One Great Family: Domestic Relationships in Samuel Richardson’s Novels by Simone Eva Höhn

Author:Simone Eva Höhn [Höhn, Simone Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783772001239
Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag Tübingen

In Duncombe’s apostrophe, Richardson seems to occupy at once the role of the inspiring muse and of the judging friend, who will approve the “weak strains” which are, nevertheless, employed for the cause which he supports. At the same time, his “anxious care” casts him in the role of a father of “the sex”, who watches with pleasure as his charges prove themselves worthy – just as Sir Charles likes to gaze on Emily or Harriet. Like Richardson, Duncombe encourages women of “genius” to publish. In the “advertisement” to the poem, he states as one of his aims in publishing it that “the public Curiosity” may be excited and so encourage the women he mentions to have their works printed.3 Similarly, Richardson liked to emphasise that his debates with women were meant to encourage them to voice their own thoughts:

When I love my correspondents, I write treatises, you know, Madam, rather than letters. What care I for that, if I can but whet, but stimulate ladies, to shew what they are able to do, and how fit they are to be intellectual, as well as domestic, companions to men of the best sense! (Sabor, Correspondence 153; Dec. 1750, to Lady Bradshaigh)

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