The Tragedy of Clarissa

 

A meta-dramatic moment in Richardson's Clarissa (Vol IV, Letter LII - Mr. Belford to Robert Lovelace, Esq.)

What a fine subject for tragedy would be the injuries of this lady, and her behaviour under them, both with regard to her implacable friends, and to her persecutor, make? With a grand objection as to the moral, nevertheless; for here virtue is punished! 

[Note 1: Mr. Belford's objection, that virtue ought not to suffer in a  tragedy, is not well considered; Monimia in The Orphan, Belvidera in Venice Preserved, Athenais in Theodosius, Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear, Desdemona in Othello, Hamlet (to name no more), are instances that a tragdy could hardly be justly called a tragedy, if virtue did not temporarily suffer, and vice for a while triumph. But he recovers himself in the same paragraph, and leads us to look up to the FUTURE for the reward of virtue, and for the punishment of guilt, and observes not amiss when he says; He knows not but that the virgue of such a woman as Clarissay is rewarded in missing such a man as Lovelace.] 

Except indeed wee look forward to the rewards of HEREAFTER, which, morally, she must be sure of, or who can? Yet, after all, I knownot, so sad a fellow art thou, and so vile a husband mightest thou have made, whether her virtue is not rewarded in missing thee: for things the most grievous to human nature, when they happen, as this charming creature once observed, are often the happiest for us in the event.

I have frequently thought, in my attendance on this lady, that if Belton's admired author, Nic Rowe, had had such a character before him, he would have drawn another sor of a penitent than he has done, or given his play, which he calls The Fair Penitent, a fitter title. Miss Harlowe is a penitent indeed! I think, if I am not guilty of a contradiction in terms; a penitent without a fault; her parents' conduct towards her from the first considered.

The whole story of the other is a pack of damned stuff. Lothario, 'tis true, seems such another wicked, ungenerous varlet as thou knowest who: the author knew how to draw a rake; but not to paint a penitent. Calista is a desiring luscious wench, and her penitence is nothing els but rage, insolence, and scorn. Her passions are all storm and tumult; nothing of the finer passions of the sex, which, if naturally drawn, will distinguish themselves from the masculine passions by a softness that will even shine through rage and despair. Her character is made up of deceit and disguise. She has no virtue; is all pride; and her devil is as much within her as without her.

How then can the fall of such a one create a proper distress, when all the circumstances of it are considered? For does she not brazen out her crime even after detection? Knowing her own guilt, she calls for Altamont's vengeance on his best friend, as if he had traduced her; yields to marry Altamont, though criminal with another; and actually beds that whining puppy, when she had given up herself body and soul to Lothario; who, nevertheless, refused to marry her. 

Her penitence, when begun, she justly styles the frenzy of her soul; and, as I said, after having, as long as she could, most audaciously brazened out her crime, and done all the mischief she could do (occasioning the death of Lothario, of her father, and others), she stabs herself.

And can this be an act of penitence?

But, indeed, outr poets hardly know how to create a distress without horror, murder, and suicide; and must shock your soul to bring tears from your eyes. 

Altamont, indeed, who is an amorous blockhead, a credulous cuckold, and though painted as a brave fellow and a soldier) a mere Tom Essence, and a quarreller with his best friend, dies like a fool (as we are led to suppose at the conclusion of the play) without either sword or pop-gun, of mere grief and nonsense, for one of the vilest of her sex: but the fair penitent, as she is called, perishes by her own had; and having no title by her past crimes to laudable pity, forfeits all claim to true penitence, and, in all probability, to future mercy. 

But here is Miss CLARISSA HARLOWE, a virtuous, noble, wise, and pious young lady; who being ill-used by her friends, and unhappily ensnared by a vile libertine, whom she believes to be a man of honour, is in a manner forced to throw herself upon his protection. And he, in order to obtain her confidence, never scruples the deepest and most solemn protestations of honour. 

After a series of plots and contrivances, all baffled by her virtue and vigilance, he basely has recourse to the vilest of arts, and, to rob hr of her honour, is forced first to rob her of her senses.

Unable to bring her, notwithstanding, to his ungenerous views of cohabitation, she overawes him in the very entrance of a fresh act of premediatated guilt, in presence of the most abandoned of women assembled to assist his devilish purpose; triumphs over them all by virtue only of her innocence; and escapes from the vile hands he had put her into.

She nobly, not franteically, resents: refuses to see or to marry the wretch; who, repending the usage of so divine a creature, would fain move her to forgive his baseness and make him her husband: and this though persecuted by all her friends, and abandoned to the deepest distress, being obliged, from ample fortunes, to make way with her apparel for subsistence, surrounded also by stranger; and forced (in want of others) to make a friend of the friend of her seducer.  

Though longing for death, and making all proper preparations for it, convinced that grief and ill-usage have broken her noble heart, she abhors the impious thought of shortening her alloted period; and, as much a stranger to revenge as despair, is able to forgive the author of her ruin; wishes his repentance, and that she may be the las victim to his barbarous perfidy; and is solicitous for nothing so much in this life as to prevent vindictive mischief to and from the man who has used her so basely. 

This is penitence! This is piety! and hence a distress naturally arises that must worthily affect every heart.