“I don’t know where to go for a quiet mind”: A Case Study of Samuel Richardson’s Clementina

Abstract

His malady settled upon his brain. --Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle 382 Because Samuel Richardson printed--among other medical texts--The English Malady by George Cheyne, and Robert James's Medical Dictionary, there is no doubt that he knew what medical symptoms of mind troubles were and what treatments were offered by physicians of period. Besides, especially at end of his life, English novelist himself exchanged many letters with Cheyne about his malady. He regularly asked for Cheyne's medical advice about ways to put an end to his physical and nervous disorders. In his diagnosis, Cheyne wrote to Richardson: your complaints are vapourish and nervous, of no manner of Danger, but extremely frightful and lowering (Letters 54). For Cheyne, disorders that afflict Richardson are common symptoms of Hyp, one of whose main symptoms is depressive mind (Letters 50). Emphasizing part bodily and mental disorders play in plots of his novels, critics sometimes draw parallel between Richardson's own impaired state of health and way he deals with his characters. Raymond Stephanson, for instance, analyses Clarissa as a projection of Richardson's own nervous problems as well as testament to their reality and value, and he adds that the destructive pressure of Protean Lovelace on harmonious Clarissa is an externalization of that nervous dissonance from which Richardson suffered for so long (283). In 1754 The History of Sir Charles Grandison, it is mainly on character of Italian Catholic Clementina della Porretta that Richardson concentrates representation and expression of mental troubles, dealt with in manner redolent of case study, matrix whose characteristics he exploits and rewrites into his novel (Wenger 21). (1) He uses various perspectives, which this article aims at analyzing through notion of case studies, defined as individual pieces of narrative that provide foundation for larger structure of medical ... [that] relate both to private and public spheres ..., [that] are used to elaborate scientific reasoning based on interpretation of symptoms ... [and that add] new element to corpus of medical knowledge (Vasset 5-7). (2) Exploiting interplay between inner and outer perspectives adopted and opinions voiced on Clementina's case, novelist anchors representation and expression of heroine's mental troubles in religious and medical discourses of his time, weaves them together, and shows both their influence and their limits in representation of mental troubles and their treatment. Clementina's predicament, further analyzed in narrative, stylistic, and linguistic terms, draws attention to links between mental derangement, language (or languages), and various geographical and metaphorical spaces derangement comes to occupy in Richardson's last novel. The author's treatment of his Italian heroine questions apparent resolution of conflicts, thereby enhancing latency of (mental) troubles at end of Sir Charles Grandison and inviting readers to ponder on their narrative and structural function in general economy of novel. The most obvious reason advocated by Richardson to account for Clementina's troubled mind is religious one. Clementina is devout Catholic, like all Porrettas, whom Sir Charles defines as zealous Roman Catholics (3: XX; 2.128). (3) Clementina's family has given to church two cardinals, and one of her brothers is bishop (3: XX; 2.119). Seen from Catholic perspective of Porrettas, pious Protestant Sir Charles, who came to know Italian family because he rescued Jeronymo, Clementina's brother, from claws of Brescian bravoes bent on assassinating him because of his libertine misdemeanors, is heretic whom they forbid Clementina to fall in love with--feelings that she cannot allow herself to experience, but also cannot prevent herself from experiencing (3: XXII; 2. …