please, without being liable to be stared at or remarked upon, and to speak to whom I please, and run away from them the moment I have discovered their stupidity. (Harriette Wilson, qtd. in CastleCastle, Terry, Masquerade and Civilization 44)

Pamela in her Exalted Condition illustrates this freedom (and the risks it entails) in more detail – not in the person of the heroine, but in that of the Countess Dowager who all but initiates the ensuing flirtation with Mr. B., a married man (366–8, 441–3).

The liberty to move and speak freely comes attended with dangers. Sir Charles’s somewhat awkward statement that “[m]asquerades […] are not creditable places for young ladies to be known to be insulted at them” (Grandison 1:143) expresses them, in its carefully objective tone, rather more convincingly than the more hysterical accounts of rapes such as the one described in Eliza HaywoodHaywood, Eliza’s Female Spectator (24–9; vol. I, bk. I). Much more is at stake at the masquerade than the danger that libertines can commit crimes anonymously. The trope that everyone “‘wears a Habit which speaks him the Reverse of what he is’” comes closer to the threat that is constituted by the masquerade (Universal Spectator, qtd. in CastleCastle, Terry, Masquerade and Civilization 5). If the quintessential costume represents “an inversion of one’s nature” (5), it simultaneously rejects and exposes the roles assumed by respectable people in everyday life. The uncertain relation between ‘truth’ and ‘deceit’, the imperceptible transition from ‘masquerade’ to hypocrisy to virtue, can be illustrated with another episode from Eliza Haywood’s Female Spectator (110–15; vol. III, bk. XIII). The virtuous Eudosia suffers the neglect and contempt of her husband Severus, whose disrespect for her goes so far that he introduces his mistress into the household, and “tho’ Eudosia kept her Place at the Head of the Table, yet nothing was served up to it but what was ordered by Laconia” (111). Instead of quarrelling with her husband, however, Eudosia makes a friend of Laconia until she can think of a plan to get rid of her. Finally, she feigns a dangerous illness and tricks Severus into reading her supposed last will – which is that he should marry his mistress. Severus is reclaimed by his wife’s generosity, and Laconia is sent away.

EudosiaHaywood, Eliza’s story is one of several illustrations of exemplary wives who manage to reclaim unworthy husbands through patience and virtue. However, in contrast to many other depictions of long-suffering wives, her behaviour is described as active scheming, rather than simple patience. Indeed, Haywood feels called on to stress this point for her readers:

Some Women will look on this tame enduring in EudosiaHaywood, Eliza as wholly unworthy of a Wife, and too great an Encouragement for other guilty Husbands to treat their Wives in the same Manner; but this Pattern of Prudence and Good-nature knew very well the Temper of the Person she had to deal with, and that nothing was to be gain’d by the Pursuit of any rough Measures. (111)

EudosiaHaywood, Eliza complies with the common advice to wives to return patience for abuse, but the equation ‘good wife = reclaimed husband’ is questioned through the imagined reader response. The familiar story of the virtuous wife, it is suggested, is liable to misreading; by implication, the example of goodness may well fail in reality as it sometimes does in fiction. Pamela, after all, attempts a similar strategy when she suspects her husband of adultery, but the situation initially gets only worse. Mr. B. senses that something is wrong and is almost estranged from her; the two are reconciled when Pamela finally admits to her suspicions (cf. DoodyDoody, Margaret Anne, A Natural Passion 92–6). If Eudosia is, nevertheless, justified in her behaviour, it is because she knows “very well the Temper of the Person she had to deal with”. She is not, that is, simply following the script every wife ought to follow. Rather than keeping to the code of conduct books, she follows her own “Schemes”, tailored to an individual husband (112).

