One Great Family: Domestic Relationships in Samuel Richardson's Novels. Simone Höhn
duty as one’s own right is particularly strong on those who hold an inferior position.
GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W.’s third and fourth types of “complementarity” are two formulations of virtually the same thing: one party’s right towards another also implies a duty towards that other. These are the types which he goes on to call “reciprocity” and which are concerned with notions of fairness and balance, although he stresses that reciprocity does not automatically mean equal returns. “In short, complementarity connotes that one’s rights are another’s obligations, and vice versa. Reciprocity, however, connotes that each party has rights and duties” (57).
Applying these two concepts to The Whole Duty of Man and Fifteen Sermons, one can make several interesting observations. First, as indicated above, complementarity is suppressed. Although a parent, for example, is bound in duty to support his11 children in a style suitable to his fortune and position, there is no corresponding right of the children to enforce such provision: indeed, Clarissa is “determined not to litigate with my papa” (134) even for an estate that is already hers by law. The young Charles Grandison goes even further, representing the allowance his father grants him as a gift rather than something owed him. Therefore, when Sir Thomas is forced to ask his son to “join in the security” for a debt, the latter can reply: “Why, Sir, did you condescend to write to me on the occasion, as if for my consent? […] That I am, under God, is owing to you. That I am what I am, to your indulgence. Leave me not any-thing!” (1:329–330).
However, although both AllestreeAllestree, Richard and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson emphasize the unconditional nature of duty, their strictures against enforcing another’s duty are directed exclusively at the subordinate party. Allestree, in particular, specifies both in the case of children and of wives that no fault of father or husband can excuse their own lack of obedience (304, 325; Sundays XIV, XV). He makes no similar point with regard to husbands’ or fathers’ duties to wives and children. Although he is always ready to remind his readers of the dangers of hell, and although he warns parents and others that enticing anyone to sin will lead to damnation, the condemnation of every kind of ‘rebellion’ leaves subjects, children, wives and servants at the mercy of their superiors. The duty of the superior party, meanwhile, is described in more conflicting terms. Despite general injunctions that all duties must be performed as coming from God (and are thus due to His mercy, rather than to benefits conferred by humans), the duties of leaders spiritual and political, as well as of fathers, husbands and masters, explicitly include responsibility for their subordinates’ behaviour. They are thus, to some extent, compelled to enforce the other party’s duty.
Nevertheless, the suppression of complementarity in some cases may help to obscure the unfairness and oppressive potential of the system of duty as a whole; theoretically, at least, parents and husbands, too, must do their duty even to bad children and wives. Therefore, in contrast to complementarity, reciprocity is emphasized by AllestreeAllestree, Richard and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson. It is noteworthy, however, that it is ‘conceptual’, rather than ‘actual’, reciprocity that matters to them. In GouldnerGouldner, Alvin W.’s terms,
[s]pecific and complementary duties are owed by role partners to one another by virtue of the socially standardized roles they play. These may require an almost unconditional compliance in the sense that they are incumbent on all those in a given status simply by virtue of its occupancy. In contrast, the generalized norm of reciprocity evokes obligations toward others on the basis of their past behavior. (59)
The duties of parents and children, for example, are reciprocal in so far as each side owes the other certain benefits; however, each side is obliged to confer such benefits whether or not they also receive any. For AllestreeAllestree, Richard and DelanyDelany, Patrick, correspondent of Richardson, status duties are structured according to norms of reciprocity, but are severed from them in actual practice. This can be done, in part, because benefits conferred on other human beings are conceptualized as being mostly returns for divine benefits. That is, while social duties are structured according to the norm of reciprocity, actual reciprocal exchange takes place mostly, and matters most, in the relationship of the divine and the human. For example, since God is the source of “all our plenty”, and since this gift cannot be repaid directly, “whatever we should by way of thankfulness give back again unto God, our alms is the way of doing it” (AllestreeAllestree, Richard 374; Sunday XVII). The person receiving alms may have done nothing to deserve them, but this is unimportant compared to the exchange taking place between God and the donor of charity. Practical reciprocity is brought in, on the one hand, to emphasize God’s mercy in contrast to the poor returns that men are able to make; incidentally, men are so sinful that even the best can have no right to divine beneficence. On the other hand, reciprocity acts as an additional incentive for the performance of one’s duty. Although there may be parents, as AllestreeAllestree, Richard concedes, who neglect and tyrannize their children, most confer (god-like) benefits that no child can expect to repay (Allestree 299; Sunday XIV).
Richardson largely shared the values outlined in The Whole Duty of Man; indeed, both his novels and his letters provide ample evidence of this.12 Nevertheless, his works also problematize the system of duty. They do this, on the one hand, by emphasizing the misery of the victims of the system – often barred from self-defence by the very principles which are trampled on by their oppressors – and, on the other hand, by presenting his heroines as the centre of a network of duties which they try to negotiate. This is less true of the hero; although Sir Charles is shown as successfully fulfilling all his duties, he is rarely depicted facing contradictory obligations.13 As a man, moreover, he escapes some of the conflicts which Pamela and Clarissa have to confront. The Whole Duty of Man does not explicitly gender its reader; the “man” of the title is a human being, who may be either a woman (who needs to pay attention to a wife’s duties) or a man. However, this apparently neutral gendering actually obscures the differences in the situations of women and men – just as modern gender-neutral language may obscure this today (cf. PatemanPateman, Carol 16–7). Edward YoungYoung, Edward, correspondent of Richardson “called Clarissa ‘The Whole Duty of WOMAN’”, implicitly, and perhaps unconsciously, drawing attention to the fact that the “whole duty” of an individual is partly gender-based (qtd. in EavesEaves, T.C. Duncan and Ben D. Kimpel & Kimpel 286).14 In Richardson’s hands, then, the individual is feminised.15 The system of duty now takes on an ambivalent function: it constrains women by limiting the heroines’ options of rebellion, but it also empowers them by validating some forms of disobedience.
1.2 Clarissa and the system of duty
The problem of (reciprocal) duty appears most prominently, and most problematically, in Richardson’s second novel, although it also features in various discussions in Grandison. The presentation of few fictional heroines is as focused on universal “duty” and usefulness as that of Clarissa Harlowe. In contrast, Richardson’s Harriet Byron is shown in those social relationships and moral struggles which are least connected to status duties, and Clementina’s struggles are, for the most part, far removed from quotidian duties, let alone household tasks. It is unclear if either of them takes part in managing the house, while much is made of Clarissa’s housekeeping. Pamela is closest to Clarissa in that especially her life after marriage centres on her responsibilities as mistress of a family and wife of a rakish man. The presentation of duty and of conflicts of duty, however, is quite different (cf. part II).
At the same time, it should be emphasized that, if few heroines are defined by dutifulness and useful self-organization as Clarissa is, there are also few as explicitly intent on guarding both their “free will” and their private time and space (cf. also SpacksSpacks, Patricia Meyer, Privacy 16–8). With regard to the first, Clarissa goes so far as to accuse Solmes of intending her dishonour, “if endeavouring to force a free mind is to dishonour it!” (323). (At this point, she still refuses to consider the possibility that her “honour” may be threatened in a more conventional sense). Throughout most of the novel, Clarissa also defends her private space, not only as a sanctuary from her family’s and Lovelace’s oppression, but as a space of meditation and (epistolary) communication. Michael SuarezSuarez, Michael F. draws