Clarissa Harlowe, Samuel Richardson [black authors fiction .txt] 📗

I will proceed fairly. I do the dear creature not only strict but generous justice; for I will try her by her own judgment, as well as by our principles.

She blames herself for having corresponded with me, a man of free character; and one indeed whose first view it was to draw her into this correspondence; and who succeeded in it by means unknown to herself.

“Now, what were her inducements to this correspondence?” If not what her niceness makes her think blameworthy, why does she blame herself?

Has she been capable of error? Of persisting in that error?

Whoever was the tempter, that is not the thing; nor what the temptation. The fact, the error, is now before us.

Did she persist in it against parental prohibition?

She owns she did.

Was a daughter ever known who had higher notions of the filial duty, of the parental authority?

Never.

“What must be the inducements, how strong, that were too strong for duty, in a daughter so dutiful?⁠—What must my thoughts have been of these inducements, what my hopes built upon them at the time, taken in this light?”

Well, but it will be said, That her principal view was to prevent mischief between her brother and her other friends, and the man vilely insulted by them all.

But why should she be more concerned for the safety of others than they were for their own? And had not the rencounter then happened? “Was a person of virtue to be prevailed upon to break through her apparent, her acknowledged duty, upon any consideration?” And, if not, was she to be so prevailed upon to prevent an apprehended evil only?

Thou, Lovelace, the tempter (thou wilt again break out and say) to be the accuser!

But I am not the accuser. I am the arguer only, and, in my heart, all the time acquit and worship the divine creature. “But let me, nevertheless, examine, whether the acquital be owing to her merit, or to my weakness⁠—Weakness the true name of love!”

But shall we suppose another motive?⁠—And that is love; a motive which all the world will excuse her for. “But let me tell all the world that do, not because they ought, but because all the world is apt to be misled by it.”

Let love then be the motive:⁠—Love of whom?

A Lovelace, is the answer.

“Is there but one Lovelace in the world? May not more Lovelaces be attracted by so fine a figure? By such exalted qualities? It was her character that drew me to her: and it was her beauty and good sense that rivetted my chains: and now all together make me think her a subject worthy of my attempts, worthy of my ambition.”

But has she had the candour, the openness, to acknowledge that love?

She has not.

“Well then, if love be at the bottom, is there not another fault lurking beneath the shadow of that love?⁠—Has she not affectation?⁠—Or is it pride of heart?”

And what results?⁠—“Is then the divine Clarissa capable of loving a man whom she ought not to love? And is she capable of affectation? And is her virtue founded in pride?⁠—And, if the answer to these questions be affirmative, must she not then be a woman?”

And can she keep this love at bay? Can she make him, who has been accustomed to triumph over other women, tremble? Can she conduct herself, as to make him, at times, question whether she loves him or any man; “yet not have the requisite command over the passion itself in steps of the highest consequence to her honour, as she thinks,” (I am trying her, Jack, by her own thoughts), “but suffer herself to be provoked to promise to abandon her father’s house, and go off with him, knowing his character; and even conditioning not to marry till improbably and remote contingencies were to come to pass? What though the provocations were such as would justify any other woman; yet was a Clarissa to be susceptible to provocations which she thinks herself highly censurable for being so much moved by?”

But let us see the dear creature resolved to revoke her promise, yet meeting her lover; a bold and intrepid man, who was more than once before disappointed by her; and who comes, as she knows, prepared to expect the fruits of her appointment, and resolved to carry her off. And let us see him actually carrying her off, and having her at his mercy⁠—“May there not be, I repeat, other Lovelaces; other like intrepid, persevering enterprizers; although they may not go to work in the same way?

“And has then a Clarissa (herself her judge) failed?⁠—In such great points failed?⁠—And may she not further fail?⁠—Fail in the greatest point, to which all the other points, in which she has failed, have but a natural tendency?”

Nor say thou, that virtue, in the eye of Heaven, is as much a manly as a womanly grace. By virtue in this place I mean chastity, and to be superior to temptation; my Clarissa out of the question. Nor ask thou, shall the man be guilty, yet expect the woman to be guiltless, and even unsuspectible? Urge thou not these arguments, I say, since the wife, by a failure, may do much more injury to the husband, than the husband can do to the wife, and not only to her husband, but to all his family, by obtruding another man’s children into his possessions, perhaps to the exclusion of (at least to a participation with) his own; he believing them all the time to be his. In the eye of Heaven, therefore, the sin cannot be equal. Besides I have read in some places that the woman was made for the man, not the man for the woman. Virtue then is less to be dispensed with in the woman than in the man.

Thou, Lovelace, (methinks some better man than thyself will say), to expect such perfection in a woman!

Yes, I, may I answer. Was not