Why Lovelace Must Die

III

Richardson's lesson is not just written on Lovelace's body; Belford undergoes the reformation denied his friend. He models the appropriate reader response. Richardson wants readers to learn from Clarissa's sentiments, but to imitate Belford's actions. He suggests that they can learn to be good by learning how, and what, to read. As a transparent stand-in for Richardson's readers, then, Belford enters Clarissa's story steeped in Lovelace's style and predisposed in his favor. Belford spends the novel's first half surrounded by and learning from negative examples, from Lovelace's letters to the gruesome deaths of his uncle and rake-hell friend Belton. Attesting to the power of negative didacticism, these deaths, especially Belton's protracted and painful one, shock Belford into a receptive frame of mind, giving him the perspective necessary to be able to appreciate Clarissa's peaceful apotheosis.

Belford can be Clarissa's advocate and executor because he has already renounced the rake's creed. By the time he befriends Clarissa, his "reformation" has already occurred. Watching over the dying Belton, Belford vows "I hope I shall make a proper use of this lesson. Laugh at me if thou wilt, but never, never more will I take the liberties I have taken; but whenever I am tempted, will think of Belton's dying agonies, and what my own may be" (L424). Clarissa merely encourages him, and her friendship and example keep him from relapsing. Having learned from the hasty and unconvincing moral about-face of Mr. B., Richardson allows Belford a more gradual and plausible transformation, one shown to be in character, not a sudden reversal of it. For Belford, always a rake by proxy, never actively evil, has been Lovelace's conscience, his voice of reason, throughout the novel. He urged Lovelace to marry Clarissa from the beginning; he reacted with unmixed horror to Lovelace's plan to rape Anna Howe; and he gently chastises Lovelace for his more excessive flights of rakish fancy. Readers have also learned to trust him and respect his opinions. More worldly and less partial than Anna Howe, Belford has proven that he is the novel's best reader. After all, he alone correctly predicted Clarissa's response to rape, warning Lovelace that she could not outlive the "perpetrated outrage," and that "wasting grief [would] put a period to her days" (L222). He also offers the most digressive commentary, from his moralizing on Belton's death to his analysis of popular plays. In a letter to Lovelace describing the dying Clarissa's perfect penitence-true tragedy-Belford pauses to offer this lengthy critique of Lovelace's model play, Rowe's immensely popular "she-tragedy" The Fair Penitent:

The whole story of the other [The Fair Penitent] is a pack of damned stuff. Lothario, 'tis true, seems such another wicked ungenerous varlet as thou knowest who: the author knew how to draw a rake; but not to paint a penitent. Calista is a desiring luscious wench, and her penitence is nothing else but rage, insolence, and scorn. Her passions are all storm and tumult; nothing of the finer passions of the sex, which if naturally drawn will distinguish themselves from the masculine passions by a softness that will even shine through rage and despair. Her character is made up of deceit and disguise. She has no virtue; is all pride; and her devil is as much within her as without her.