Classical Myth in
Richardson's Clarissa:
Ovid Revised
Douglas Murray
I
nterpreters have long accorded mythic status to the events recounted
in Richardson's novel Clarissa. They have assumed-and rightly, I
think-that the text contains myths, those culturally privileged images
of experience and scripts for behaviour.1 The first critic to interpret
Clarissa's story as myth is, perhaps not surprisingly, that accomplished
reader Robert Lovelace, who in his letters to Belford imagines himself recapitulating two timeless patterns. He announces himself, first,
as the archetypal king and conqueror. He compares himself as conqueror to Hannibal (IV, 357; 11, 494) and later calls himself "Robert
the Great" (V, 64; 111, 2Q2 Secondly, he presents himself as the archetypal tempter, a modern Satan to Clarissa's Eve? Hence his famous allusion
1 For this definition of myth, I am indebted to Fmma Zeitlin, 'Tonfigurations of Rape in Greek
Myth." in Rope, ed. Sylvana Tomaselli and Roy Porter (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986). pp. 122-24.
2 In the absence of a good modem text of Clorissa. I have adopted a double citation system
modelled after that used in Margaret Anne Doody's and Peter Sabor's Samuel Richardson:
Tercmtemty Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Since I do not have m e s s
to the textually superior third London edition. I cite first the eight-volume London edition of
1785. which retains Richardson's capitalization and italicization; then, in italics, I cite the fourvolume Everyman edition (London: Dent, 1962). For the textual history of Clorisra, see Florian
Stuber. "On Original and Final Intentions, or Can There Be an Authoritative Clorissa?" TEXTr
Trans(1cti0~of the Societyfor Textwl Schohrship 2 (1985). 229-44, and Margaret Anne Doody
and Florian SNber. "Clarisso Censored," Modern Language Studies 18 (1988). 74-88.
3 John Carroll and lwelyn Harris discuss Lovelace's desire to interpret himself as the tyrant of
legend (Carroll. "Lovelace as Tragic Hero." University of Toronto Quarterly 42 U9721. 1819; Carroll. "Richardson at Work: Revisions. Allusions, and Quotations in Clnrisso," in Srudies
in the Eighteenth C e m l y 2, ed. R.F. Brissenden ITamnto: University of Toronto F'ress, 19731,
E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION, Volume 3, Number 2, January 1991
114 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y F I C T I O N
to Milton's Satan when he unmasks himself in Clarissa's Hampstead
retreat:
I started up in my own form divine,
Touch'd by the beam of her celestial eye,
More potent than Ithuriel's spear! (V,83; 111, 41)
Perhaps Richardson intended Lovelace's transformation of himself into
mythic figures to spur readers to trace other legends as well. John Carroll and Jocelyn Harris find in Lovelace a Don Juan figurc4 Gillian Beer
has read the novel as a reworking in prose of Milton's myth of chastity,
Comus.5 Margaret Anne Doody sees Clarissa as an Arachne transmuted
into Pallas Athena.6 To account for the power and appeal of the story,
other readers have argued that the novel encapsulates and transmits a
"mythic" version of the social and economic history of Richardson's
era. According to Dorothy Van Ghent, for example, Richardson's narrative transcribes the preoccupations and values of his class and century
in a story which is "larger than life"' and thus dramatizes "powers
that are assumed to have universal authority" (p. 53). Leslie Fiedler
also grants the novel a "mythic resonance" and calls it "a sacred book
Such
and a treasure house of symbols dear to the rising bourge~sie."~
readers generally present the novelist merely as a transmitter of his
65-66: Harris. S a w e l Richardson [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19871, pp. 7682). Both Carroll and Harris also consider Lovelace as Saran ( C m l l . "Lovelace as Tragic
Hero," pp. 20-21, "Richardson at Work." pp. 66-67: Hanis, pp. 66-67).
4 C m l l . "Lovelace as Tragic Hem." 24: Harris. "Richardson: Original or Learned Genius," in
Same1 Richardson: Tercentenary Essoys. pp. 198-200: and Harris. Sowel Richordron, pp. 6869.
5 Beer, "Richardson, Milton and the Smtus of Evil." Review ofEnglish Studies n.s. 19 (19681,
262-61.
