when I pleased; no joy so great as in obeying me. […] Be a Lady Easy to all my pleasures, and valuing those most, who most contributed to them; only sighing in private, that it was not herself at the time […]. (669–70)
And when his obsessive8 analysis and manipulation of Clarissa ends in her utter rejection of him and in her death, he demands, now literally, what he could not attain in her life: “her heart, to which I have such unquestionable pretensions […]. I will keep it in spirits” (1384). In their absolute demands on Clarissa, the Harlowes and Lovelace arrogate to themselves God’s place. Lovelace goes even further in this than the heroine’s family; while they see her duty as culminating in obedience to her family, Lovelace’s wishes in the above quote go directly against the system of duty. Their desire to keep Clarissa to themselves succeeds, indeed, in partly severing her bonds to other human beings. However, as, in David GrahamGraham, David, correspondent of Richardson’s words, she “steadily […] keep[s her] Eye on [God]” (cf. 1.2), this merely results in her turning from them and to God: “God will have no rivals in the hearts of those he sanctifies” (1338).
Like the Harlowes and Lovelace, Anna Howe desires Clarissa’s heart. In contrast to them, however, she neither expects to fill all Clarissa’s heart, nor does she arrogate to herself a right to control. Instead, knowledge of her friend’s feelings – due, as they both agree, to their friendship – will enable her to give the best possible advice. However, both Anna and Lovelace frequently find that the feelings they impute to Clarissa cannot be ascertained to be either real or not. What is at issue is not only the question of which feelings Clarissa may actually hide, but also what the quality of those feelings is. Clarissa’s “heart” is controllable and yet unmanageable, an open book and yet opaque. When Belford for the first time tries to persuade Lovelace to marry her, he notes Lovelace’s inconsistency in pleading both that Clarissa has been led into error by him, and so may be seduced by others, and that Clarissa does not love him enough: “are not the pretences thou makest for further trial most ungratefully, as well as contradictorily, founded upon the supposition of error in her, occasioned by her favour to thee?” For Belford, “there is no reason to doubt” that Clarissa is in love, although she has such “a command […] over herself, that such a penetrating self-flatterer as [Lovelace is] sometimes ready to doubt it” (502). However, although Belford’s is an accurate summary of Lovelace’s wavering, it also emphasizes difficulties of interpretation, for if self-control can hide love, how can love be ascertained?
To the extent that Lovelace’s wavering is caused by his difficulties of reading Clarissa – as opposed to his general unwillingness to marry – it has as much to do with a struggle with the system of duty as with his struggle with a specific woman. Lovelace feels uncomfortable with this system, which is based on individual roles rather than on the equal return of actions. Legally and financially independent, the system of duty would still press him into obligations which he shuns. As we have seen, he usually acknowledges duties based on status only to press it into his own service: his uncle is “undutiful” and therefore undeserving of respect; Anna breaks a maternal command, and therefore should be punished by him. His wilful misreading of the system shows to what extent the system of duty puts high demands even onto those most seemingly powerful. For although this code may criminalize opposition to a man like Lovelace, directly subordinate only to political authority, he is still bound by it to his duty, a state he finds intolerable: “Everything I do that is good is but as I ought!—Everything of a contrary nature is brought into the most glaring light against me!—Is this fair?” (420).
Mr. B., the rake who reforms and who marries the woman he has pursued, does think it fair. When Pamela suffers from anxiety before the wedding, he comforts her by reminding her that he “joyfully subscribe[s]” to every part of the marriage service (340). Because the duties of spouses are reciprocal, and because both he and Pamela want to fulfil their obligations to each other, everything will turn out well. Lovelace, in contrast, desires a position where he is under no obligations, so that all his good deeds are voluntary favours. In matters where he is just or generous – good manners, generosity to tenants or to “his Rosebud” – he tries to draw on a system of gift giving where, having the power to oblige others, he can then control them through their duty to reciprocate. However, according to the system of duty, these same acts are merely the fulfilled duties of justice and charity. As Clarissa stresses more than once (sometimes too severely, but in general justly), he has no right to be proud of doing merely what he should: “TRUE GENEROSITY is not confined to pecuniary instances: it is more than politeness: it is more than good faith: it is more than honour: it is more than justice: since all these are but duties, and what a worthy mind cannot dispense with” (594).
However, Lovelace does not ‘merely’ wilfully abuse the system of duty; rather, he seems genuinely puzzled by it. When he ponders Clarissa’s feelings for him or admires her virtue, he is disturbed by the ways in which her emotions may be due to her sense of moral duty rather than to his influence over her. Unlimited agency – not only inward, but outward – is paramount for Lovelace. Indeed, TaylorTaylor, E. Derek diagnoses “a ‘god-complex’” (Reason and Religion 120): to describe his actions, Lovelace uses the language of divine power, and like God, he combines omnipotence with the claim that he is not responsible for his creatures’ misdeeds (121). There seems to be an appropriateness to this combination of puzzlement and abuse of divinely instituted systems: both aspects of Lovelace’s thinking/self-representation reject the possibility of a power greater than himself, “whose Plot not even [he] can escape” (123). As Taylor argues persuasively, however, Lovelace is unable to genuinely reject the system which he perverts; “he is a believer who will not accept the logical ramifications of his belief, or, put another way, a believer who will not believe” (139). In his relations to God, this may put him beyond the reach of mercy. In his relations to Clarissa, it means that he can never attain his desires, or fully reach the “heart” he wants.
Lovelace desires Clarissa’s virtue, but that virtue, he thinks, will stand between him and her. Although she will make a good wife to him, he speculates, she “would not be governed in her behaviour to me by love, but […] by blind duty” (669).9 However, for Clarissa herself, the love achieved out of a sense of duty is almost indistinguishable from ‘spontaneous’ love; her affection for her father certainly feels natural enough to Lovelace to make him jealous (cf. 489).10 Thus, Lovelace’s puzzlement is to some extent a misreading: if Clarissa is going to love him at all, it will be the joint, and un-severable, result of both duty and attraction. As he himself observes, virtue in her is either “native” or rooted as deep as life:
Then her LOVE OF VIRTUE seems to be principle, native, or if not native, so deeply rooted that its fibres have struck into her heart, and, as she grew up, so blended and twisted themselves with the strings of life that I doubt there is no separating of the one, without cutting the others asunder.
What then can be done to make such a matchless creature as this get over the first tests, in order to put her to the grand proof, whether once overcome, she will not be always overcome? (657)
Seemingly unconscious of the implication of his own words, Lovelace ponders how he can distinguish Clarissa’s “love of virtue” from the rest of her heart. He acknowledges that they are inseparable, only to express all the more determination to disentangle the (as far as he is concerned) two driving forces of her actions, virtue and love for him. However, according to his own words, he is thus occupied in a task which he cannot achieve except by her death. Ironically, it is Lovelace – the one who flouts his pleasure in word-play and twists of meaning (cf. e.g. CastleCastle, Terry, Clarissa’s Ciphers 84) – who is far more preoccupied in penetrating the true core of Clarissa’s being than Clarissa is in fully understanding his.
Interestingly, Lovelace seems to achieve a deeper understanding, or at least acceptance, of the system of duty towards the end of the novel, when Clarissa is dying. After he has been persuaded to stay away from her, but still has hopes of her recovery, he imagines her marrying him and being a good wife out of duty (1234–5) – no longer impatiently, but eagerly. This belated acceptance of her moral values implies a hidden potential for reform on the villain’s part, and perhaps a parallel of the heroine’s own religious development. In one