In Letter 191, Lovelace writes to Belford that his “principal design is but to bring virtue to a trial, that, if virtue, it need not be afraid of,” indicating that he will again test Clarissa’s virtue—ostensibly for the sake of testing her virtue (Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 608). This little snippet stuck with me because I can’t decide whether or not Lovelace believes it himself.

Certainly, he’s performing “Lovelace the rake” for Belford but, just as certainly, he’s aware that he desires Clarissa. Even he can’t possibly believe that her success in rebuffing his advances will make him happy. But here’s where it gets weird—I’m not sure that, on some level, he doesn’t believe himself when he’s writing to Belford. We have had a great deal of discussion about Lovelace’s ability to pick and choose which “Lovelace” is the most advantageous for him to perform in any given situation. I wonder if, especially in moments like this, he isn’t performing a particular Lovelace for himself. With all those identities to choose from, things have to get confusing every once in a while. I’m quite sure that at certain points in the novel, not even Lovelace knows anything about Lovelace except that he is a master of rhetoric.

In this way, he confirms some of Plato’s deepest fears about rhetoric in the hands of the sophists. Sophistic rhetoric, for Plato, is dangerous, just as one might argue Lovelace is dangerous; there isn’t anything underneath. The fear is that, lacking a system of ethics, rhetoricians wield a powerfully deceptive tool (Lovelace in a nutshell—am I wrong?). This tool is so powerful that it might allow a rhetorician a frightening degree of control over otherwise perfectly independent, rational, capable citizens. Sound familiar? There’s a way here, I think, that Lovelace comes to represent rhetoric itself, and represent it in a not-quite-flattering light.

If, as I suggested in my post about Clarissa, narrative and writing and authority in the novel comes in the form of authorship of written words, whoever is the best writer (or rhetor) has the most power. And, worryingly, the only identity that Lovelace espouses with any stability throughout is that of an accomplished rhetor.