CLARISSA AND EMMA AS PHEDRE
823
when the idea of the scene is the resistance of the chaste woman. Here
there is no conflict. Inasmuch as Lovelace effects Clarissa's death and
her return "to her Father's house" as the divinely sexless daughter–
permanently chaste because dead-he is an instrument of the primal
Harlowe-economy, the economy of death. He is a kind of moral
employee of Mr. Harlowe, the living scourge exercised by the father
upon the rebellious daughter who has "gone off with a man." ("Going
off with a Man, is the thing I wanted most to make inexcusable,"
Richardson said. There is perhaps no word with emotional resonance
occurring so frequently in
Clarissa
as the word "man.") Love itself
is a non-sensual passion; it is an abstract, mechanical, obsessive con–
centration on murder; Lovelace is Jack the Ripper and Clarissa is
Jill the Ripped. Instinct leads to death, not because it is anti-social,
but because it acts in collusion with society and is instrumental to
the hegemony of death.
Clarissa
is, therefore, not a tragedy, but-in
the sense that it has the "happy ending" of death-a comedy, a
"divine comedy."
The symbol of "the man" begins to evolve in Clarissa's first
private interview with Solmes, the suitor approved by the Harlowes;
he has splay feet, he sits "asquat" like a toad, he exhibits an "advanc–
ing posture," his "ugly weight" presses against her hoop. But Solmes's
symbolic function as suitor is rather quickly over with; all he has to
do, in this role, is to be repellent. Actually, he is just one more Har–
lowe male, sexless economic man-"rich Solmes"-through whom,
under the universal governance of abstraction, the female must find
her right use. He is approved by the Harlowes not only because he
will make them richer, but also (for this is Richardson and not Balzac)
because he is sure to duplicate the Harlowe nest in the future Solmes
family; and not only to duplicate its form, but to attach the Solmes
nest to the Harlowe nest, enlarging the colony but also consolidating
it, so that the daughter will not really "go off with a man" but remain
in her spiritual home, "her Father's house." More than increased
wealth and a bought title for the Harlowes are at issue; the stakes are
both societal and metaphysical.
"The man" proper-the man as lover and therefore as outlaw,
social threat, and at the same time divine scourge of instinct, the
predestined and adorable executioner-is focused in Lovelace. He
offers to Clarissa the temptation of the wilderness: miracle (sex),
