Sean McCullough

Dr. Richards
Honors Thesis
April 10, 2015

Broken for Whom?

Reading Richardsons Clarissa as the Eucharist

Introduction:
Background and Reception
Samuel Richardsons Clarissa was a pivotal text for eighteenth-century feminism. This
epistolary novel deals with questions of the body, love, authority, and power. Clarissa Harlowe, a
young woman renowned for her beauty and chastity, inherits a sizeable portion of her
grandfathers wealth, which her family wishes to use as a bargaining chip for their own societal
elevation. Caught between the desires of her family and her own desire for independence, she is
snatched away from her oppressive family and brought to live with Robert Lovelace, a libertine
who steals her virtue and threatens her agency. Throughout his work, Richardson ostensibly
adheres to a Judeo-Christian allegory, his novel bearing not only resonances to, but also quoted
passages from Miltons widely disseminated Paradise Lost. Accordingly, most critics who
address the allegory, given that Richardson drew from both Genesis and Paradise Lost, analyze
the story from inside the proverbial bounds of the Eve Script. Clarissa becomes Eve and
Robert Lovelace (her rapist and suitor) becomes Satan.
Interpreted through the biblical story of Adam and Eves banishment from the Garden,
Lovelace can easily be read as Satan, the devil who eventually overpowers Eve and takes away
her innocence. However, this lens severely limits Richardsons artistic development of plot and
moral implications. If Clarissa is merely an Eve, then she possesses no narrative agency, and the
redemptive tale that Richardson attempted to convey becomes a failure in construction,
execution, and instruction. This Eve merely dies for her sin. The objective of this essay is to
assert and substantiate that Miltons text provides a complication to this Eve Script, one that
allows for a more innovative reading of Richardsons scandalous novel, one that allows for a
different allegorical pairing for Clarissa and Lovelace. This renunciation of such an inexorable,

archetypal script helps readers to understand Clarissa as a redemptive and ultimately

empowering feminist novel. Working from Richardsons text, discursive analyses from scholars,
and contextual readingshistories, philosophical treatises, biographical writings, and the four
Gospel accountsthis paper will argue that Clarissa should actually be read as Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, and Lovelace as Judas Iscariot, who sells and commodifies Jesus body. In this
interpretation, Clarissas textual body (her collection of letters) is the body of Christ broken for
all to consume and experience salvation. Like Jesus, once Clarissa understands the limitations of
her human body, the significance she places on it diminishes to allow her broken corpus of letters
to become her new body; therefore, reading Clarissa becomes the Eucharist.
Samuel Richardson, the man, was nothing extraordinary. He was a printer and publisher
until he reached the age of fifty-one years, when he wrote the first novel. As the first novelist,
however, he set a lofty precedent for future writers to match. He was by no means a progressive
thinker, adhering to a Protestant Judeo-Christian background that shaped much of his cogitations
on men, women, and the soul, but his writing betrayed a profundity of thought that make his
novels some of the greatest and most influential feministic works of all time. As Carol Flynn
notes in her chapter Down from the Pedestal, Richardsons imagination subverted and
transcended his moral intentions. His didacticism freed him to write, to take up issues and
problems that he could not have investigated without a moral license (101). Richardson
inadvertently became an advocate for the Christian mind and its preponderant and inexorable
narrative at the end of an era that sought to discard that mode of thinking altogether: The
Enlightenment. Working both within and without of the context of his Christian foundation,
Richardson could create fictions of sensation and power that often threaten to burst their moral
framework (101). Whereas John Milton, through his Paradise Lost, achieved the production of