At the same time, however, HaywoodHaywood, Eliza does not allow her reader to perceive Eudosia’s behaviour as a mere masquerade. Eudosia is a “Pattern of Prudence and Good-nature” (the latter point is proven when she begs her husband to provide for his mistress before sending her away). Her scheme, then, of conquering through a display of generosity, is natural to her. Moreover, she “still retained the most tender Affection for her Husband” (112) despite his cruelty. Her love further naturalises her patience, elevating it from a simple ploy to noble loyalty. This insistence on the wife’s love appears to be a universal element of the trope of the neglected wife. It appears, for example, in Sarah Fielding’s novel David SimpleFielding, Sarah, correspondent of Richardson. Early in the story, the eponymous hero boards with different people in order to “seek out one capable of being a real Friend” (27). The wife of one of his landlords proceeds to tell him the details of her married life and the abuse her husband heaps on her. Yet she concludes her story with the following words:

Thus even my Tenderness for him is turn’d against me, and I can do nothing that he does not dislike; yet my Fondness still continues for him, and there are no pains I would not take, if he would return it; but he imputes it to a Warmth in my Inclination, which Accident might as well have given to another Man. (56)

Like EudosiaHaywood, Eliza, this virtuous wife continues to feel affection for her tormentor. Yet although the narrative asks us to take her words at face value, tensions are perceptible between her laying open, however hesitantly, her husband’s faults, and her assertion that she still loves him. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the problem raised by the last part of the sentence quoted: what does the wife’s obligatory love stem from? If it is ‘natural’, might there be some justice in the husband’s assertion that she would have felt it for any other man? And if it is the effect of a conscious effort to control her emotions, can it still be ‘true’? These are the questions which torment Lovelace, and which he uses to justify his repeated ‘trials’ of Clarissa’s love and virtue.

Sarah FieldingFielding, Sarah, correspondent of Richardson’s narrative, in contrast, does not problematize this uncertainty. Her world, although recognizable for contemporary southern England – most of the novel is set in London, Bath and their surroundings –, is organized largely according to the logic of allegory. Duplicity and lies exist, of course, but they are inherently knowable. The same is true, I would argue, for her brother’s more complex novels. Henry Fielding plays with the concept of the ‘reporter-narrator’. He repeats, for example, “the Observation of some antient Sage, whose Name I have forgot”, or records details about his hero Joseph’s diet: “He accordingly eat either a Rabbit or a Fowl, I never could with any tolerable Certainty discover which” (Joseph AndrewsFielding, Henry 29, 59). The narrator’s very uncertainty, however, testifies to the knowability of the world depicted. The “Sage’s” teachings could be looked up in another book, if the reader happened to have a better memory than the narrator, and the details of Joseph’s meal might be found out by a more diligent enquirer. Similarly, there is little inherent mystery about characters’ motivations. In many cases, a character’s main traits are given away by their very name, as in the case of Allworthy or Shamela. Such characters have been said to “belong to […] a moment […] that we might call allegorical, a moment, possibly fictitious, when social role and inner persona were indistinguishable” (RosenRosen, David and Aaron Santesso & Santesso 1046). In some cases, of course, Fielding chooses to obscure or hide a character’s motivations – as he does when withholding the knowledge that Bridget Allworthy is in fact Tom Jones’s mother –, but they are comprehensible when outlined by the narrator. Duplicity, hypocrisy and lack of frankness are thus contained within Fielding’s narrative; the narrator is able to state clearly their cause and limits.

The same is not true for Richardson’s novels. The cause is less that his protagonists have unconscious motivations while Fielding’s have not; rather, it is that there is no agent within the story that can safely set the limits of allowable equivocation and ‘prudent’ scheming. In epistolary fiction – if not “in all writing”, as William WarnerWarner, William Beatty has suggested – “there is nothing within a text to distinguish a true narrative from its false simulation” (Licensing Entertainment 210). In a novel where each event and every thought are filtered through characters driven by half-conscious desires as well as conscious values, the establishment of an absolute ‘truth’ appears oxymoronic. I am not especially concerned with the ‘real reader’ here, who knows that s/he is safely outside the fiction and can choose, for example, to trust the ‘editor’-author’s preferences for certain characters, or to read the novel against the grain by assuming, say, that Pamela is really ShamelaFielding, Henry. Instead, I ask what happens to the fictional reader-characters when they acknowledge that ‘truth’ can look like a masquerade, and vice versa.

