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Allestree, RichardDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson The Whole Duty of Man remained in print well over a century after its first publication. Its quotable title may have further contributed to its inclusion in Richardson’s first novel, where Pamela herself testifies to its worth. When she writes to her parents towards the end of the second volume, arranging their visit to the Bedfordshire estate and their later settlement on one of Mr. B.’s farms, she asks them to give presents to former benefactors: “As Farmer Jones has been kind to you, as I have heard you say, pray, when you take Leave of them, present them with three Guineas worth of good Books, such as a Family-Bible, a Common-Prayer, a Whole Duty of Man, or any other you think will be acceptable” (476). The work may, however, be more familiar from a more memorable passage in Henry Fielding’s first parody of Pamela, where the eponymous anti-heroine ShamelaFielding, Henry packs up her belongings. They include “The Whole Duty of Man, with only the Duty to one’s Neighbour, torn out” (332).1

Knowledge of Christian tenets is hardly requisite to grasp the irony of the juxtaposition of the totality implied in the work’s title and the sadly fragmentary state of ShamelaFielding, Henry’s copy. A cursory acquaintance with the New Testament suffices to recognise that the missing part alludes to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10), and thus to one’s duty to all men. Further, albeit perhaps less funny, ironies are present to readers familiar with The Whole Duty of Man. Shamela’s easy dismissal of the missing chapter – it is “only” the duty to one’s neighbour which she misses reading – emphasises her selfishness. Presumably, she is more comfortable reading passages dealing with one’s duty to God (and, by association, to his ministers, with one of whom she has a bastard child) and one’s duty to oneself. However, a cursory survey of AllestreeAllestree, Richard’s account of our “DUTY to our SELVES” shows how far Shamela is from discharging even this – for it means to live “Soberly” and to possess the virtues of humility, meekness, consideration, contentedness with one’s condition, diligence in the care of one’s soul, chastity, and temperance. The reader will be hard-pressed to find evidence of any of these in Shamela. The duty to oneself, AllestreeAllestree, Richard explains, consists in “keeping within those due bounds which God hath set us” (139; Sunday VI) so as to avoid immediate ills (such as sickness or a bad reputation) and to prevent the punishment of hell-fire: “Think with your selves, how you will be able to endure Everlasting Burnings” (preface, section 6, n.p.). Similarly, DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson names some of the duties to oneself as “ministerial virtues; as being subservient to virtues of greater consequence” (108; sermon VI). While self-interest is acknowledged as a motive for human action, this is legitimate only in the context of the larger scheme of one’s eternal welfare – the opening sentence of the preface to The Whole Duty of Man, section 1, states that the “Treatise” is “a short and Plain Direction to the very meanest Readers, to behave themselves so in this world, that they may be happy for ever, in the next”. Next to the gratitude that, as AllestreeAllestree, Richard emphasizes, is due to God’s mercy, fear of punishment is the most pervasive argument for doing one’s duty, although he also stresses the folly or cruelty of not doing one’s duty to one’s ‘neighbour’ or oneself.

The above-mentioned tripartite structure of The Whole Duty of Man is based on Titus 2.12. From this passage, AllestreeAllestree, Richard states, we learn “That we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world; where the word, Soberly, contains our duty to our Selves; Righteously, our duty to our Neighbour; and Godly, our duty to God” (4; Sunday I). The text as a whole is relatively loosely structured. It is divided into 17 chapters (divisions being based mainly on chapter length), “[o]ne whereof being read every Lord’s Day, the Whole may be read over Thrice in the Year” (title page). Allestree starts with the duty to God, highest and the basis of all other duties, goes on to the duty to one-self, and ends with the duties to other men. These take up roughly 5, 4, and 8 Sundays, respectively. Although cross-references are frequent, they tend to emphasize that all duties – or “debts” (e.g. 267; Sunday XIII) – ultimately are duties to God. Allestree makes it clear that “there is no sin we commit but is either mediately or immediately against [God]. For though there be sins both against our Selves and our Neighbours, yet they being forbidden by God, they are also breaches of his Commandments, and so sins against him” (129; Sunday V). What is usually missing from such cross-references is the attempt to negotiate the relative importance of duties or potential problems when they clash.

