in apparently hopeless circumstances. Grandison, finally, focuses on the good which will result if those in power are thoroughly good themselves. Viewed in another way, Clarissa illustrates the problem that those without authority also lack the power to be both good and happy, while Pamela and Grandison present a (partial) solution to this problem.
This shift in Richardson’s focus can be observed on many levels, for instance with regard to agency. In Pamela and Clarissa, the emphasis is on the ability to act, and to act well. For considerable portions of each novel, the heroine’s right to act on her own judgment is denied by those holding authority and/or power over her. In both cases, moreover, the heroines have to combat deceitful lovers who would force them to commit immoral actions. In contrast, such conflicts are rarely depicted in Grandison. Even when unjustified coercion occurs – such as Sir Thomas’s tyrannical behaviour to his daughters – it is not clear that it would lead to deeds which are wrong in themselves and which the victim of oppression has a moral duty to resist. Even the most striking example of violence, Sir Hargrave’s abduction of Harriet, differs from Mr. B.’s and Lovelace’s confinement of Pamela and Clarissa, respectively, for its purpose – marriage – is not immoral, although the means he takes to enforce it certainly are. Although Harriet has to undergo a brief period of fear and heroic resistance, this first ordeal is not the real test of her character. Instead of treacherous lovers or abusive parents, the main conflicts she has to confront are situated inside herself.
After being rescued by the hero, Harriet’s struggles are with the right interpretation of events and characters as well as with her own feelings. The first of these is not important for her actual safety – as in the case of Pamela and Clarissa, whose doubts about their would-be seducers’ intentions need to be resolved so that they can properly defend themselves. Instead, her accurate assessment of other people’s characters and actions will result in her own moral behaviour, as well as her correct choice of a moral mentor. Thus, when she ponders the history of the Grandison family, the doubtful cases she comments on concern such questions as whether or not the Grandison sisters were justified in writing to their brother despite paternal prohibition. Her judgment has little direct bearing on herself; rather, it serves to highlight her sense of morality and to elucidate the characters of the Grandison siblings. Moreover, when she criticises Sir Charles for some of his actions and opinions – for example, the indications of (compassionate) misogyny, or his general secrecy even towards his sisters – such considerations often turn out to be less significant with regard to the hero than to the heroine. Indeed, Harriet’s criticisms of Sir Charles are often emphasised in order to combat her growing love of him or her own self-doubts.
The characters of Grandison, then, have to learn mainly how to control themselves. This is true even for the hero, who frequently claims that he has had to combat his tendencies toward rash anger or pride, and who is “very much dissatisfied” (2:63) with his violent behaviour even to men who draw swords against him in his own house. The same can be said of the hero’s mother, whose actions – and, it is suggested, whose feelings – are bent on wifely love and submission, but who is shown to act thus out of her own free will. When conflict is externalised, as on many occasions when Sir Charles has to fight assassins or evade a duel, or when his sisters have to choose between love and filial obedience, it is usually set in the past. By the time Harriet hears of Sir Thomas’s tyranny, for example, the reader already knows that it has had no irremediably bad effects on his children’s future. The present of the novel, in contrast, is concerned with the good influence which characters have on each other, and the successful struggle for self-control. Despite several discussions on duties and rights, in the present of the novel, right feeling – and displays of right feeling – takes precedence over issues of authority. The shift is visible in the hero, who acts as a father figure but who derives his authority not from biological fatherhood, but rather from providing protection, advice, money, and affection to those around him.
This re-orientation of ‘fatherhood’ corresponds with a new focus on the forging of relationships and the spreading of virtue. The open exercise of authority is replaced with what is now called ‘nudging’: the hero and the other virtuous characters (often by the former’s assistance) prepare incentives for the more faulty characters to mend their ways. Often, however, reform is voluntary and merely welcomed and supported by the steadily growing community of the good. Indeed, one way in which the conflict between individual liberty and authority is contained is by voluntary self-control once control has been granted to the individual. Thus, the emphasis on absolute duties in Clarissa is replaced by a less clearly defined process of conferring benefits3, which allows for individual agency within limits.
Thus, another way to describe the shift from Richardson’s earlier novels to Grandison is that it is a shift of focus from hierarchy to network as the organising element of human relationships. In a thought-provoking study, Caroline LevineLevine, Caroline has shown how forms such as hierarchy and network inform structures of narratives (or of relationships within those narratives). Several forms can occur together, either in conflict or mutually reinforcing. The role these forms play in narrative is both limited and flexible:
To capture the complex operations of social and literary forms, I borrow the concept of affordance from design theory. Affordance is a term used to describe the potential uses or actions latent in materials and designs. […]
Let’s now use affordances to think about form. The advantage of this perspective is that it allows us to grasp both the specificity and the generality of forms—both the particular constraints and possibilities that different forms afford, and the fact that those patterns and arrangements carry their affordances with them as they move across time and space. […] Networks afford connection and circulation, and narratives afford the connection of events over time. […]
To be sure, a specific form can be put to use in unexpected ways that expand our general sense of that form’s affordances. (6)
LevineLevine, Caroline’s concept is useful because it unites the stable features of form (such as materials, patterns, etc.) with their – potentially unlimited – applicability. Thus, it offers a means to describe readers’ differing reactions to a text as they focus on different affordances of the same materials. Similarly, Levine’s concept is applicable to the very different conclusions which Richardson’s contemporaries, as well as he himself, drew from the authority of the Bible (cf. parts I and II). Applied to Richardson’s novels, affordance is a means by which to describe the stable features of his works – including concepts of moral duties and structures of relationships – as they appear in different forms and to different effect. Indeed, the moral system underlying each novel seems remarkably stable, even though its application, and Richardson’s focus, vary. This variability is due, in part, to the moral system being organised according to two differing principles, namely hierarchy and network.
The etymology of the word ‘hierarchy’ is curiously well adapted to its use by moral writers such as AllestreeAllestree, Richard or DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson: it derives “from the Greek hieros, meaning ‘sacred,’ and arche, meaning ‘rule’” (LevineLevine, Caroline 82). As we shall see, when a relationship is especially important, hierarchy – and the ‘sacred’ duty to submit to it – is crucial, as well. “[H]ierarchies arrange bodies, things, and ideas according to levels of power or importance. Hierarchies rank—organizing experience into asymmetrical, discriminatory, often deeply unjust arrangements” (82). It is notable that to “discriminate” means first and foremost “to distinguish”, although this can happen “in an unjust or prejudicial manner” (OED, “discriminate, v.” 1 & 4). Hierarchies distinguish what is different, imposing order. In contrast, “[s]prawling and spreading, networks might seem altogether formless, perhaps even the antithesis of form. For some influential theorists, in fact, it is their resistance to form that makes networks emancipatory—politically productive” (Levine 112). In contrast to the ‘above’ and ‘below’ of hierarchy, networks can spread laterally, accommodating an indefinite number of component parts. Although the term ‘network’ is not mentioned by the moral writers I consider for this study, it is a convenient shorthand for describing those relationships which are not governed by hierarchy, indefinite in number and flexible