"Tremble and Reform": The Inversion of Power in Richardson's Clarissa

Abstract

Midway in Richardson's Clarissa, an inversion occurs on the level of content which has a crucial effect in the domain of form. The change involves a decisive reordering of the novel's structure. As Clarissa, Richardson's passive heroine, gradually gains mastery over her persecutor, Lovelace, the roles of victim and victor shift and the novel's formal design undergoes a radical transformation. Within the larger fictional design, patterns of symbolism and narrative structure, manipulated in the first half of the novel by Lovelace as elements of an inner, private fiction, suddenly range out of his control and pass into the hands of Clarissa. From the beginning of the novel, the issue of power is of signal importance. As the Harlowes' misuse of power initiates the events which lead to Clarissa's fall, so Clarissa's lack of it perpetuates her oppression, and Lovelace's compulsive urge to dominate guarantees the tragedy. In its broadest outlines, the plot of Clarissa hinges on an exchange of power between two individuals; within these outlines, modulations and transferrals of power infuse the book with a vital energy. Every character, from James Harlowe to Anna Howe, is involved in the struggle to gain or to conserve power. One of the most striking patterns of movement in Richardson's novel emerges from repeated alternations in focal points of control. Power shifts continually among the novel's directors and directresses (I, 3),1 and its authors of disgraces (I, 113). Recurring images of control (through imprisonment: keys, locks and bolts; by domination: emperors, crowns and royal decrees), of the hunt (Lovelace's savage, predatory nature; Clarissa's entanglement in his snares), and of warfare (swords and knives, physical conquest and surrender) establish a formal substructure which intensifies the novel's thematic movement. Critics of Richardson have regarded the struggle for power as evidence of psychological conflict between two formidable wills,2 of social conflict between a rising middle class and the settled aristocracy,3 and of allegorical conflict between good and evil, God and Satan.4