As Richardson’s characters recognise, events are shaped by their telling. Pamela’s ordeal at the hands of Mr. B. becomes a “pretty Novel” (232) with a power of its own – it is through reading her version of events that the would-be seducer decides to marry her. Even then, however, he fails to understand her whole mind – although he recognises her virtue, he is unable to ‘read’ her love (which Pamela, in turn, only recognises once he sends her away). It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the married Pamela finds the need to conceal her jealousy almost unbearable. Her pain, as well as the negative effect her behaviour has on Mr. B., proves that she is not and never has been a “finish’d hypocrite” (Pamela in her Exalted Condition 402). In contrast, the kind of behaviour which EudosiaHaywood, Eliza assumes is presented as praiseworthy and wise in Grandison, where hypocrisy is a less pressing issue. Significantly, however, the woman who practises it – Lady Grandison, the hero’s mother – is dead by the time the narrative starts; her story is told only in retrospect, almost as an exemplum. Indeed, as Margaret DoodyDoody, Margaret Anne has observed, “as soon as [Richardson] examines a situation closely he begins to query abstract theoretical statement” (A Natural Passion 96). Lady Grandison’s behaviour works because she is not really a ‘character’ at all.

Pamela, the novel which divided the world into “Pamelists and Antipamelists” (qtd. in KeymerKeymer, Tom, Richardson’s Clarissa 23), is an extreme case. As hinted above, hypocrisy is a less problematic issue in Grandison, which does not entail such a direct challenge to hierarchies of class and gender. Even where less is at stake, however, narration remains self-representation; the writer’s essence – her thoughts, words, and actions rendered in detail – inescapably is also ‘performance’. David RosenRosen, David and Aaron Santesso and Aaron Santesso quote the sociologist Erving Goffman to express the complex interplay of “observation, interiority and behavior”: “[As] performers, individuals are concerned not with the moral issue of realizing these standards [by which they are judged], but with the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that these standards are being realized” (1043; first square bracket in the original). The problem of Richardson the novelist – and of his characters – is that virtuous characters should be most concerned with realizing the standards, rather than with performance. However, when the pursuit of moral standards looks identical to the mere “engineering a convincing impression”, how can true virtue be expressed and recognized? Early in Grandison, Harriet’s uncle Selby comments on the heroine’s claim that she has always tried “‘to keep down any foolish pride’”: “Then you own that pride you have?—Another point gained! Conscience, honest conscience, will now-and-then make you women speak out. But now I think of it, here is vanity in the very humility” (1:28). As Mr. Selby makes clear, Harriet’s seeming attempt to control her emotions may be read equally as an expression of true humility or as uncommonly subtle boasting. Sincerity and masquerade, propriety and hypocrisy, threaten to collapse into each other.1

There is, however, another and even graver danger: that masquerade is only a guise for what is, in fact, one’s reprehensible essence. When Harriet is drawn into a description of masquerades some time after her abduction, she seems at first preoccupied with the folly of the ‘diversion’. Masquerade is likened to “Bedlam” (1:426), and her own “tinsel dress” is “ridiculous”. Ashamed of herself, Harriet considers what her

good grandfather [would] have thought, could he have seen his Harriet, the girl whose mind he took pains to form and enlarge, mingling in a habit so preposterously rich and gaudy, with a croud of Satyrs, Harlequins, Scaramouches, Fauns, and Dryads; nay, of Witches and Devils; the graver habits striving which should most disgrace the characters they assumed, and every one endeavouring to be thought the direct contrary of what they appeared to be. (1:427)

At the beginning of Harriet’s account, outside and inside are out of tune; the problem is that the dress belies the well-regulated mind. As she goes on, the correspondence between habit and “habits” becomes increasingly blurred. If “every one” endeavours “to be thought the direct contrary of what they appeared to be”, how comes it that “the Devils, at least”, were not “charming creatures”, as Charlotte Grandison jokingly suggests (1:427)? The reason is that masquerade is not a simple reversal of truth. Rather, it offers scope for a variety of relations between truth and false appearance – for the (in Harriet’s account) grotesque spectacle of an “enlarged mind” in a “tinsel dress” and “graver habits striving to disgrace the characters they assumed”, as well as for appearances that display the mind. Harlequins openly declare their folly, and devils display their want of principles. The fact that their behaviour is so unpredictable only makes it the more sinister: do they endeavour to be thought the contrary of what their character in the real world is, or, rather, of what their masquerade habit would seem to demand? And if they appear “charming”, does this belie the ‘truth’ of their dress or rather confirm them as seductive Satans?

