ABSTRACT
One of the most emotionally charged scenes in Samuel Richardson's 1747-8 novel Clarissa opens with an improvised trial. The eighteen-year old paragon of virtue and beauty, Clarissa Harlowe, is accused of bribing a maid in order to escape from the London brothel where she has been kept prisoner. The 'jury' consists of the brothel's keeper, Mrs. Sinclair, and her presumed nieces, Sally and Polly. The prosecutor is Mr. Lovelace, the story's charismatic villain, who had first tricked Clarissa into leaving her family and running away with him and then, after she refused to become his mistress, drugged and raped her (with the assistance of Mrs. Sinclair and her girls). Though the trial is a sham - the bribed maid acted on Lovelace's precise instructions - the jury is 'resolved to punish the fair briberess' (948), and the punishment will be real enough. Lovelace hopes to ratchet up the 'courtroom' passions to such a pitch that in the wake of the violent accusations and counter-accusations, struggle, and swoonings, another rape would naturally follow.