7 Van Ghent, The English Novel: Form and Function (New York: Rinehm. 1953). p. 56. In the
early 1950s Van Ghent identified four mythic struggles in Clotisso, svuggles between good and
evil, between classes, between the young and old in the nuclear family, and between love and
death (pp. 53-63).
8 Love and DcoIh in the American Novel, revised edition (New York: Stein and Day. 1966), pp. 7273. Fiedler also argued that the myth of the novel concerned the conflict of the male and female
principles. Fiedler identifies the male with the Devil, Ule aristocrat, and the Id: the female
he identifies with the Saviour, the bourgeoisie, and the Super Ego (pp. 62-74). See also Ian
Danaldson's The Ropes of Lucretia: Myth nnd Its Transformation (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1982). Donaldson tends to deny a larger significance to the novel: it lacks any ideological
dimension. "concentrating rather upon the inhicacies of family life and individual psychology"
(p. 75).
C L A R I S S A : O V I D R E V I S E D 115
culture's categories, preoccupations, and orthodoxies. I wish to suggest
that we should see Richardson not as a transcriber but rather as an
adapter--even a questioner--of myth. In Clarissa Richardson first
invokes and then radically reworks classical myths of a god raping a
mortal.
Gone are the days when readers saw Richardson as an unlearned
genius, as an author without sufficient knowledge of the classics to
join modem experience to ancient stories. Though in all probability his
schooling ended in his tenth year, and he had less Latin and Greek
than Shake~peare,~
he developed a high degree of cultural literacy from
reading, printing, theatre-going, and conversation. Rints, caricatures, and
book illustrations provided him with traditional iconographic images.'O
Clarissa itself contains ample evidence of Richardson's knowledge of
classical mythology, mostly in the letters of Lovelace, who compares
himself to a formidable list of Olympians-to Mercury (IV, 3; 11, 238).
to Hercules (V, 175; 111, 110). to Vulcan (IV, 271; 11, 432). and to
Jupiter the rapist (I, 237; I, 17.5).Lovelace compares Clarissa to four famous violated misused women: to Semele (111, 163; 11, 98). scorched to
a "cinder" by a vision of Jupiter in his glory; to Lucretia, the legendary
Roman woman raped by Tarquin (V, 323; 111, 220); to Dido (VII, 4445; IV, 30-31); and to the violated "sweet Philomela" (VI, 225; 111, 409).
Clarissa once likens Lovelace to "a perfect Roteus" (111, 140, 11, 82).
Richardson makes the Reverend Mr Brand, in Mrs Norton's words, capable of "throwing about, to a Christian and Country audience, scraps
of Latin and Greek from the Pagan Classics; and not always brought in
with great propriety neither" (VII, 92; IV, 66). Richardson respected the
classics enough to give his heroine a knowledge of them, at least in translation: in a personal letter not published in Clarissa, Richardson wrote
of her education "So early as from her Cradle, by means of her excellent Norton, a woman of Reading and fine Observation, whose chief
Attention was to the Beauties of the Iliad."" The frequency of such allu9 T.C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel. Swrucl Richardson: A Biogmphy (Oxford: Clarrndon
Ress, 1971). pp. 9-10.
10 Richardsan seems to have had an amazing ability to scizc upon information and make it his
own. Margaret Anne Doody points out that "Richardson's knowledge of M was probably very
limited, but a consideration of some of the images used in Clnrisso would indicate that what
experience he had of the visual aRs made a deep impression upon him." See A Nnruml Parsion:
A Study of the Nowls of Some1 Richardson (Oxford: Clarendon Ress. 1974). p. 219.
I 1 Selecrcd Letters of Samuel Richardson, ed. John Carroll (Oxford: Clarendon Ress, 1%4), p.
142.
