ABSTRACT
Since all happy families are perhaps boringly alike, amatory fiction requires domestic strife. Passion breeds isolation and turns individuals upon themselves; the plot’s recurring motion is the dramatic unraveling of those bonds and loyalties that should sustain domestic relationships. Sexual desire separates individuals from a social self defined by obligations and reciprocities, a self that should be rooted in institutions, in custom and tradition, expressed not in exalted passion but in those visible, external, concrete property relationships that for eighteenthcentury British society signify identity and status. And much amatory fiction, even Richardson’s, also effectively isolates readers, who are offered vicarious involvement with suffering individuals and are encouraged first and foremost to exercise sympathy and enjoy participation before judging or considering critically.