AllestreeAllestree, Richard opens the sermons dealing with one’s duty to one’s neighbour with the general duties of “Justice and Charity” (213; Sunday X), which include, among other things, respect towards others’ property and reputation. He proceeds to specific status duties, beginning with the most important and hierarchical one, the duty to “the Civil, the Spiritual, the Natural” parents (i.e. ruler, clergy, and biological parents; 288; Sunday XIV), followed by the duty of parents to their children. He then goes on to “[t]he second sort of Relation […] that of a Brother” (317; Sunday XV). While this “may in the largest extent contain under it all Mankind” (317), Allestree specifically includes under this heading siblings and more distant relations, spouses, friends, and masters and servants. The final sermons mainly concern the duty of charity, which is due to everyone.

Interestingly, AllestreeAllestree, Richard includes some hierarchical relationships in his list of brotherhood ties. He does so without further comment, or is at least not careful to demarcate the point when he ceases to speak of relationships between equals. What seems to matter about ‘brotherhood’ is, apparently, not equality, but closeness. This is all the more remarkable because of the general consensus that the relationship between husband and wife is hierarchical. The early feminist Mary AstellAstell, Mary, for example, concluded that a woman “who Marrys ought to lay it down for an indisputable Maxim, that her Husband must govern absolutely and intirely, and that she has nothing else to do but to Please and Obey” (116). If the tone of her remark is bitterly ironic, she nevertheless subscribed to its general tenor. Because women are valuable beings, and because wives ought nevertheless to obey, women should “duly examine and weigh all the Circumstances, the Good and Evil of a Married State” before they decide for or against it (127; cf. also TaylorTaylor, E. Derek, Reason and Religion 69). Similarly, Hester MulsoMulso, Hester, correspondent of Richardson, who argued against Richardson that the duties of sons must be the same as the duties of daughters, acknowledged a difference of duties in the case of husband and wife – based on the marriage vows (Mulso 236–7). The relationship of brotherhood, then, can be understood only as the relationship between potential, not actual, equals. By grouping together diverse sorts of relationships, Allestree emphasizes anew the paramount importance of the father-child relationship – while skimming over conflicts in other hierarchical relationships.

DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson’s fifteen sermons are structured more clearly according to content and in a way which highlights the principle of reciprocity. Their focus is the “social duties” – AllestreeAllestree, Richard’s “duty to one’s neighbour”. However, these are clearly to be understood as part of the wider framework of duties detailed in The Whole Duty. Delany makes the explicit link at the outset of sermon VIII: “All the precepts of religion respect either our duty to GOD, to our Neighbour, or to Ourselves: […] the duties we owe to ourselves, are but secondary and subservient to those [other duties]” (139).2 Each sermon takes a particular scriptural quotation for its starting point, and, in most cases, a particular social relationship is allotted exactly one sermon. The first sermon serves as a kind of introduction, insisting, similarly to Allestree, that “Universal Righteousness [is] absolutely necessary to social Honesty” (1). Sermons II and III3 concern the duties of marriage partners, while sermons IV–VII address the duties of parents to children. Interestingly, and in contrast to Allestree, Delany starts with the chronologically earlier duty. Allestree emphasizes the duty due to parents; by placing children’s duties first, he structurally confirms the point which he also makes explicitly, namely that children have no excuse to rebel against a tyrant parent. The rights of parents take precedence over – come before – the welfare of children. If Delany, on the other hand, starts with the parents’ duty, he implicitly stresses parents’ responsibility to their offspring and attributes blame to them if their children should be undutiful.4 And when, again like Allestree (298), he includes gratitude as a reason for obedience, he tacitly acknowledges that filial gratitude requires parental kindness. This is not, however, to say that Delany does not take children’s duty (sermons VIII–IX) seriously. In one point, he goes even further than AllestreeAllestree, Richard, stating that “I have often admired it, as a glorious instance of discipline in the Jewish commonwealth, that an undutiful child was to be stoned to death by the people” (149). The term ‘admiration’ is clearly not meant in the sense of ‘wonder’ – in the next passage, Delany continues to call this law “the wisest institution that ever obtained in any nation” (150).5