116 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
sions to Ancient and Modem authors shows that they are not ornamental
overlay but rather, in Jocelyn Hams's words, "organic, connected and
contr~lled."~~
The novelist must have known the humanist assumption that ancient
myths convey eternally relevant narratives and themes. Accordingly,
when in Pamela and Clarissa he sought to create two myths valid for
his own time, he conformed his narratives to mythological precedents. It
is arguable that, in Pamela, the myth of Psyche, first wooed by Cupid
and then elevated to godhead, informs the plot; in both myth and novel
the woman represents the best that human nature can achieve, the potentialities of the soul, and her wooer is first a tormenter and then a loving
spouse. And when in Clarissa Richardson represented sexual struggles
between the powerful and powerless, he borrowed and adapted characters, situations, and meaning from the culturally approved treatments of
the theme: the numerous Greek and Roman accounts of a god raping, or
attempting to rape, a mortal.11
Lovelace becomes the contemporary analogue for the Zeus-rapist. His
money, social status, and especially his position within the patriarchy
provide him with almost godlike power. Into his role as the jeering and
assured Zeus he subsumes certain qualities and prerogatives of the censorious Jehovah of the Old Testament: he claims the right to "punish
[servants] seasonably and properly" (VII, 223; IV, 162); he uses the
word '>rovidences" (V, 160; 111, 98) for his strategems against Clarissa;
like a jealous god, he keeps a list, in his "vellum-book" (V, 180; 111,
113), of all the sins against his dignity which he will avenge; and, further appropriating the power of deity, he offers to "forgive" Clarissa
when she has escaped from Mrs Sinclair's to Hampstead (V, 84; III, 42).
While Lovelace makes himself into a Zeus with considerable Old Testament colouring, Clarissa-the lovely commoner and the female-is given
the role of the pursued and violated; she is Daphne, Leda, 10, Leto, Europa, Persephone, Syrinx, Danae, Creusa, and Ganymede. Richardson the
publisher provided his readers with a visual clue to the novel's dominant myth: the printer's ornament which ends volume five of the third
12 "Richardson: Original or Learned Genius," pp. 188-89.
13 In this account of classical myth I am of course simplifying ancient religion. I refer only to
the ~atriarchalizedstories mediated to Richardson and his centurv bv, such ooets as Ovid. The
Olympian myths were superimposed upon an earlier, matriarchal mythology. See Jane Ellen
Harrison. Proleg6meno to the Study of Greek Relixion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1903). pp. 260-322.
.
C L A R I S S A : O V l D R E V I S E D 117
edition, the volume containing Lovelace's physical triumph, depicts the
rape of Europa."
A review of these classical myths demonstrates their narrative similarity to Clarissa. Most stories recounting the loves of gods for mortals
contain violent seizures: Persephone kidnapped to the underworld, for example, or Ganymede carried by eagle talons from his home in Troy. In
the story of Creusa, Apollo seizes the girl while she is gathering crocuses and carries her off to rape her in a dark cave. Many rape myths
involve trickery and disguises, such as the shower of gold in which Zeus
descends to Danae and the god's disguise as Amphitryon when he seduces Amphitryon's wife Alcmena. Europa is tricked onto the back of a
bull which then runs for open water. In Clarissa, the tricks of the Zeuslike Lovelace are innumerable. As he writes to Belford, "Ovid was not a
greater master of metamorphoses than thy friend (111, 50; 11, 13). To be
near Harlowe Place he disguises himself as an "inmate" of a "wretched
alehouse" (I, 203; 1, 149); by not acknowledging Clarissa's letters, he
tricks the heroine into the fatal meeting outside the garden door; he uses
Joseph Leman to frighten her into his coach; he tricks her into choosing to live at Mrs Sinclair's. At Clarissa's refuge on Hampstead Heath,
Lovelace first disguises himself as aged and infirm, then strips away his
disguise, a god at last revealed in his irresistible power (V, 83; 111, 41).
After the violation of Clarissa, similarities between the novel and its
mythological heritage intensify. In the classical myths deities often offer
what they-but not always their victims--consider adequate consolations. Ganymede becomes the cup-bearer of the gods, living on Olympus
to be sure, but remaining in perpetual servitude. Hades offers Persephone
a yearly six months of freedom in the open air, but she must spend the
other six months underground, with the dubious distinction of reigning
as Queen of the dark underworld. In one of the most amazing rape narratives, Zeus's love causes incredible suffering to that woman turned into
a heifer, 10. She must wander, in the form of a cow, from Greece, to
the Caucasus, and at last to the hanks of the Nile, all the while pursued by a gadfly sent from Hera. Her consolation? The ford between
14 For identification of the Ewopa printer's ornament, see William Sale's Samuel Richardson:
Master Primer (Ithaca: Cornell University Ress, 1950). p. 307; Carroll, "Richardson at Work."
p. 54: and Carmll. "Lovelace as Tragic Hero," p. 19. The ornament is repmduced on p. 112
at fhe beginning of this d c l e . According to William Sale. this ornament was first used in the
third edition of C l d s s o (pp. 245. 307). no doubt at the suggestion of its author-printer. After
studying early editions of Clorissa, John Carroll writes. "Nothing was too minute to escape
[Richardson's] attention-not even the typography" ("Richardson at Work," p. 54).
