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He Could Go No Farther: A Modest Proposal about Lovelace and Clarissa

Critics have averted their eyes from the specifics of Lovelace’s rape of Clarissa almost as hurriedly as did the principals in Richardson’s novel. Modern studies of the phenomenon of rape suggest that a closer look might be rewarding. Of the three people certainly present at the episode, there is good reason to suppose Lovelace impotent, Clarissa blankly rigid, and Sinclair, the presiding androgynous harlot, the purposeful actor in the scene. If Sinclair and the “women of the house” are at the heart of the book’s action and are not simply Lovelace’s “implements,” then a prime issue of Clarissa is not only whether Clarissa “lives” but also whether Sinclair “dies.” In fact, despite her famous Gothic death scene, Sinclair too lives, and rules Richardson’s imagination of woman, perhaps even of Being, to the end of the novel.