Clarissa; or, Rake Versus Usurer

This paper applies "interest," as a dominant eighteenth-century model of human nature, to Richardson's Clarissa; it proceeds to explore the construction of a new ethics of sexual relationship in the novel by focusing on the homology between usury and libertinism as two kinds of speculation judged immoral due to absence of risk. Clarissa's economic language reveals her to be an astute exegete of her culture's politics and enables her to redress the sexual imbalance of risk; Lovelace, by contrast, troubles the assumptions of the "interest" paradigm by subscribing to an aristocratic economy of expenditure that is at odds with the economic prudence of the bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie · Economics · Epistemology · Law and economics · Odds · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Prudence · Redress · Sociology · Speculation · Theology · Usury · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Mathematics · Philosophy · Finance