Complaisance and Complacence, and the Perils of Pleasing in Clarissa

This French ambiguous word Complaisance hath led your Sex into more blame, than all other things put together.

(George Savile, marquis of Halifax, Advice to a Daughter)

I

How does a woman persuade a man that she prefers him above all others? ¹ Mr. B leaves Pamela in no doubt: to convince him of her preference, "she must have lessened, not aggravated, my failings; she must have borne with my imperfections; she must have watched and studied my temper; and if ever she had any points to carry, any desire of overcoming, it must have been by sweetness and complaisance; and yet not such a slavish one, as should make her condescension seem to be rather the effect of her insensibility, than of her judgment and affection." ² It is a tall order, but the really hard part lies in the blanket expectation of a uniform and unfailing complaisance that is nevertheless the result of considered judgment: she must not simply please him; she must choose to please him because she wants to please him--always. Pamela comments a little later that such a doctrine, "if enforced, would tend to make an honest wife a hypocrite" (p. 469), since it would require her to acquiesce in her husband's judgment even if her own judgment were unconvinced. It is a doctrine, however, that would never need to be "enforced" if the woman believed, as Mr. B expects her to believe, that the man she preferred above all others would take care "to make her compliance . . . reasonable, and such as should not destroy her own free agency" (p. 465).

This is a nice distinction, and it has the particular excellence of reconciling obedience with free will, which also helps satisfy another of Mr. B's demands: that the woman who prefers him above all others should not give cause "for any part of my conduct to her, to wear the least appearance of compulsion or force" (p. 465). The argument assumes that a woman has agency--a necessary proviso, for if a woman does not have a mind of her own, her complaisance (and her preference) is devalued; but it also appropriates that agency to the willing service of another's pleasure, in which duty a woman is deemed capable of simultaneously expressing and suppressing self. A wife with a point to carry, then, needs to win her husband's indulgence, but by accident, as it were--pleasing him, but not, ultimately, in order to please herself.

In the eighteenth century, the virtue of complaisance provided a convenient vehicle for a set of assumptions about female character and conduct that were not always voiced as explicitly as they are in Mr. B's injunctions but that nevertheless informed--and arguably continue still to inform--a range of cultural expectations of women (notable among them the notion that a woman's vocation lies in making other people happy). While not intrinsically gender-specific, complaisance as a social virtue had a much more pervasive influence on female conduct because it was more in keeping with traditional notions of a woman's character as unfixed and changeable. In men, complaisance as an expression of respect and good breeding might easily be carried too far into an unmanly servility, but in women the desire to oblige, as long as appropriately directed, was a proper expression of what was deemed a "natural" flexibility. Alexander Pope's "Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear" might translate as vacuous inconstancy, but it also supports the notion of a will so malleable as to mold itself effortlessly to another's desires. ³

There were potential pitfalls, of course. The most obvious danger lay in a pliancy so indiscriminately indulgent as to be reckoned "loose" rather than respectfully acquiescent. There were dangers, too, in a complaisance that might be deemed expedient or manipulative (particularly in a wife...