I shall now be convinced that there is something in dreams. The ceiling opening is the reconciliation in view. The bright form, lifting her up through it to another ceiling stuck round with golden Cherubims and Seraphims, indicates the charming little boys and girls that will be the fruits of this happy reconciliation. The welcomes, thrice repeated, are those of her family, now no more to be deemed implacable. Yet are they a family too, that my soul cannot mingle with.
But then what is my tumbling over and over, through the floor, into a frightful hole (descending as she ascends)? Ho! only this; it alludes to my disrelish to matrimony: which is a bottomless pit, a gulf, and I know not what. And I suppose, had I not awoke (in such a plaguy fright) I had been soused into some river at the bottom of the hole, and then been carried (mundified or purified from my past iniquities) by the same bright form (waiting for me upon the mossy banks) to my beloved girl; and we should have gone on, cherubiming of it, and carolling, to the end of the chapter.
As to Morden’s flashing through the window, and crying, Die, Lovelace, and be damned, if thou wilt not repair my cousin’s wrongs! That is only that he would have sent me a challenge had I not been disposed to do the lady justice.
All I dislike is this part of the dream: for, even in a dream, I would not be thought to be threatened into any measure, though I liked it ever so well.
And so much for my prophetic dream.
Lovelace frequently leaps toward opposite ends of a pole. The dream means I'm going to be killed; the dream means Clarissa and I will be together. How do all you read his re-interpretation?
I read this letter as representative of Lovelace being desperate and possibly trying to avoid the truth of what his dream truly means. Lovelace is self-absorbed and full of himself so he wouldn't want to accept a dream in which he meets his end rather he would want to interpret the dream as one that reinforces his plans and desires. I also feel that this letter is also possibly a reaction to the Enlightenment on the part of Richardson. Rather than seeing the religious implications, Clarissa going to Heaven and Lovelace to Hell, he instead rationalizes the dream. Lovelace believes his descent “alludes to [his] disrelish to matrimony” rather than he being punished for anything. In short, I read his re-interpretation as a Lovelace thing to do — making it turn around to benefit rather than warn or berate him.
Not surprising that our favorite egotistical rake would re-interpret the dream toward his own best outcome. As Kendra notes, he's just a bit self-absorbed. But when I think about his later reactions, as the possibility of Clarissa's actually dying dawns on him, I can also see this reinterpretation as a desperate grasping at straws, an interpretation prompted by real fears: “Surely it can't mean what it most obviously means! Surely there's a way in which all this awfulness can turn out well! Surely I haven't actually killed the poor girl!” “Poor man” indeed, as Clarissa calls him.
I think the “real fears” Tony mentioned are definitely here, as well as his own rationalizations, as Kendra notes. It seems striking to me how often Lovelace swings on this pendulum from one binary to the next and how much this is reflective of his age, our age, any age. It's good/evil, angel/devil, heaven/hell, still as the starting point for any rationalization (even including faith/doubt or faith/rationalization). How stuck he is in these binaries–and how much more so other characters are also ruled by these binaries as well, which we see in their responses to Clarissa both before and after her death.
It is important to remember that Lovelace was fooled (as were many readers) by Clarissa's “allegorical” letter, and he is now trying to square what he knows with what she appears to offer.
The dream is also striking (as are all the other dreams in the novel) in how they are, as Freud suggested, “overdetermined.” caused by multiple aspects of an individual's life. They are, by nature, open to interpretation. And the interpretive stance really influences what the dream seems to mean.
I think one might also argue that the dream (with its openness to multiple interpretations) is, itself, a kind of allegory of the text itself. So often we see different people interpreting the same events in very different ways. Just as we the readers also interpret the text differently. And this is not just a modern insight; the readings for today show how important the reader was for Richardson in the construction of mean
I'd like to second what Debra says here, but I'd add that I think Lovelace is particularly gifted at reading things (letters, situations, threats of bodily harm) in whatever way suits him best at a particular time. I read the events of his visit to the glove shop in L. 416 aghast at how awfully he was behaving — as I'm sure were most of the people in the scene, but he is able to read the day as a triumph, convinced that everyone in the shop was having a grand time. That he is free to depart so sharply from what many characters would share as a working definition of “reality” when he likes with little consequence is a marker of the incredible privilege he enjoys as a man and as a member of the aristocracy.