a poetic retelling of the creation and fall of man, Richardson achieved a humanistic and realistic
portrayal of morality that played out with much more artistry and nuance. Milton did not break
from Adam and Eve. Richardson did. The story is still there, but it is skillfully hidden and
complicated by his Clarissas authoritarian insistence upon her command of her own narrative.
T.C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, in their book Samuel Richardson: A Biography,
assert that the only way to get to know Richardson at his best is to read Clarissa, and to read it
unabridged (236). However, as with the Bible, when reading the works of Samuel Richardson,
one can struggle to extract significance beyond the authors own setting. His stringent attention
to detail allows for realistic works, but most critics see his novels only as time-bound
documents (Sale 40). Modern readers become extricated from Richardsons characters lives.
However, because of the success and acclaim that Richardson achieved from his novels during
his time, one can purport that his characters and incidents were effective symbols for his
contemporaries; this fact is attested by the avidity with which they were seized upon (Sale 41).
Readers devoured Richardsons literature. Whereas a modern reader struggles through a work
like Clarissa today, Richardsons readers looked forward to each new installment, and, more
interestingly, his readers did not just encompass one social class. Richardson achieved the
greatest aim of any novelist: to write literature that can weave through ones current, highlystratified social class system. Richardson wrote during a time when Englishmen were
sufficiently aware of the fact that their vital social problem was the interpenetration of the
emergent middle class and the surviving aristocracy (Sale 41). With the rise of the middle class,
the aristocracy began to fall. This socioeconomic shift engendered a new decorum and, with it, a
new humanity. Richardson took the task of explaining this new humanity upon himself, and he
did so primarily through the letters of female characters: Like James and like Meredith he

preferred women for his central charactersthe new women, products of a time when a new
freedom seemed attainable but was certainly not attained (Sale 42).1 For Richardson, the
shifting sands of an antiquated social system created the opportunity for a new foundation, one
which could benefit all peoples, especially women.
During the time in which he wrote, transition from one class into another became more
socially acceptable, and Richardson explicitly comments on this anomaly of eighteenth-century
English society in Clarissa. When the novel opens, the Harlowes, a middle class family, are in
the midst of transitioning into a form of aristocracy. Florian Stuber, in her article On Fathers and
Authority in Clarissa, notes that Clarissa is to marry Roger Solmes for the sake of the family
views of aggrandizement (558). Roger Solmes does not come from an aristocratic family, but
union to him would allow the Harlowes to make the social jump into the eighteenth-century
English aristocracy through amassment of wealth. Marriage to Robert Lovelace would allow
only Clarissa to ascend, leaving her family behind to figure out another means of ascension.
However, despite the new freedoms granted to the rising middle class, wealth alone could not
enable one to reach the top of the social ladder. Fathers still relied on their children to progress
their line. Sons would need to augment the estate, but daughters provided the bargaining chip
that more quickly allowed the family to gain enough status and wealth to skip rungs on their way
to the top. This dynamic becomes a main issue of contention in Clarissa because Richardson
chooses to allow Clarissa to manage a portion of the familys estate because of her grandfathers
decision to name her the inheritor of that wealth and property: I was also absent at my dairyhouse, as it is called, busied in the accounts relating to the estate which my grandfather had the

1 It is important to note that Richardsons New Woman was not synonymous to the New
Women of the nineteenth and twentieth century who expressed more sexual freedoms.

goodness to bequeath me, and which once a year are left to my inspection, although I have given
the whole into my papas power (Letter II).
Not only did Clarissas grandfather grant her economic and social freedom to live a life
that she pleased, but he also granted her a much greater bargaining chip, one which would allow
her to advance her family much further than good financial management of their estate would.
Clarissas decision to place such freedom in the hands of her father stifles her, and, instead of
liberating her from the constraints of marriage, her grandfathers will now allows for James
Harlowe, Sr. to place all of his expectations for family aggrandizement upon Clarissa and not his
elder daughter Arabella. Solmes should marry an aristocrats daughter, but he is attracted to
Clarissa because of her beauty and her dowry. However, Clarissa still continually makes
reference to her heart being free, and she more than a few times suggests living independently as
an alternative to not marrying Roger Solmes, but her family fears that she is scheming with
Robert Lovelace to elope and forge a disagreeableto themfamily connection. This story,
unlike Pamela, would resonate with all of English society.
Whereas, in Pamela, Richardson structured Pamelas quest for virtue and independence
under that of a master-servant relationship, in Clarissa, he structures this same quest under a
father-daughter relationship. And, as Sale, Jr., author and eighteenth-century scholar, notes, The
master-servant relationship in the household is not so flexible as the father-daughter relationship
which he uses in Clarissa (44). In a typical master-servant relationship, the master will exert
power over his or her servant. Fathers should be obeyed, but they are also supposed to love and
support their daughters. However, Sale, Jr. also notes that In eighteenth-century England a
servant is not bound to her master as Pamela seems at times to feel that she is bound; nor do we

