Hunt, Conquest, Trial: Lovelace and the Metaphors of the Rake

H u n t, C o n q u e s t, T ria l:zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA L o v e la c e a n d th e M e ta p h o r s o f th e R a k e P E N E L O P E B I G G S ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The eighteenth-century rake was a special type of predator: a destroyer of lives who enjoyed full social acceptance. While he gloried in his defi­ ance of conventional morality, he simultaneously claimed a special moral dispensation, a license which enabled him to square his conduct with the social order. Society granted this license, collaborating with the rake to suppress the ugly consequences of his actions and to invest his "exploits" with an aura of gallantry and glamor. It is one of the achievements of Richardson in TSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Cla r is s a to show the functioning of this process of selfdeception . As we follow Lovelace, the definitively articulate rake, through all his poses, evasions, denials, and excuses, we become aware of certain unexamined notions which played an important role in making the rakes behavior palatable; and we see that these notions have no appli­ cation to the actual relationship between the rake and his victim, but have been as it were smuggled in, through association with certain other ideas which were seen as valid models for that relationship. Euphemism is the rake's stock-in-trade, beginning with the abuse of the words lo v e and h o n o r . But the mental conventions which make that abuse possible crystallize around a small group of metaphors or models, the most important of which —the hunt, the conquest, the trial —I pro­ pose to examine here. Each of these analogies, by likening the contest be­ tween rake and victim to a contest of another sort, denies its grotesquely 51 5 2 / BIGGSZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA unequal odds and thus neutralizes the natural repugnance to unfairness — while at the same time magnifying the rakes "triumph." And through Richardsons management, each one is exposed as hollow, in various ways, by Lovelace himself. The first metaphor, that of the hunt, casts an aura of sport and jollity over the rakes pursuit of women. It focuses attention on the efforts and skill of the pursuer, who is glorified by success; and suppresses the suffer­ ing and potential death of the pursued, for "quarry" is after all not human. So Lovelace asks, "seest thou not how greatly preferable it is, on twenty accounts, to pursue a difficult rather than an easy chase?" —and speaks of "the joys of the chase" and "pursuing a winding game" (II.ix.30).1 For Lovelace, this "difficulty" has a special meaning. It is not simply the uni­ versal amorous challenge, but the condition of pursuing a virtuous (upper-class) woman, rather than the "other" sort. He values himself on this preference, and even finds in it a kind of vindication: despite their consequences, his actions are to be accepted because their aim is not sen­ sual indulgence. When Joseph Leman, for instance, begins to feel qualms about taking part in his schemes, Lovelace "assures" him that his pleasure is in his "contrivances," that he is "no sensual man; but a man of spirit"; adding by way of illustration, "In coursing, all the sport is made by the winding hare. A barn-door chick is better eating" (II.xli.147). Later, Belford urges Lovelace to spare Clarissa, on the ground (among others) that if he gains his purpose he will ruin Clarissa's life, with no commensurate gain to himself. ("In every real excellence she surpasses all her sex. But in the article thou seekest to subdue her for, a mere sensualist, a Partington, a Horton, a Martin, would make a sensualist a thousand times happier than she either will or can" [II.lxx.244]). To this objection Lovelace retorts, at the end of a long and fascinating self-revelation, "Does not the keen foxhunter endanger his neck and his bones in pursuit of a vermin, which, when killed, is neither fit food for men nor dogs?" (II.lxxi.249); and in the following...