In short, we are here, as at Hampstead, all joy and rapture—all of us except my beloved; in whose sweet face, [her almost fainting reluctance to re-enter these doors not overcome,] reigns a kind of anxious serenity! —But how will even that be changed in a few hours!
Methinks I begin to pity the half-apprehensive beauty!—But avaunt, thou unseasonably-intruding pity! Thou hast more than once already well nigh undone me! And, adieu, reflection! Begone, consideration! and commiseration! I dismiss ye all, for at least a week to come!—But remembered her broken word! Her flight, when my fond soul was meditating mercy to her!—Be remembered her treatment of me in her letter on her escape to Hampstead! Her Hampstead virulence! What is it she ought not to expect from an unchained Beelzebub, and a plotting villain?
Be her preference of the single life to me also remembered!—That she despises me!—That she even refuses to be my WIFE!—A proud Lovelace to be denied a wife!—To be more proudly rejected by a daughter of the Harlowes!—The ladies of my own family, [she thinks them the ladies of my family,] supplicating in vain for her returning favour to their despised kinsman, and taking laws from her still prouder punctilio!
Be the execrations of her vixen friend likewise remembered, poured out upon me from her representations, and thereby made her own execrations!
Be remembered still more particularly the Townsend plot, set on foot between them, and now, in a day or two, ready to break out; and the sordid threatening thrown out against me by that little fury!
Is not this the crisis for which I have been long waiting? Shall Tomlinson, shall these women be engaged; shall so many engines be set at work, at an immense expense, with infinite contrivance; and all to no purpose?
Is not this the hour of her trial—and in her, of the trial of the virtue of her whole sex, so long premeditated, so long threatened?—Whether her frost be frost indeed? Whether her virtue be principle? Whether, if once subdued, she will not be always subdued? And will she not want the crown of her glory, the proof of her till now all-surpassing excellence, if I stop short of the ultimate trial?
Now is the end of purposes long over-awed, often suspended, at hand. And need I go throw the sins of her cursed family into the too-weighty scale?
[Abhorred be force!—be the thoughts of force!—There’s no triumph over the will in force!] This I know I have said.* But would I not have avoided it, if I could? Have I not tried every other method? And have I any other resource left me? Can she resent the last outrage more than she has resented a fainter effort?—And if her resentments run ever so high, cannot I repair by matrimony?—She will not refuse me, I know, Jack: the haughty beauty will not refuse me, when her pride of being corporally inviolate is brought down; when she can tell no tales, but when, (be her resistance what it will,) even her own sex will suspect a yielding in resistance; and when that modesty, which may fill her bosom with resentment, will lock up her speech.
This is the final letter Lovelace writes before the rape–what do you think it tells us about his particular state of mind at the moment, and of his nature in general?
I am, as usual, struck by his need to “pump himself up.” He goes through his “grievances” like a litany, a kind of chant of plagues.
Also his utter inability to imagine that Clarissa will not refuse him once he has vanquished her? And the phrase–so violent, malevolent and just plain creepy: “when her pride of being corporaly inviolate.” This trope of being inviolate– being whole, intact, unbroken–is so much a part of Clarissa's identity.
I completely agree with Debra, he always seems to need to “pump himself up” before he does anything. You can almost see him in a mirror giving himself pep talks. I also like how we are (yet again) reminded of Lovelace's adoration of his own power. The line “But remembered her broken word! Her flight, when my fond soul was meditating mercy to her!” caught my attention because he is so enraged that Clarissa would do such a thing when he was was contemplating “mercy” to her. Not to mention he has to remind himself of several other offenses she committed — rejecting him and treating him “cruelly” when he was going to go easy on her. Then again, most of his letters only serve to remind us that he is essentially a narcissistic sociopath.
I found myself wondering (yet again) whether Lovelace just doesn't understand Clarissa, or if he really just does not understand anything about how relationships work? There were a couple of places like “She must forgive me–And, as I have often said, once forgiven will be for ever forgiven” and “The girl, God bless her! is wild with her own idle apprehensions!–What is she afraid of?” How can he be so obtuse as to write a letter where he explains to Belford that he is RETHINKING THE USE OF FORCE to make Clarissa “his,” and simultaneously be so ignorant of her fears? I just don't know what to make of his character.