find it easy to accept the highhanded fashion in which Mr. B. abrogates the laws of his country in
carrying through an abduction (44).
Customs were changing when Richardson wrote Pamela. Pamela could have quit her job.
She did not have to stay in the house of Mr. B and withstand his advances. Her choice to stay
corroborates with a commonly held theory that Pamela intentionally seduced her master,
negating any virtue in Pamela for which Richardson ardently argues. That is what appealed to
readers; it was a quaint love story that bore no implications for its readers. Pamela rose from the
ashes through surreptitious seduction and deceit. This distortion of Richardsons intentions gets
canonized in Henry Fieldings satirical revision of Pamela, Shamela. Richardsons choice, one
carried out in spite of the advice and entreaty of his friends who sought to reshape it for him, to
place Clarissas main conflict into a father-daughter relationship system allows for greater
credence to be given to this ultimately more fictionalized history because he wisely placed
Lovelace outside the domestic orbit of the Harlowes (Sale 44-45). Richardson also then clearly
makes his narrative adhere to a Christian allegory, particularly that conveyed in Miltons
Paradise Lost. Like Lovelace, Satan exists outside of the domestic orbit of the Garden of Eden,
and Clarissa defies her god, her father, in her conversations with this jealous demi-god.
In the literal context, Clarissa, like Pamela, disobeys her parents, but she never binds
herself to her protagonist as Pamela so unnecessarily did. T.C Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel,
in their Samuel Richardson: A Biography, cite critic Arnold Bennett who deems Clarissa the
greates realistic novel in the world, and they qualify his hyperbolic statement, noting that the
story is thoroughly realistic if one can believe in the existence of such a character as the
heroine, and readers at the time could and did believe in a character such as Clarissa (238)
because Pamela, in contrast, could so clearly be read as fallen Eve, seducing her Adam (Mr. B) to

disrupt the prescribed order of the world in which she was placed into as a secondary and
powerless individual. This is the narrative that men and women of Richardsons time would have
understood. Clarissa, in comparison, complicates this Eve role for readers. Readers of the time
vehemently argued with Richardson, asking him why Clarissa had to be raped by Lovelace. This
plot twist problematizes female virtue and the authority and utility of the Eve Script.
At this point in history, women were prized for their chastity and virtue. Their potential
lie in their ability to ignore their Eve-like desires, abstain until marriage, and bear a child as a
holy virgin for their husbands. As with his Pamela, readers were under the assumption that
Clarissa must defend her virtue. She would be seduced by Lovelace, but she would not succumb
to the tempter. Her virtue would be rewarded. Readers expect this ending because, as Eaves and
Kimpel note of the roles Richardsons Clarissa and Lovelace play, these types persisted in later
British and American fiction (240). Richardson could be deemed the progenitor of the Victorian
Era and Southern American Gothic seduction narrative. However, Clarissa, unlike Pamela, does
not play out this way. Clarissa is penetrated. She resists Lovelace, but Richardson complicates
the narrative because, although Lovelace drugs Clarissa and rapes her, her body is still defiled.
Anatomically, she is no longer a virgin. Socially, she is a bawd. This depressing analysis
becomes redemptive when one reads Clarissa as a Christ character transcending her socially
enforced status as an Eve. Like Christ, despite the publics perception of her public image as
sinful, she privately knows that she is innocent.
But Richardsons readers did not differentiate so easily between Pamela and Clarissa as
they do today. Both follow a similar narrative arc, and in both accounts, Fynn notes that
Richardsons heroines become characters of integrity and independence, women who support
themselves and forge their own fates, elevating themselves and depending ultimately upon

