Clarissa's Narrators, and: Autonomous Voices: An Exploration of Polyphony in the Novels of Samuel Richardson (review)

Victor Lams gives convincing analysis of the narrative/dramatic structure of Clarissa by focusing on how the correspondence itself rather than events in the story is the central action of the novel and by contrasting the self-reflective narratives of Clarissa and Lovelace to the other-reflective narrative of Belford, who acts like a tragic chorus on the action. Lams's emphasis on narrative time as opposed to the "actual" time of the events described helps us to understand the brilliance of Richardson's technique of "writing-to-the-moment": "The time of Clarissa on the narrative stage is the psychological experience of a three-fold 'now,' one which brings together the now of the just-past offstage action that is recaptured in the dramatic scenes, the now of the hoped-for or dreaded future which is imagined, and the now in which the character's mental states are enacted into social reality by his or her letters" (7).

Lams sees the whole novel as comprising five segments or movements in accordance with Aristotle's theory of tragedy, alluded to in Richardson's postscript to this novel: the first three playing out in Clarissa's and Lovelace's self-reflective narratives (Harlowe Place, Mrs Sinclair's house, and Mrs Moore's house), the final two (the Smiths' house and her father's house) in Belford's other-reflective account. Narrative time in the latter two segments includes Clarissa's postdated letters. The quantitative proportioning of epistolary narrative reflects ironically the status of each protagonist in this power play. Thus in the beginning of the novel Clarissa's narrative dominates during the first two volumes, while all the time Lovelace secretly manipulates events like a puppeteer. Even in the third volume Clarissa still has a two-to-one advantage in narrative space while rendering her ordeal at Mrs Sinclair's house. But early in the fourth volume Lovelace becomes the master of ceremonies. In the fifth volume, Lams estimates, Lovelace has 97 per cent of the narrative, a portion almost equal to that of Clarissa while at Harlowe Place. By the sixth volume Belford emerges in the narrative as a fundamental bridge from the self-directed to the other-directed point of view. Particularly interesting is Lams's insight into how, by the final volume of this novel, no one character retains control of the story. In the final movement, moreover, Clarissa is posthumously "present" as a character speaking from clockless eternity as opposed to the earthlings left behind and still bound to everyday time.

Narrative time is crucial to rendering the conversions that each of the four principal characters undergoes. Lovelace's final discovery of his spiritual emptiness and Belford's relatively more tame avoidance of old habits are the more obvious changes. Anna Howe's Hobbesian view of the world, where everything is a struggle for dominance, stands in sharp contrast to Clarissa's Aristotelian ideal of virtue as rational and disinterested. Lams traces Clarissa's movement from initially being a Pelagian social activist to becoming a more profoundly inward, evangelical follower of the Cross in the aftermath of her trauma. Perhaps the most agonizing moment in Clarissa's sufferings is her bewailing of God's evident wrath against her despite her good intentions throughout those trying months in her family's house. While contemplating the rich ore of her spiritual resources in writing those fragments after the rape, Lams alights on John Norris's poem The Aspiration as a key text in the Neoplatonic language of her self-appraisal. Unfortunately, Lams ignores Derek Taylor's germinal article on this very connection ("Clarissa Harlowe, Mary Astell, and Elizabeth Carter: John Norris of Bemerton's Female...