Abstract:

Early in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1748), Lovelace boasts of not raping a seventeen-year-old whom he identifies as “his Rosebud.” While critical references to Rosebud are now rare, her presence preoccupied early readers who were so impressed by Lovelace’s generosity that they could scarce believe his later actions toward Clarissa. Although Lovelace acknowledges that years of criminal behaviour have destroyed his reputation, he nevertheless fantasizes that such “generosity” might establish an economy of credits and debits whereby one non-rape can count against a future sexual assault. While Lovelace’s fantasy fails on multiple levels—he invokes the logic of double-entry bookkeeping only to misunderstand it, and his non-rape of Rosebud is, of course, not actually generous at all—it offers a paradigm for understanding Richardson’s broader approach to character. As even Lovelace recognizes, not raping Rosebud can never render him innocent in a larger sense. Returning to Rosebud allows us to read Clarissa as a novel in which character remains fixed, even if it takes hundreds of pages to fully unfold.

摘要：

塞缪尔·理查森（Samuel Richardson）的克拉丽莎（Clarissa）早期（1748年），洛夫莱斯（Leelace）吹嘘自己没有强奸一个17岁的孩子，他将其称为“他的玫瑰花蕾”。尽管现在很少有对玫瑰花蕾的批评性提及，但她的出现吸引了早期读者，洛芙蕾丝的慷慨给他们留下了深刻的印象，以至于他们几乎不敢相信他后来对克拉丽莎的举动。尽管洛夫雷斯承认多年的犯罪行为已经破坏了他的声誉，但他仍然幻想这样的“慷慨”可能会建立借贷经济，在这种情况下，一个不被强奸的人可以算作未来的性攻击。尽管洛夫雷斯的幻想在多个层面上都失败了，但他引用两次簿记的逻辑只是误解了这一点，而他对玫瑰花蕾的强奸当然一点也不慷慨，但它为理解理查森的更广泛方法提供了范例特点。甚至Lovelace都认识到，不强奸玫瑰花蕾永远不会使他在更大的意义上成为清白的人。回到玫瑰花蕾，我们可以阅读克拉丽莎（Clarissa）是一本小说，人物始终如一，即使花费数百页才能完全展现出来。