Sermon X is concerned with servants’ duties to masters, its counterpart, XI, with masters’ duties to servants. Sermons XII–XIII are concerned with more general relationships among men, particularly the duty of paying debts. Based on the same quotation, DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson goes on, in sermon XIII, to discourse on the duty of love. Sermon XIV concerns the duties of a ruler toward his subjects, a topic which AllestreeAllestree, Richard had refused to discuss – a difference which may be explained in the different political situation. Allestree, a royalist writing shortly before the Restoration, had reason enough to complain that most people were “already much better read” in the “duty of their Supreme” than in their own (291; Sunday XIV). Delany’s final sermon, XV, concerns the “[m]utual Duty of Princes and People”. Remarkably, this sermon, “Preached on the Anniversary of the Martyrdom of KING CHARLES I” (299), unites in its title reverence for a king who believed in the absolute authority of kings with an emphasis on reciprocity.6 Despite the explicit admiration of Charles as possessing “more personal virtues, than perhaps any one Prince recorded in history” (305), an equal emphasis is awarded to the (English) ruler’s function as “the guardian of the liberty and rights, religious, and civil, of his people. This is his true character, and the only foundation of his power” (304). Without going so far as to explicitly condone rebellion, Delany here leaves some ground for the supposition that the breach of duty in one party may justify rebellion in the other. The contrast to his attitude to the parent-child relationship is striking: the concept of absolute obedience appears more resilient in private than in public life (cf. KayKay, Carol 169).

Despite their differences, both AllestreeAllestree, Richard and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson ground their system of moral duty in a combination of reciprocity7 and patriarchy – the system which Richardson draws on for the moral dilemmas played out in his novels. Hierarchical structures overlay more egalitarian ones of brotherhood (or, in Richardson’s novels, bonding among women), and the authority at the top is envisaged as male and based on fatherhood.8 Reciprocity is equally crucial. Insistence that the breach of duty in one party does not cancel the other’s duty goes hand in hand with the presumption that undutifulness commonly amounts to ingratitude. What is missing in the moral tracts, however, is a detailed response to conflicts of duty, although Allestree and Delany present the individual as enmeshed in a network of obligations. In the case of the former, this network appears particularly complex: alms-giving, for example, is owed on two different grounds: “He that is in poverty and need, must be relieved by him that is in plenty; and he is bound to it, not only in charity, but even in justice” (283; Sunday XIII)9. Similarly, good counsel is due to a spouse, to friends and even enemies (significantly, it is not mentioned as a filial duty10), and, finally, every duty to one’s “neighbour”, and even to one’s self, is tied up with duty to God. With regard to servants, for example, AllestreeAllestree, Richard writes: “God has commanded Servants thus to obey their Masters; and therefore the obedience they pay is to God” (335; Sunday XV). Yet although he acknowledges the possibility that a person in authority may issue “unlawful commands”, and although he insists that these must not be obeyed, he provides little to no framework for dealing with conflicts of duty.

It is, perhaps, more a symptom than a cause of this that the word ‘reciprocity’ so frequently mentioned in Richardson’s novels is used in a two-fold sense. “It is my notion, that one person’s remissness in duty, where there is a reciprocal one, does not absolve the other party from the performance of his”, Harriet Byron writes, commenting on Sir Thomas’s domestic tyranny (1:315). She makes a similar point when discussing Lady L.’s secret correspondence with her later husband: “Ought you not to have done your duty, whether your father did his, or not?” (1:333). The severity of the remark is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it is not addressed to Lady L. directly, but occurs as an apostrophe in a letter to Lucy Selby. In contrast, Lovelace makes a very different use of the term. Thus, when he writes to Belford concerning his uncle Lord M.’s public criticism of him, he comments: “He is very undutiful, as thou knowest. Surely, I may say so; since all duties are reciprocal” (415). Clearly, what differentiates the usage of ‘reciprocity’ by the heroine of Grandison and the villain of Clarissa, respectively, is more than their good or bad intentions. Rather, their concepts of reciprocity are different. For Harriet, reciprocal duty means a stable relationship between two parties who are each obliged to do some specified good to the other. For Lovelace, reciprocity means an exchange of goods as in a contract. Thus, if his uncle “rave[s]” at him, he may be called undutiful in return (415). Whether he talks of duties or of voluntary benefits, exchange is at the heart of Lovelace’s concept of reciprocity, and he takes care to be the one who has more to give. Significantly, he is too proud to accept financial help – and, in consequence, “control” – from his relations (50).

The sociologist Alvin GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W. provides the vocabulary to problematize the system of reciprocity underlying AllestreeAllestree, Richard’s and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson’s as well as Richardson’s works. In his classic article “The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement” (1960), he distinguishes between complementarity and reciprocity. A little confusingly, he first enumerates four types of “complementarity”, before specifying that “[p]roperly speaking, complementarity refers only to the first two meanings”, while the last two “involve true instances of reciprocity” (57). I quote his definitions and examples in some detail because their relevance to Richardson’s works (as well as to Allestree’sAllestree, Richard and Delany’sDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson) becomes thus immediately apparent:

Complementarity 1 may mean that a right (x) of Ego against Alter implies a duty (- x) of Alter to Ego. […] The interesting sociological questions, however, arise only when issues of empirical substance rather than logical implication are raised. For example, where a group shares a belief that some status occupant has a certain right, say the right of a wife to receive support from her husband, does the group in fact also share a belief that the husband has an obligation to support the wife? Furthermore, even though rights may logically or empirically imply duties, it need not follow that the reverse is true.