Masquerade, then, highlights the deceitfulness of appearance even while giving scope to its exploitation. It is the emblem in negative of Harriet’s own behaviour; she strives to attain that absolute frankness which she will not acknowledge to be unattainable. Something of this indeterminacy is shown also in Mr. B.’s flirtation at the masquerade, where both he and the Countess Dowager dangerously play with a variety of relations to ‘truth’. As Pamela angrily notes, they do not act up to their costume; as a Spanish Don, “the dear Gentleman no more kept to his Spanish Gravity, than she to the Requisites of the [Nun’s] Habit she wore: When I had imagin’d, that all that was tolerable in a Masquerade, was the acting up to the Characters each Person assum’d” (Pamela in her Exalted Condition 365). He should act more proudly and seriously, she more modestly, than they do. On another level, however, their “habits” do indeed express their characters: Mr. B. does have pride, and the Countess is more virtuous than Pamela fears. In consequence of their imprudent behaviour, rumours of adultery arise; these are wildly exaggerated and yet partly justified, since the behaviour of B. and the Countess affronts propriety. The masquerade is so horrible precisely because it allows essentially virtuous people to play with fire, instead of restricting all behaviour to that which is proper.

Nevertheless, some Richardsonian characters can envisage ways to counteract the negative effects of masquerade by fixing its relation to truth. One such proposition is Caroline L.’s suggestion that masquerade could be “a rational and almost instructive entertainment” if only decent characters were assumed and then “support[ed] with wit and spirit” (1:427; cf. also Pamela in her Exalted Condition 368). Sir Charles rejects her proposal by arguing not only that few people are able to fulfil the prerequisites of “wit” and “decorum”, but that the example of the select few would reach down to those who would copy masquerade in a degenerated, riotous form. In other words, innocuous versions of the play with truth and appearance may indeed be imagined, but to act on this is to encourage deceit.

However, role play is not condemned so thoroughly in all of Richardson’s fiction. Indeed, Pamela – despite its condemnation of masquerade – includes and endorses various kinds of ‘masquerade’. Both the original novel and its continuation include various scenes of disguise which can be either beneficial or problematic; indeed, it is often a matter of interpretation as to what functions as ‘disguise’ and what does not – Pamela’s appearance in rustic dress is presented by her as acting up to her true identity, while Mr. B. interprets it as a ploy to catch his attention (Pamela 57).2 In Pamela in her Exalted Condition, the heroine condemns the disguises employed in the stage comedy The Tender Husband. In the play, almost all the characters cheat each other, using lies and cross-dressing to achieve their purposes, which are utterly selfish (355–61). However, both Pamela and her husband also employ disguise for justifiable ends. Thus, Pamela – at the behest of her friends – acts the part of “Lady Jenny” in front of her husband’s uncle, Sir Jacob Swynford, who has come to rebuke his nephew for marrying beneath him. By pretending to be the well-born Lady Jenny, daughter of the Countess of C., low-born Pamela has the chance to demonstrate her worth. The trick succeeds, and Sir Jacob is reconciled: “Who can chuse but bless you?” (217). What distinguishes the ‘masquerade’ staged for Sir Jacob from the deceits practiced in The Tender Husband is the different motivation of the actors. Mr. B.’s uncle is deceived so that he can see the truth.3

Role-play, albeit not actual masquerade, is discussed in even more light-hearted terms in Richardson’s Familiar LettersRichardson, SamuelFamiliar Letters on Important Occasions on Important Occasions. In letter LXXXV, a gentleman rebukes a lady for her “supposed Coquetry” (108) only to be reprimanded in turn:

