Why Lovelace Must Die

How then can the fall of such a one create a proper distress, when all the circumstances of it are considered? For does she not brazen out her crime even after detection? Knowing her own guilt, she calls for Altamont's vengeance on his best friend, as if he had traduced her; yields to marry Altamont, though criminal with another; and actually beds that whining puppy, when she had given herself up body and soul to Lothario; who, nevertheless, refused to marry her.

Her penitence, when begun, she justly styles the frenzy of her soul; and as I said, after having as long as she could most audaciously brazened out her crime, and done all the mischief she could do (occasioning the death of Lothario, of her father, and others), she stabs herself. (L413)

Belford follows up this examen with a plot summary of Clarissa, concluding that, unlike "our poets who hardly know how to create a distress," "[t]his is penitence! This is piety! And hence a distress naturally arises that must worthily affect every heart" (L413). Unlike the popular stage productions, Clarissa does the work of tragedy, as Richardson understands it: "to raise commiseration and terror in the minds of the audience" (Postscript). Belford's rejection of The Fair Penitent and the rest of Lovelace's foundational texts demonstrates his reformation: his "improved" aesthetic sense mirrors his improved morals. Conversely, Lovelace is too deeply enmeshed in the genre to re-evaluate it. Instead of being reclaimed and rehabilitated by Clarissa's virtue, he remains trapped in his Restoration texts, unable to decipher Clarissa, incapable of turning her story into either she-tragedy or marriage comedy.

Richardson indulges in some ironic "poetical justice" for Lovelace. He transforms his villain from a "wicked, ungenerous varlet" into a fair penitent in his own right. After "having as long as he could most audaciously brazened out his crime, and done all the mischief he could do (occasioning Clarissa's death), he seeks his own death in a duel. Despite the complaint with which I began, it could be argued that Lovelace is not beaten out of "his play." He is just forced to take the role he had envisioned for Clarissa. In a way, Lovelace does succeed. While Clarissa, even in death, retains control of her novel, Lovelace becomes the title character in a Restoration tragedy.

Lovelace's fate can be read as an analogue of the Young Pretender's. Charles Edward's escape (and protection by the Scots and then French) meant that he had to be figuratively executed, with the result that the people, ideas, and culture associated with the Jacobite prince were outlawed and destroyed in his stead. By killing Lovelace, Richardson gives the cultural representation of the Stuart/Jacobite myth its coup de grace, for not only is Lovelace a throwback to Stuart tragedy and heroic drama, but his Cavalier persona is the same as that adopted by "Bonnie Prince Charlie." By the novel's close, Richardson has systematically stripped Lovelace of his authority, his voice, and his supporters; even his own family has turned against him. The thoroughness of this destruction echoes the severity of the reprisals against the Jacobites involved in the '45. Richardson, like General Cumberland and George II's advisors, believed that all rival claimants to authority, be they political (Jacobites) or cultural (the Restoration stage), had to be eliminated in order to protect the Georgian establishment and its ideals.