Complementarity 2 may mean that what is a duty (- x) of Alter to Ego implies a right (x) of Ego against Alter. On the empirical level, while this is often true, of course, it is also sometimes false. For example, what may be regarded as a duty of charity or forbearance […] need not be socially defined as the right of the recipient. (56)

Intriguingly, GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W.’s two examples concern cases very much at the heart of Richardson’s work. Indeed, it is of vital importance to differentiate between ‘right’ and ‘duty’. Although, as Gouldner implies, there are many cases when the right of one party and the duty of the other amount to the same thing, such a connection is by no means inevitable.

Adam SmithSmith, Adam notes the distinction in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, using the “trite example” of “a highwayman” who, “by the fear of death, obliges a traveller to promise him a certain sum of money. Whether such a promise, extorted in this manner by unjust force, ought to be regarded as obligatory, is a question that has been very much debated” (330; VII.iv.9). One of those who has “debated” it is Lovelace. Beginning to suspect Clarissa of a lie, he complains to Belford that “it is a sad thing for good people to break their word when it is in their power to keep it”. Belford, of course, may have an obvious reply to this, so Lovelace continues: “You perhaps will ask: What honest man is obliged to keep his promise with a highwayman? for well I know your unmannerly way of making comparisons: but I say, every honest man is” (1269). This convenient conclusion – which binds the “honest” Clarissa but not the “profligate wretch Lovelace” (1270) – is, once more, enforced by the concept of reciprocal duty: “can my not doing my duty, warrant another for not doing his? Thou wilt not say it can” (1270). As long as Lovelace can demand that Clarissa exercise GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W.’s “forbearance”, it does not matter that he does not deserve it.

Even in cases where “a right (x) of Ego against Alter implies a duty (- x) of Alter to Ego” and vice versa, the emphasis is often on only one of these terms. The “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, for example, implies, by listing the essential rights of each individual, a corresponding duty of each individual (as well as institutions) to respect and guarantee such rights (evidenced, on the linguistic level, by the frequent appearance of the word “shall”). However, the choice of the term ‘right’ rather than ‘duty’ emphasizes the inalienability of these rights and, potentially, the privilege to enforce them. In contrast, AllestreeAllestree, Richard’s and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson’s emphasis on duty not only highlights the individual’s responsibility, but frequently and explicitly comments on the fact that such duty must not be knit to any corresponding rights. In The Whole Duty of Man, for example, unconditional obedience to rulers is enforced by the following comment: “And ’tis observable that these precepts were given at a time, when those powers were Heathens, and cruel persecutors of Christianity; to shew us that no pretence of the wickedness of our Rulers can free us from this duty” (2[90]; Sunday XIV). The (non-)enforcement of reciprocity is clearly linked to issues of hierarchy and equality, as well. The pressure not to recognise another’s duty as one’s own right is particularly strong on those who hold an inferior position.

GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W.’s third and fourth types of “complementarity” are two formulations of virtually the same thing: one party’s right towards another also implies a duty towards that other. These are the types which he goes on to call “reciprocity” and which are concerned with notions of fairness and balance, although he stresses that reciprocity does not automatically mean equal returns. “In short, complementarity connotes that one’s rights are another’s obligations, and vice versa. Reciprocity, however, connotes that each party has rights and duties” (57).

Applying these two concepts to The Whole Duty of Man and Fifteen Sermons, one can make several interesting observations. First, as indicated above, complementarity is suppressed. Although a parent, for example, is bound in duty to support his11 children in a style suitable to his fortune and position, there is no corresponding right of the children to enforce such provision: indeed, Clarissa is “determined not to litigate with my papa” (134) even for an estate that is already hers by law. The young Charles Grandison goes even further, representing the allowance his father grants him as a gift rather than something owed him. Therefore, when Sir Thomas is forced to ask his son to “join in the security” for a debt, the latter can reply: “Why, Sir, did you condescend to write to me on the occasion, as if for my consent? […] That I am, under God, is owing to you. That I am what I am, to your indulgence. Leave me not any-thing!” (1:329–330).