118 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y F I C T I O N
Greece and Turkey-which, of course, she must swim-will one fine
day be called the Bosphoms (Ford of the Cow) in her memory; her human form will be restored once she reaches Egypt-several thousand
miles, of course, from Greece; and she will give birth to a son who himself will be an ancestor of the greatest of heroes, Hercules. Only someone
who sees with Zeus's eyes could possibly consider this an adequate consolation for 10's years and miles of suffering and humiliation. In another
amazing story, Creusa, pregnant after being seized by Apollo, dares not
tell anyone of her condition; she gives birth alone in the same cave in
which she was raped. Unknown to her, Apollo transports the child, a
son, to his temple in Delphi, leaving the mother to conclude sorrowfully that her offspring has been eaten by a predator. Years later, now
married and seemingly barren, Creusa and her husband travel to Delphi, where certain artifacts prove to her that Ion, a beautiful boy sewing
in the temple there, is her lost child. But Creusa must suffer the indignity of publicly hearing the wily god announce to her husband that
the lovely boy is and will be his-the husband's. The deity makes no
mention of Creusa's role in the birth.
Lovelace the god is similarly arrogant in the consolation he offers to
Clarissa, primarily in the form of a belated marriage. He is genuinely
surprised when she finds such a condition inadequate recompense for his
many deceptions and the rape conducted before the eyes of Mrs Sinclair
and her girls. Two days after the rape Lovelace blithely assumes that
he can "make [Clarissa] happy" (V, 296; 111, 200). Even after forcing a
meeting with the violated girl, he wonders, "what is that injury which a
Church-Rite will not at any time repair? Is not the Catastrophe of every
Story that ends in Wedlock accounted happy ... ?" (VI, 52; 111, 281).
The classical myths, like some modem courts of law, often attempt to
censure the violated. In the traditional story of Daphne, the girl tempts
Apollo by being so active and beautiful; as the god mentions, her hunting
garb reveals her knees and arms, and her unladylike fondness for physical exercise allows her hair to fly in seductive disarray. Lovelace never
seriously blames Clarissa for the rape, though he often enough calls her
his "charmer," hinting that his violence is only a response to her allure. The Harlowes more loudly and memorably condemn the victim for
her victimization, and Clarissa does not dare bring Lovelace to court,
for she anticipates further blame, in her words, "a ready retort from every mouth, that I ought not to have thrown myself into the power of such
a man, and that I ought to take for my pains what had befallen me" (VII,
253; IV, 184-5).
CLARISSA: O V l D R E V I S E D 119
The ancient stories often silence or limit the discourse of the victimized.15 Daphne is transformed into a laurel and Syrinx into reeds; both are
thus rendered incapable of communicating their stories or their distress.
Control of discourse continues even after metamorphosis: Daphne, who
longs for the power to run free in the forest and for the right to imitate
Diana-just as Clarissa longs for an independent life in her dairy house
(I, 43; I, 25)-prays to her father as she is being pursued by Apollo.
She is pleased to be transformed into the laurel: when she hears the god
predict the use to which she will forever be put, Ovid writes that "The
laurel waved her new-made branches, and seemed to move her headlike top in full consent" ("factis mod0 ramis / adnuit utque caput visa est
agitasse cacumen" [I, 566-67]).16 This metamorphosis does not end her
indignity: the plant is adopted by Apollo as his own symbol, from his
point of view an honour, from hers yet another rape-though the god, in
Ovid's account of the story, presumptuously interprets the plant's silence
as acquiescence.
