Writing as Truth

In Volume IV, we begin to see Lovelace’s identity become clearer through his responses to John Belford. Belford (finally) responds to Lovelace’s letters and indicates his resistance to Lovelace’s schemes, and this resistance from an audience shapes Lovelace’s rhetoric in a way that also reflects his identity as malleable and difficult to pin down. At the beginning of Letter 191, Lovelace reiterates the purpose behind his plan, which is to simply test the virtue of his beloved Clarissa:

When I have opened my view to thee so amply as I have done in my former letters; and have told thee, that my principal design is but to bring virtue to a trial, that, if virtue, it need not be afraid of; and that the reward of it will be marriage (that is to say, if, after I have carried my point, I cannot prevail upon her to live with me the life of honour; for that thou knowest is the wish of my heart); I am amazed at the repetition of thy wambling nonsense.

(Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 608).

In this statement, Lovelace indicates his disgust with Belford’s questioning of his intentions with Clarissa; in fact, in his response here, he suggests that his intentions are a fact that cannot be disproven and need no further discussion. To illustrate this point further, he calls Belford’s reference to his true intention “nonsense” because Belford should know “the wish of [Lovelace’s] heart” (Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 608). Lovelace’s commitment to his intention to only put Clarissa’s virtue under rigorous trial certainly indicates something about Lovelace’s identity. After reviewing this selection again, I am not convinced that Lovelace even sees the need for justification for his actions; instead, he simply wants to redirect the blame to Belford for being so “nonsensical.” Similarly, in this response to Belford, Lovelace asks Belford to revisit some of his previous letters and look for all of the instances in which he praises Clarissa: “Art thou able to say half the things in her praise, that I have said, and am continually saying or writing?” (Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 608). What interests me here is the fact that Lovelace assumes that because he wrote praises of Clarissa in these letters that Belford should know that these are true utterances—they are not to be questioned.

Writing in Excess

In addition, writing for Lovelace is also a very compulsive task that enables him to release the emotions he feels as he contrives these elaborate schemes against Clarissa and allows him to fully express his desire to control and essentially own her body and her mind. We have discussed in class on numerous occasions his compulsion to write in excess because his desire to write can seemingly never be satisfied—it is as if writing for him is an addiction.

We could potentially name several causes for this obsession with writing. As James Grantham Turner (1989) suggested, Lovelace cannot survive the paradoxes inherent in being a libertine. For example, Turner (1989) wrote, “He must force Clarissa into sexuality (to prove that ‘every Woman is the same’), and yet sex is empty and disgusting for him…He seeks a profound intimacy with her, and yet cannot imagine sexual love within marriage, since he fears in a partner precisely the ‘vapours’ and volatility that he enjoys in himself” (p. 70). This need to drive Clarissa into a sexual relationship while being disgusted by thoughts of marriage can perhaps only be sorted out through Lovelace’s “writing to the moment,” which, of course, requires writing in excess. In short, it could be argued that Lovelace’s compulsive need to write is primarily because he is so torn between the two roles he must play throughout the novel.

Letter as Fetish

Similarly, Terry Eagleton (1982) made a compelling argument that could shed some light on Lovelace’s need to write when he noted that Lovelace lacks a center; there is an emptiness in Lovelace that readers often detect while trying to characterize him. Furthermore, Eagleton (1982) suggested that Lovelace fetishizes the letter, revealing many possible reasons for this obsession with letters and writing.

It is interesting to consider the letter as a site of mastery for Lovelace. The letter as the object does not seem to be what becomes the fetish, but rather the way the letters represents a site of control, domination, and mastery. The letter becomes fetishized because of what it offers the writer—a place to release the body and subsequently control it (Eagleton, 1982). Mastery of writing (and control, more generally) are important topics that we have addressed throughout our class discussions, and the letter serves as the rhetorical site for this to happen. Lovelace becomes obsessed with writing and with letters because of how it represents his control over Clarissa, and I think that Clarissa does the same in order to attempt to release herself from Lovelace’s (and her family’s) control over her. The letter is the only space that she is able to release her “body,” as Eagleton (1982) suggests, and control it in ways that are not purely physical.