In addition to the comments on Lovelace – The scene in this letter where Clarissa falls to her knees and begs for mercy is strikingly similar to the scene in volume one where she begs her mother for help and cannot even speak through her tears. In both cases, she feels completely helpless and must resort to begging (incoherently, I might add) the only person who she believes can help her in this hopeless situation. She is asking for mercy in both cases. In the beginning, she only thought she would be losing her autonomy and identity as a Harlowe/single woman, but she is now truly in danger of losing her virtue and, with that, what Clarissa believes to be her entire identity. I'm not sure if the first scene was just a powerful bit of foreshadowing, but it certainly deepened my emotional response to the scene at hand.
Lots of good stuff here. This “pumping himself up”–do you think he actually NEEDS this to carry out the rape, or does he just enjoy retelling the narrative he is so involved in creating/sharing/relishing? And I like that nice connection Megan makes between the two begging scenes.
Here Lovelace is frustrated that Clarissa refuses him again. He has a capacity to be astounded by Clarissa's predictable rejection, and he experiences it as a fresh injury every time. Not that he acts out of feeling hurt, though. I think all along he's seen Clarissa's rejection as the ultimate challenge to overcome, and I wonder if on some level he's entertained by the whole thing, even when frustrated.
Breaking down her “pride of being corporally inviolate” is another stage in the challenge, then. He's operating from an assumption he has about how humans (or women?) work. Broken down emotionally and physically, people will do whatever you want them to do. What evidence does he have, though, that Clarissa would willingly marry him after he rapes her? Throughout the novel he seems to jump from strategy to strategy, but he also isn't random. I think he has a repertoire of strategies he knows he's willing to try, and early in the novel he was very clear about his limits. He said getting her consent is preferred, but he's willing to rape her if she rejects him. So when she rejects him again after he rapes her, what could be the next step in his plan?
Actually, I think he does need the “pumping up,” because I don't think he really wants to have sex with Clarissa. I think he only wants to enact the ultimate triumph. And to do that, he has to violate her. But the sexual act itself seems almost negligible to him; he offers no details, and pretty much puts it aside once it's done. (He is amazed Clarissa can't do the same.) And once the rape is achieved, he feels flat and like a fool.
It looks like Debra and Jessica agree–the actual (and how actual it is) rape is sexual in nature, as any intercourse is, but also “negligible” as a sexual act for Lovelace (and as he wishes it to be for Clarissa). He does jump “from strategy to strategy”–the problem being that the physical realities involved aren't just game-playing strategies. A body is violated. A person is violated. And there's no taking it back, however “witty” anyone's language is about the construction of it all.
I don't think her violation is negligible. But I think Lovelace finds it negligible, a game. Lovelace tries to gloss over the real physical action of rape, but Richardson doesn't let us forget. Clarissa never turns away from what has happened to her, and she forces us to face it as well.
I was thinking along these lines quite a bit and, at some point, scribbled in the margins about how the act of rape seems destructive for them both but in different degrees: it utterly destroys Clarissa and her sense of herself as inviolate, while really offering Lovelace none of the triumph for which he planned or hoped. Even after all of this pumping up–Volumes of it–he is left wondering what it was all for, once he sees that she has not changed her physical response to him, which is still to flee.
Very true–and just the right phrase: “Clarissa never turns away from what has happened to her.” And, as noted, we are therefore never allowed to turn away from it either.
Lovelace is definitely “pumping himself up” here, but I think more is happening. Or rather, I'd like to look at how he pumps himself up. Part of what motivates him is pride and anger and revenge upon Clarissa for refusing (and so humiliating) him. But that same pride is working in another direction as well. He keeps pointing out the “many engines set at work” to make this moment happen. I keep thinking of the exhortations of the women in the house who can't understand why he hasn't done it already.It's like he began this thing, and then employed (literally and figuratively) his friends and many others to make it happen, and now it's too big for him to stop. It's like he's convincing himself that the whole thing is out of his hands, and I wonder what that says about his pride. It seems like a large part of what motivates him here is the idea of losing face with everyone he's involved in this whole affair.