Perhaps the most horrifying manipulation of discourse is contained in
the story of Syrinx, who flees from the pursuing Pan and then prays to
her father, a river god, for deliverance. She is transformed into a tuft
of reeds, a change preferable to molestation. But she is not to be left
alone; Pan continues his victimization; he transforms her into shepherd's
pipes to become forever his mouthpiece. Another Ovidian metamorphosis
pertinent here--even though the rapist is, for once, a mortal rather than
a god-is the story of Tereus's rape of Philomel, in which the criminal
so desires the victim's silence that he removes her tongue. Lovelace is
quite aware that here his role recapitulates this classical rapist's, for he
calls Clarissa his "sweet Philomela" (VI, 225; Ill, 409). He symbolically
removes Clarissa's tongue by intercepting (IV, 176-88; 11, 364-72 and
V, 160-61; III, 99). interrupting (V, 30-46; 111, 1-12), rewriting, and
forging Clarissa's-and Anna Howe's+orrespondence (V, 46-47; 111,
13-14 and V, 154-60; 111, %-98 and V, 163; 111, 100). Clarissa cannot
even communicate her distress. Elsewhere, he presumes to interpret her
silence. When, at Mrs Moore's in Hampstead Heath, he has surprised her
into a faint, he speaks for her: 'This Lady is my Wife," he announces
(V, 85; 111, 42). And when, after the rape, he meets the silent Clarissa
15 My comments on the silencing of Clarissa have been much influenced by Terry Castle's
Chrism's Ciphers: Meaning and Dlrruprion in Richnrdson's "Clorissa" (ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982). pp. 57-80.
16 The Metamorphoses. ed. and trans. Frank lustus Miller (London: William Heinemann, 1928). 1,
42-43.
120 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
at Mrs Sinclair's, he, like Pan before the reeds and Apollo before the
laurel, interprets her silence as acquiescence: "She answered me not, but
with tears and sighs," he writes to Belford. "I imputed her silence to
the modesty of her Sex. The dear creature (thought I) solemnly as she
began with me, is ruminating, in a sweet suspence, how to put into fit
words the gentle purposes of her condescending heart" (VI, 34; 111,267).
In stifling Clarissa's attempts to tell her story, the patriarch Lovelace is
only continuing the practice of the Harlowes, who had never fully given
Clarissa a voice: they had refused to believe that a refusal of Solmes did
not mean desire for Lovelace, and they had at last attempted to silence
her by forbidding correspondence and confiscating paper and pen.
Other figures in Clarissa suggest analogues to classical myth. Clarissa's
elder sister Arabella becomes the contemporary Hera, someone who, as a
woman, should take Clarissa's side, hut who instead cooperates with the
aggressive patriarchal power structure." In myth, it is Hera who sends
the gadfly to torment 10 and who fills Semele with the desire to see
Zeus in all his glory, a wish which brings fiery death to the mortal girl
and near-death to her unborn son Dionysus. In the novel, Arabella is the
unsisterly tormenter. Clarissa directly associates her sister with the masculine power structure. As she explains to her cousin Dolly, "my Sister,
too, is as hard-hearted as any of them. But this may be no exception neither: For she has been thought to be masculine in her air, and her spirit.
She has then perhaps, a soul of the other Sex in a body of ours" (II, 20; 1,
386-87).18And, as with Hera, it is jealousy which gives Arabella her aggressive masculinity, Arabella having first been courted, then abandoned,
by Lovelace.
The many specific allusions and frequent structural similarities to classical narratives of rape argue the influence of those narratives on Clarissa.
Richardson's novel recapitulates narratives and encapsulates characters
from Western culture's most privileged repository of rape narratives. But
the Modem Richardson could not simply rewrite the Ancients. His Christianity would not allow him to be uncritical of the pagan past. In 1753
he wrote to Patrick Delany:
17 M n Howe probably serves a similar purpose. Anna Howe is a more ambiguous figure. At times
she expresses considerable dissatisfaction with the patriarchal ways of the world: see I, 131; 1,
178, where she writes of marriage as "a state of bondage, or vile subordination: To be courted as
Princesses for a few weeks, in order to be treated as Slaves for the rest of our lives." Elsewhere.
like Pope's CIaIissa in Ellen Pollak's interpretation of The Rape of the Lock, she advises Clarissa
to make the best of a bad deal: see n, 7-8: 111. 42-3 and N.47; VII. 66. For Pollak on Pope's
poem. see The Poetics of S a u l Myth (Chicago: Univenity of Chicago Press, 1985). pp. 77-107.
