Making Gender, Culture, and the Self in the Fiction of Samuel Richardson by Bonnie Latimer

Abstract

Reviewed by: Making Gender, Culture, and the Self in the Fiction of Samuel Richardson by Bonnie Latimer Kathleen M. Oliver Bonnie Latimer. Making Gender, Culture, and the Self in the Fiction of Samuel Richardson. Farnham, England: Ashgate, 2013. Pp. x + 215. $99.95. Two interrelated premises drive Ms. Latimer’s monograph: ‘‘that Richardson’s work in toto was responsible for helping to redefine the [female] fictive self, and that The History of Sir Charles Grandison represents the most sophisticated, subtle and intellectually compelling of his novels.’’ Bold assertions indeed (particularly for fervent admirers of Clarissa), yet Ms. Latimer’s book is persuasive, particularly as regards Richardson’s creation of a female possessed of individuality and subjectivity. However, despite the book’s emphasis on fictional heroines, her best insights concern Sir Charles Grandison—in all his frustrating smugness and busybodyness. The first chapter defines the ‘‘individual’’ (or ‘‘subject’’) as understood in eighteenth-century England: ‘‘a continuous, indivisible, conscious self that participates in society by means of rational thought and the ability to give consent to this engagement.’’ This does not appear gendered, but, as Ms. Latimer notes, ‘‘a defined, delimited consciousness capable of self-construction, self-awareness and self-control, able to deal rationally in a public sphere is, in eighteenth-century terms, normatively masculine.’’ The chapter examines cultural and literary views of women—as porous, uncontained, and uncontrollable—followed by a discussion of Richardson’s unique construction of the female as ‘‘individual,’’ which he creates not by ‘‘debunking or ignoring formulaic ‘characters of women,’ but often [by] using, even embracing, this categorizing understanding of femininity. Within their letters, Richardson’s heroines all establish their identities in part by a willingness to inhabit roles or characters.’’ Thus, Pamela plays ‘‘faux’’ rustic and Lady Jenny; Clarissa, the scandal-tainted Fanny Darlington and the brothel servant Mabel; and [End Page 67] Harriet, a dizzying array of temporarily assumed and quickly discarded personas. Performance of alternate identities assures that individual identity is viewed as superior. (The reading of Clarissa is not as strong as those of Pamela or Grandison.) In chapter two, the feminine appropriates masculine attributes as a means to attain ‘‘individual’’ status. Contemporary literary depictions of women as irrational and uncontrollable contrast with Richardson’s Harriet Byron who offers ‘‘displays of rationality, wit, creativity, and a cultivated frankness—in other words, all the reason-related qualities traditionally denied to women.’’ In a fine, close reading, Ms. Latimer admirably proves Harriet’s complexity, as confirmed by her narrative control, the construction of ‘‘other’’ in her epistolary discourse, her appropriation of the discourse of others, and her ‘‘carefully cultivated rhetorical stance of ‘frankness’’’—in other words, Miss Byron is shrewd, inventive, and self-aware. Though refusing to condone sexual innuendo or license, his heroines are not coy or naïve misses. In chapter three, Ms. Latimer focuses on each heroine’s ‘‘ability to make moral and rational choices’’ and to act on them. She first examines the poor, irrational choice in prostitute narratives, then Pamela’s presumably rational decision when confronted by the dilemma of whether to breastfeed in Pamela II. Mrs. B knows that breastfeeding benefits the child, but Mr. B is firmly set against it. How then to be good mother and dutiful wife when roles conflict? While I do not necessarily believe that Pamela’s submission to her husband is ‘‘tinged with satire’’ (it seems odd that Richardson would be satirical about such things), I agree that ‘‘Pamela both enacts and problematises the submissive, willless femininity of conservative imaginings, in a provocative and troubling working-out of female choice.’’ In Grandison, unlike Richardson’s earlier fictions, ‘‘the spectacle of the fallen woman provides an opportunity for the heroine to suggest her own judgement through narrating the virtuous hero’s dealings with such women.’’ Sir Charles secures female sexual compliance through a system of monetary rewards, while Harriet’s detailed epistolary musings on his reclamation of fallen women highlight her own virtue. Ms. Latimer also convincingly argues that Clementina della Porretta is not the heroine, due to her repeated ‘‘failure of judgement.’’ Chapter four explores how ‘‘each of Richardson’s protagonists engages in apparently unethical behaviour in the name of...