One Great Family: Domestic Relationships in Samuel Richardson's Novels. Simone Höhn
who are able to support their parts with the wit and decorum stipulated by Caroline. Clearly, decorum – specifically with regard to courtship – involves its own kind of masquerade; indeed, Clarissa’s friend Miss Biddulph claims that female “coquetry” is only the natural consequence of men’s “false hearts” (44). When Harriet prepares for her masquerade, she tries to echo the attitude of the anonymous lady who “likes to see young fellows dying for her”. Though she feels uncomfortable in her dress from the first, she attempts to support her character of “Arcadian Princess” with spirit (1:115). As she ends her letter to her cousin Lucy, she asks her to imagine “how many Pretty-fellows […] in this dress, will be slain by [Harriet]” (1:116). Her playful assumption of coquetry comes back to haunt her when she later remembers that this was the last line she wrote before her abduction (1:150). As she recognises at the masquerade, dress and situation cannot be kept separate from behaviour, and perhaps not even from character: “No prude could come, or if she came, could be a prude, there” (1:427).4
Her abduction shakes her confidence that play and truthfulness can coexist. Although she recognises that it could have been organised from any other place of diversion (1:426), her narration repeatedly links the abduction to masquerade. It seems significant, in this context, that her playful impersonation of other characters early during her stay in London has no parallel in the later parts of the book. Before the masquerade, Harriet enjoys a seemingly more harmless manner of impersonation: she imagines her new London acquaintance writing letters which report their impressions of her. LatimerLatimer, Bonnie suggests that these letters are an assumption of power: “Harriet […] defines herself by annexing or over-writing, by working on and thus possessing, other characters” (Making Gender 51). According to her, Harriet’s openness about the letters’ inauthenticity is, in itself, a mask which gives false authority to her representation. Latimer’s analysis of the complexity of her (self-)representation is largely convincing. However, her reading of Harriet – “she is continually slyly representing others – inventing others – praising herself” (54) – also suggests that all shaping of experience is somehow manipulation, a tool to control others. I would argue, instead, that the letters imply her confidence in the disparity between truth and falsehood. Relying on her readers’ knowledge of herself, she can repeat the compliments she receives, inviting her correspondents to put them in context.
Similarly, trusting in their confidence in her own sincerity, she can offer a ‘real’ and a ‘fully fictional’ portrait of the same men and women, playfully assuming a role without danger that either they or she will be misrepresented through it. She expects the same attitude from her readers: one of Harriet’s responses to her uncle’s accusations of vanity is to characterise his words as a playful misrepresentation. As long as he says “what may be said, [rather] than what he really thinks”, and as long as her relatives value her, she will not be hurt (1:66). Her playfulness and her certainty are similarly expressed when she tries to “mak[e] mouths” in the mirror in imitation of the pedant Mr. Walden (1:46). As LatimerLatimer, Bonnie (here) suggests, Harriet “appears to be so comfortable with her own identity that she can hazard slipping into Mr Walden’s, although she does not finally do so” (Making Gender 35). Indeed, her body refuses to partake of the masquerade; Harriet is unable to perform the ridiculous, repulsive facial expressions she has described with so much gusto. This confidence in herself and in the transparency of truth is shattered during her abduction. Later letters still include detailed accounts of other characters’ behaviour, but the aspect of impersonation is taken over by two of the Grandison siblings – Sir Charles and Charlotte. Their style of ‘masquerade’ differs, however, from Harriet’s and will be discussed in part III. Harriet, in contrast, will come to embody ‘frankness’, the happy congruence of inner truth and its outward appearance (cf. also McMasterMcMaster, Juliet, Reading the Body 96). Although the spectre of hypocrisy is briefly raised in Grandison, this gives way to an emphasis on the healing powers of ‘proper’ performance.