18 For other references to Arabella's masculinity, see also 1, 139-40; 1, 189-90 and IV, 110; VII,
153.
C L A R I S S A : O V l D R E V I S E D 121
I always thought, that the Cause of the Christian Religion was sometimes far
from being sh.engthened by the implicit Regard that is paid to the Pagan Ancients, however, in the main, admirable. Men have been disciplined into a
Reverence for them in their Youth; and have I not heard Homer and Virgil
preferred to the Bible, and all the glorious Things contained in it?I9
Richardson continues the ktter by quoting with approval Haniet Byron, the heroine of Sir Charles Grandison, who argues that the Modems
should not he considered as "pygmies" to the Ancient "giants";the Modems, she claims, have made "important discoveries in many branches of
science" and have received "a Revelation from Heaven, to which the
Religion of the Pagans was foolishness."2Q
Elsewhere, Richardson blames the epic tradition for sanctifying mankind's aggression and militarism. Of "the fierce, fighting Iliad," he wrote
to Lady Bradshaigh in 1749:
Scholars, judicious scholars, dared they to speak out, against a prejudice of
thousands of years in its favour, I am persuaded would find it possible for
Homer to nod, at least. I am afraid this poem, noble as it mly is, has done
infinite mischief for a series of ages; since to it, and its copy the Eneid, is
owing, in a great measure, the savage spirit that has actuated, from the earliest
ages to this time, the fighting fellows, that, worse than lions or tigers, have
ravaged the earth, and made it a field of blood.21
And in a letter of 1750 he complains to Susanna Highmore (4 June 1750)
of the violence of ancient Romans: "abominable fellows, thieves, robbers,
plunderers." "Yet," he continues with dismay, "from these banditti are our
university-men, and dramatic-writers, to borrow their heroes" (p. 161).z2
Accordingly, we should not be surprised when Richardson modifies the
mythological tradition as he found it. The old archetypal images maintain
aggressive gods in implacable control and show females meekly acquiescing in male triumph. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, as we have seen,
19 Letters, pp. MO-61.
20 Sir Charles Grandison, ed. Jocelyn Harris.3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Ress, 1986). 1,
54.
21 Leners. p. 134.
22 Even though Donaldson's argument in 7 % Ropes
~
of Lucretia (see n. 8 above) tends to deny
mythic status ta Chrissa, he suggests that Richardson develops a contrast between the Roman
and the Christian: the Roman Lucme can commit suicide, the Christian Clarissa cannot. My
point he-that
Richardson is acutely aware of the incompatiblity of the Christian and classical
uaditions--parallels Donaldson's.
122 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
Daphne blithely accepts her fate as the eternal material for the laurel wreaths which honour Apollo, her destroyer. Richardson, however,
discredits such feminine meekness and dispossesses such god-rapists:
Lovelace becomes a social outcast and finally dies at the hand of Colonel
Morden; the Zeus-figure is thus forever excluded from the earthly Olympus of the landed aristocracy and-if his dreams are reliable-from the
Christian Olympus of Heaven. And Richardson, while giving fairly all
points of view, leaves most readers-and intended to leave all readersfirmly on the side of Clarissa, the victim. Through having her tell her
own story so movingly, the author enlarges and insists upon the point
of view of the oppressed. Clarissa, like Ovid's Arachne, tells the truth
as she sees it: Arachne, in her weaving contest with Pallas Athena, depicts figures familiar to readers of this essay-Leda and Europa-as
well as other mortal women mistreated by the gods, notably Medusa
(Ovid I, 296-99). But unlike the Ovidian Arachne, Clarissa does not receive her author's rebukcZ3In Ovid, Athena arranges her own victory
in the weaving contest and turns the presumptuous human into a spider, but in Clarissa the undaunted heroine embodies and inspires the
calm wisdom of Athena herself.24
A glance at two other eighteenth-century reworkings of rape narratives--one by Pope, another by Dryden-elucidates the revolutionary
nature of Richardson's myth. Like Clarissa, Pope's Rape of the Lock
uses mythological rape narratives for its exploration of the proper role of
the feminine in early eighteenth-century society. Belinda may be seen as a
synecdoche for all womankind.z5Pope's text thus reveals itself as innately
conservative: the message to Belinda and her feminine readers, as in
Ovid's account of Daphne, is to submit to loss, first to the loss of the lock
and ultimately of virginity and of independent identity. Dryden's great
comedy Amphytryon (1690), reworks the story of Jupiter's wily seduction
of Alcmena. At the dinouement of that play, the god, unopposed and
uninterrupted, announces that the deceived Alcmena will give birth to
23 Nancy K. Miller's essay "Arachnologies: The Woman, The Text, and the Critic" has opened
the implications of the sad career of Arachne, whose story has affinities with Clarissa's. lust as
Clarissa's moral superiority conhibules to her fate, Arachne gets into muble for her success: the
latter is widely reputed a splendid weaver. Perhaps Clarissa lacks the hubris of Amchne. who
engages Athena in a weaving contest. But Clarissa also consciously mounts a challenge, in her
case against the fiction of parenlal superiority, thus recalling Arachne's "feminwemric protest."