However, although both AllestreeAllestree, Richard and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson emphasize the unconditional nature of duty, their strictures against enforcing another’s duty are directed exclusively at the subordinate party. Allestree, in particular, specifies both in the case of children and of wives that no fault of father or husband can excuse their own lack of obedience (304, 325; Sundays XIV, XV). He makes no similar point with regard to husbands’ or fathers’ duties to wives and children. Although he is always ready to remind his readers of the dangers of hell, and although he warns parents and others that enticing anyone to sin will lead to damnation, the condemnation of every kind of ‘rebellion’ leaves subjects, children, wives and servants at the mercy of their superiors. The duty of the superior party, meanwhile, is described in more conflicting terms. Despite general injunctions that all duties must be performed as coming from God (and are thus due to His mercy, rather than to benefits conferred by humans), the duties of leaders spiritual and political, as well as of fathers, husbands and masters, explicitly include responsibility for their subordinates’ behaviour. They are thus, to some extent, compelled to enforce the other party’s duty.

Nevertheless, the suppression of complementarity in some cases may help to obscure the unfairness and oppressive potential of the system of duty as a whole; theoretically, at least, parents and husbands, too, must do their duty even to bad children and wives. Therefore, in contrast to complementarity, reciprocity is emphasized by AllestreeAllestree, Richard and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson. It is noteworthy, however, that it is ‘conceptual’, rather than ‘actual’, reciprocity that matters to them. In GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W.’s terms,

[s]pecific and complementary duties are owed by role partners to one another by virtue of the socially standardized roles they play. These may require an almost unconditional compliance in the sense that they are incumbent on all those in a given status simply by virtue of its occupancy. In contrast, the generalized norm of reciprocity evokes obligations toward others on the basis of their past behavior. (59)

The duties of parents and children, for example, are reciprocal in so far as each side owes the other certain benefits; however, each side is obliged to confer such benefits whether or not they also receive any. For AllestreeAllestree, Richard and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson, status duties are structured according to norms of reciprocity, but are severed from them in actual practice. This can be done, in part, because benefits conferred on other human beings are conceptualized as being mostly returns for divine benefits. That is, while social duties are structured according to the norm of reciprocity, actual reciprocal exchange takes place mostly, and matters most, in the relationship of the divine and the human. For example, since God is the source of “all our plenty”, and since this gift cannot be repaid directly, “whatever we should by way of thankfulness give back again unto God, our alms is the way of doing it” (AllestreeAllestree, Richard 374; Sunday XVII). The person receiving alms may have done nothing to deserve them, but this is unimportant compared to the exchange taking place between God and the donor of charity. Practical reciprocity is brought in, on the one hand, to emphasize God’s mercy in contrast to the poor returns that men are able to make; incidentally, men are so sinful that even the best can have no right to divine beneficence. On the other hand, reciprocity acts as an additional incentive for the performance of one’s duty. Although there may be parents, as AllestreeAllestree, Richard concedes, who neglect and tyrannize their children, most confer (god-like) benefits that no child can expect to repay (Allestree 299; Sunday XIV).

Richardson largely shared the values outlined in The Whole Duty of Man; indeed, both his novels and his letters provide ample evidence of this.12 Nevertheless, his works also problematize the system of duty. They do this, on the one hand, by emphasizing the misery of the victims of the system – often barred from self-defence by the very principles which are trampled on by their oppressors – and, on the other hand, by presenting his heroines as the centre of a network of duties which they try to negotiate. This is less true of the hero; although Sir Charles is shown as successfully fulfilling all his duties, he is rarely depicted facing contradictory obligations.13 As a man, moreover, he escapes some of the conflicts which Pamela and Clarissa have to confront. The Whole Duty of Man does not explicitly gender its reader; the “man” of the title is a human being, who may be either a woman (who needs to pay attention to a wife’s duties) or a man. However, this apparently neutral gendering actually obscures the differences in the situations of women and men – just as modern gender-neutral language may obscure this today (cf. PatemanPateman, Carol 16–7). Edward YoungYoung, Edward, correspondent of Richardson “called Clarissa ‘The Whole Duty of WOMAN’”, implicitly, and perhaps unconsciously, drawing attention to the fact that the “whole duty” of an individual is partly gender-based (qtd. in EavesEaves, T.C. Duncan and Ben D. Kimpel & Kimpel 286).14 In Richardson’s hands, then, the individual is feminised.15 The system of duty now takes on an ambivalent function: it constrains women by limiting the heroines’ options of rebellion, but it also empowers them by validating some forms of disobedience.