ABSTRACT
Although the psychological parallelism between Lovelace and Clarissa has been previously examined, their analogous sexual identifications have received only brief attention. 1 From Clarissa's threats of suicide and Lovelace's anesthetized rape of her, to her drawn out death and funeral and Lovelace's desire for her exquisite corpse, Samuel Richardson continually points us to the however-unpleasant realization that the sexual taboo Clarissa and Lovelace share is death-in-sex. In fact, Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady (1747–1748) can be seen as Richardson's own courtship of death: the novel is riddled with descriptions and imagery equating desire with death, and is ultimately devoted to painting a protracted portrait of Clarissa's beautiful demise. But the powerful theme of desire in death goes much beyond the protracted rape and deathbed scenes—it actually marries the notorious antagonists. It is precisely at the point where sex and death are linked that Lovelace and Clarissa themselves conjoin.