See The Poetics of Gender, ed. Nancy K. Miller (New York: Columbia University Ress, 1986).
p. 273.
24 Doody, '"The Man-made World." pp. 62-63.
25 See Pollak, The Poetics of Sexual Myth. pp. 77-107
C L A R I S S A : O V l D R E V I S E D 123
his son Hercules, whom her beloved husband Amphitryon must accept
as his own offspring. Alcmena listens to Jupiter's final speeches in stony,
disapproving silence; here the deus ex machina brings only a shadow
and a parody of the expected comic dCnouement of joy, justice, and
reconciliation. The god still sits on his throne, but the dramatist and his
human characters remain troubled by his continued control.%
Richardson carries one step further Dryden's discomfort with traditional mythological plots, for Clarissa invokes the old myths only to
destroy them. Lovelace tries to play out, to prove again the eternal
relevance and truth of the classical rape narratives; in the novel it is generally Lovelace who imagines himself a deity. Significantly, Clarissa's
one comparison of Lovelace to a god is to Proteus (111, 140; 11, 82).
that master of perpetual transformation who, at the climax of Virgil's
fourth Georgic, can be captured while asleep and thus made to assist humankind: once tied, he provides information which allows Aristaeus to
restore his lost hive of bees (451-806).27 Lovelace wishes to assume
the power of a less beneficent deity. In pursuing Clarissa, Lovelaceand many of Richardson's original followers-expected that Clarissa,
like Ovid's Daphne, would finally consent. But Lovelace and his readers learn that the old paradigms for experience have been superseded;
Lovelace's plan to recapitulate myths never quite works out. His mentor Zeus always had thunderbolts at his command and found that his
fire could "scorch Semele "into a cinder" (111, 163; 11, 98), but when
Lovelace attempts to use flames to further his schemes in the fire scene,
his efforts fail. Clarissa, contrary to Lovelace's hopes (VIII, 217 and
225; IV, 158 and 164) and contrary to the mythological precedents, does
not conceive and give birth to a child. And Clarissa at last writes a letter which the once-omniscient schemer cannot understand and cannot,
therefore, molest: she writes him that she is "setting out with all diligence for my Father's House" (VII, 215; IV, 157) and he, with his limited
vision, does not understand that she has set out for Heaven.
Lovelace, alas, does not survive the collapse of his plan to become the
modem Zeus; he does not discover new paradigms for behaviour. But
Richardson expected his readers to learn new patterns, relevant for a new
age. They learn of the indignity which oppression brings to oppressors.
They learn the importance of listening to the victim. And, finally, they
26 The Works of John Dryden vol. 15 (Albion and Atbanius, Don Seboslian, ond Amphitryon), ed.
Earl Miner (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1976).
27 The Poem of John Dryden. ed. James Kinsley (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1958). U, 991-IWO. 1
cite Dryden's translation of the Georgics, which became the standard in the eighteenth century.
124 E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y FICTION
learn the ultimate power of the woman and the victim, for it is Clarissa,
not Lovelace, who appears after the rape "in a flood of light" and as "a
meridian Sun" (V, 83; 111, 40). ultimately triumphant over the predatorgod.=s
Belmont College
28 I wish to thank the following. without whose assismce this paper could not have been written:
Margaret Anne Doody of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee; Sandra Smith of Belmant
College, Nashville; Wayne Batten of the Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville; Philip Phillip
of Belmont College; and Florian Stuber of the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY. New
York City.