Why Lovelace Must Die

Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Fall 2003 by McGirr, Elaine

As we have seen, Richardson follows the Whig propagandistic practice of conflating tyranny and absolutism. Lovelace's character is best defined by what Susan Owen calls "the Whig definition of tyranny." In Restoration Theatre and Crisis, she argues that "[t]yranny is portrayed [by Whigs] not only as the concomitant of depraved lusts ... but also as a political mentality which leads to the alienation of essential human capacities, which destroys the family, and which damages perpetrator as well as victim" (129). The political, sexual, and familial are all intertwined in tyrannical and rakish heroics, just as they are in Lovelace's play. My reading of Lovelace as a composite but consistent character-a Restoration hero-differs markedly from other analyses of his dramatic tendencies. My Lovelace is not Protean, for while he may don new costumes on occasion, his character remains constant.6 Lovelace's character is "fixed," and Richardson, a purist about such matters, ensures that his villain does not, cannot re-create himself. Lovelace cannot transform himself into a husband for he has committed to the part of a tyrant and must suffer a tyrant's fate: Lovelace must die.

II

In the seminal essay "Discourse in the Novel," Mikhail Bakhtin introduces the concept of heteroglossia as a way of ordering the linguistic play and confusion of the English comic novel. He writes, "the primary source of language usage in the comic novel is a highly specific treatment of 'common language.' This 'common language'-usually the average norm of spoken and written language for a given social group-is taken by the author precisely as the common view, as the verbal approach to people and things normal for a given sphere of society, as the going point of view and the going value" (176). For instance, Fielding presents the "common language" of honour and greatness in Jonathan Wild (1743) in order to expose it as "bombast greatness" or heroic excess. Bakhtin's analysis addresses comic novels, but his model can be applied to tragedies like Clarissa with only slight alteration. Bakhtin argues that only "direct authorial word" can present the "semantic and axiological intentions of the author," that is, the author must enter the text and speak for himself, as Fielding so often does (176). These authorial intrusions create an interpretive norm against which the novel's "common language" should be read: Fielding's satiric asides teach readers how much the "going value" is worth. But Richardson, aside from his "editorial" direction, seeks to be mostly invisible to readers. He denies his own authority and masquerades as the text's editor, a mere compiler of his characters' "authentic" productions. While in revisions of the novel Richardson enters the text more often and more directly in order to dictate his semantic and didactic meaning, these footnotes, asterisks, and italics are meant to draw attention to the value judgments already imbedded in the "languages" of his two protagonists.7 Lovelace, Richardson's rakish villain, speaks the novel's "common language"-here, the familiar tropes of the heroic mode. Clarissa's "novel" language establishes the interpretive norm against which Lovelace's language should be evaluated, for she is Richardson's representative in the text: the purity of her language exposes the hypocrisy, artificiality, and immorality of the hero's language and concomitant deeds.