1.5 Body and mind
In the face of the difficulty in deciding between the essence and the semblance of virtue, many characters in Richardson’s novels try to read the evidence of the body to guess at the mind. The body, however, takes on a double role. On the one hand, it can confirm the sincerity of the mind – as in the tears frequently shed by Lovelace and his associates, who feel some compunction even while trying to trick Clarissa. Interestingly, the heroine is generally correct in recognising the tears as involuntary and thus authentic expressions of the inner life of those she deals with, but she is frequently mistaken in the exact cause and amount of the ‘affectedness’ of those weeping. In these situations, the body is under the sway of the mind, it is its visible manifestation. However, this opens the possibility of the body turning traitor, betraying parts of the mind which reason would have remain hidden – Lovelace acts out this aspect when he describes to Belford his ‘murder’ of his embodied conscience, which has so frequently ‘betrayed’ him into tears while confronting Clarissa (848). Moreover, if body and mind are connected, the former can turn traitor in another sense, by infesting the soul with the taint of physical desire.
The idea that the body can attest to the reality of emotion can be found in writers very far from Richardson’s outlook. Bernard MandevilleMandeville, Bernard, for example, notoriously argues in his Fable of the Bees that women’s blushing is a public reaction, which will not occur when they are alone: “[L]et them talk as much Bawdy as they please in the Room next to the same Virtuous Young Woman, where she is sure that she is undiscover’d, and she will hear, if not hearken to it, without blushing at all, because then she looks upon herself as no Party concern’d” (65).1 Blushing is thus not a sign of wounded modesty, but of shame, caused by a fear that the woman’s innermost immodest thoughts have been guessed at. Mandeville’s description of the young woman highlights the treacherousness of physical reaction: the blush, bodily proof of real emotion, can be misread. Moreover, as in a conjuror’s trick, it signifies both ‘virtue’ and ‘hypocrisy’. The blush is the public symbol of modesty, but because it vanishes in private, it cannot be ‘real’. Mandeville can deny the reality of virgin modesty because he connects it with a sign – the blush – which he already ‘knows’ to be treacherous.
Paradoxically, the body can testify to hypocrisy only because its reactions are also connected to real mental processes. In a passage almost immediately following, MandevilleMandeville, Bernard argues thus on pride and shame:
That these two Passions, in which the Seeds of most Virtues are contained, are Realities in our Frame, and not imaginary Qualities, is demonstrable from the plain and different Effects, that in spite of our Reason are produced in us as soon as we are affected with either.
When a Man is overwhelm’d with Shame, he observes a sinking of the Spirits; the Heart feels cold and condensed, and the Blood flies from it to the Circumference of the Body; the Face glows, the Neck and Part of the Breast partake of the Fire: He is heavy as Lead; the Head is hung down, and the Eyes through a Mist of Confusion are fix’d on the Ground: No Injuries can move him; he is weary of his Being, and heartily wishes he could make himself invisible: But when, gratifying his Vanity, he exults in his Pride, he discovers quite contrary Symptoms; His Spirits swell and fan the Arterial Blood; a more than ordinary Warmth strengthens and dilates the Heart; the Extremities are cool; he feels light to himself, and imagines he could tread on Air; his Head is held up, his Eyes roll’d about with Sprightliness; he rejoices at his Being, is prone to Anger, and would be glad that all the World could take notice of him. (67–7)
Following his statements concerning the blush of modesty, MandevilleMandeville, Bernard’s description of the visible effects of shame and pride gains an ambiguous quality. The man overcome with shame “observes” his bodily symptoms; the man feeling pride, however, “discovers” them, a word which can mean both to ‘find out’ and to ‘display’ (OED, “discover, v.” 5 & 6). Mandeville’s drift in this passage is to demonstrate that shame and fear are real because each man can feel their effect in his very body, in contrast to virgin modesty, which vanishes when a woman is alone.2 However, like the virgin’s blush, the man’s symptoms of pride are displayed, that is, observable, to others than himself, and thus vulnerable to the same kind of public (mis-)reading.3