Perhaps I like to see the young fellows dying for me; but since they can do it without impairing their health, don’t be so very angry at me. In short, sir, you are your own master; and, Heaven be thank’d, I am, at present, my own mistress; and your well-manner’d letter will make me resolve to be so longer than perhaps I had otherwise resolved. (109)

The lady’s answer reminds suitor and reader alike that her own coquetry, like “the young fellows dying”, are part of an elaborate code of behaviour known to all parties, who are able to support their parts with the wit and decorum stipulated by Caroline. Clearly, decorum – specifically with regard to courtship – involves its own kind of masquerade; indeed, Clarissa’s friend Miss Biddulph claims that female “coquetry” is only the natural consequence of men’s “false hearts” (44). When Harriet prepares for her masquerade, she tries to echo the attitude of the anonymous lady who “likes to see young fellows dying for her”. Though she feels uncomfortable in her dress from the first, she attempts to support her character of “Arcadian Princess” with spirit (1:115). As she ends her letter to her cousin Lucy, she asks her to imagine “how many Pretty-fellows […] in this dress, will be slain by [Harriet]” (1:116). Her playful assumption of coquetry comes back to haunt her when she later remembers that this was the last line she wrote before her abduction (1:150). As she recognises at the masquerade, dress and situation cannot be kept separate from behaviour, and perhaps not even from character: “No prude could come, or if she came, could be a prude, there” (1:427).4

Her abduction shakes her confidence that play and truthfulness can coexist. Although she recognises that it could have been organised from any other place of diversion (1:426), her narration repeatedly links the abduction to masquerade. It seems significant, in this context, that her playful impersonation of other characters early during her stay in London has no parallel in the later parts of the book. Before the masquerade, Harriet enjoys a seemingly more harmless manner of impersonation: she imagines her new London acquaintance writing letters which report their impressions of her. LatimerLatimer, Bonnie suggests that these letters are an assumption of power: “Harriet […] defines herself by annexing or over-writing, by working on and thus possessing, other characters” (Making Gender 51). According to her, Harriet’s openness about the letters’ inauthenticity is, in itself, a mask which gives false authority to her representation. Latimer’s analysis of the complexity of her (self-)representation is largely convincing. However, her reading of Harriet – “she is continually slyly representing others – inventing others – praising herself” (54) – also suggests that all shaping of experience is somehow manipulation, a tool to control others. I would argue, instead, that the letters imply her confidence in the disparity between truth and falsehood. Relying on her readers’ knowledge of herself, she can repeat the compliments she receives, inviting her correspondents to put them in context.

Similarly, trusting in their confidence in her own sincerity, she can offer a ‘real’ and a ‘fully fictional’ portrait of the same men and women, playfully assuming a role without danger that either they or she will be misrepresented through it. She expects the same attitude from her readers: one of Harriet’s responses to her uncle’s accusations of vanity is to characterise his words as a playful misrepresentation. As long as he says “what may be said, [rather] than what he really thinks”, and as long as her relatives value her, she will not be hurt (1:66). Her playfulness and her certainty are similarly expressed when she tries to “mak[e] mouths” in the mirror in imitation of the pedant Mr. Walden (1:46). As LatimerLatimer, Bonnie (here) suggests, Harriet “appears to be so comfortable with her own identity that she can hazard slipping into Mr Walden’s, although she does not finally do so” (Making Gender 35). Indeed, her body refuses to partake of the masquerade; Harriet is unable to perform the ridiculous, repulsive facial expressions she has described with so much gusto. This confidence in herself and in the transparency of truth is shattered during her abduction. Later letters still include detailed accounts of other characters’ behaviour, but the aspect of impersonation is taken over by two of the Grandison siblings – Sir Charles and Charlotte. Their style of ‘masquerade’ differs, however, from Harriet’s and will be discussed in part III. Harriet, in contrast, will come to embody ‘frankness’, the happy congruence of inner truth and its outward appearance (cf. also McMasterMcMaster, Juliet, Reading the Body 96). Although the spectre of hypocrisy is briefly raised in Grandison, this gives way to an emphasis on the healing powers of ‘proper’ performance.