themselves for their salvation (101). Richardsons readers were able to see the realism in his
largely invented and hyperbolic narrative situations because they were tucked safely away in the
countryor, if she lived in the city, snug in her closet, sheltered from the monstrous evils of
London, where Harriets could be kidnapped and Clarissas raped, where whores passed for ladies
and rakes ruled the day (102). Richardson played to the fearsmerited or notthat both he and
his readers actively shared. In Pamela, his rake penetrates the idyllic, pastoral scene, making
Clarissa seem all the more realistic in comparison because Lovelace brings Clarissa to the
alleged sordid London. In reality, London may not have been the center of immorality that
middle and upper class British citizens believed it to be, but Flynn notes that Richardson writes
realistically of a world that his readers believed to be true, using their own assumptions to
authenticate his fictions (102). Richardson clearly exploited the naivet of his readers, but this
tactic proved fruitful for the author. His worksespecially Clarissareceived almost
instantaneous popularity, and they inspired many young authors to write their own Pamelas and
Clarissas.
Concerning the immediate reception of Richardsons magnum opus, Eaves and Kimpel
note, Even before the publication of the final volumes of Clarissa Richardson began to receive
letters about it, some from friends and acquaintances, but he also received commendations from
people he had never before known, specifically, five bishops, one of whom declared that he had
read [Clarissa] eleven times already and proposed to re-read it every two years as long as he
lived (285). Many responses that Richardson received at Clarissas time of publication followed
in this fashion, but some readers wrote to him, expressing their melancholy for Clarissas
unfortunate end: Susanna Highmore wrote that though she could not regret so noble a death as
Clarissas, her heart had been almost broken (286). She, like Clarissa, is reported to have wept.

Ms. Highmores response was appropriate; Richardson himself admitted his despair at his own
decision to end his poor Clarissas life in misery. But, in order to fulfill the stipulations of his
self-imposed double allegory, Clarissa had to suffer, and she had to die. However, Clarissa leaves
behind her a broken corpus of letters that, unlike her body, cannot be held in any tomb. Through
her proverbial transubstantiation, Richardson provides for his readers an uplifting narrative:
Clarissa lives!
Conversely, some readers indicted Richardson, not as they do today for his apparent
desire to satisfy his own sadistic intentions of defiling the virtuous woman, but for his libeling a
private family (288). With the second title of The History of a Young Lady attached to his work,
many assumed that Richardson had misappropriated this heartbreaking narrative without the
permission of the young Clarissa. Similarly, other readers found reason to quibble over more
minute details. While Mrs. Chapone wrote to the author, unsatisfied with Richardsons
characterization of Clarissa as a woman too submissive to her father, a Mr. Bennett had
asserted the opposite: The Harlowe family was right in endeavouring to force Clarissa to marry
Solmes to keep her out of the arms of Lovelace, since her correspondence with the latter showed
that she was not to be depended on (288). In both senses, these readers saw Clarissa as an
imperfect model for female readers, and they were correct in their analyses. Clarissa presents an
anomaly in identity in that, in Richardsons double allegory, she finds resonance with both Eve
and Christ.
Furthermore, from this analysis, one can see that Richardson may not have been writing
an epistolary novel meant to instruct his female readership. In a sense, he published his first
treatise on religious theories that he held in esteem due to his Protestant foundation. However,
from a literary perspective, Richardson published a novel that exemplifies the power of literature

to move humanity forward, and literature after Clarissa definitely liberated the independent
woman, both as an author and as a literary characters. The obstinacy of the Eve Script caused
many authorial difficulties for Richardson when writing Pamela. As mentioned previously, his
readership viewed Pamela primarily as a seductive and fallen Eve. His overt use of the double
allegory in Clarissa would spark the ambivalent responses he received toward his work, but it
would help him to better instruct his readers in relinquishing such a previously indomitable and
constraining script. Through Clarissas destruction of her bodyboth physically and in the
broken-up nature of her epistolary workRichardson invites readers to experience her
redemptive narrative.