Why We Read Fiction_ Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine [55]
Of course, this is by definition an impoverished and frequently quite wrong ascription of Clarissa's state of mind. In this particular case, Clarissa is blushing in response to Lovelace's lukewarm proposal not because she desperately wants to marry him—as a matter of fact, she doubts more and more that he would ever be able to make a suitable husband for her—but also because she is thinking of her friend Anna's most recent letter, in which Anna pragmatically advises her to take Lovelace up on his first word and marry him out of hand in order to avoid being censured by the world for eloping with a rake. Clarissa's blushing is indicative of a complex amalgam of feelings, for she is aware of the truth of Anna's advice, angry with herself for putting herself in such an ambiguous situation, and half-ashamed at realizing that, in spite of everything, she is still attracted to Lovelace.
It is only natural that Lovelace would have no access to these complex feelings—he is not, after all, telepathic—but what is more important is that by losing track of himself as the source of his representations of Clarissa's mind, he is foreclosing any potential for thinking that Clarissa may have complex feelings not accessible to him and thus subsequently revising his past misconceptions. By keeping track (that is, as much as we can, for sometimes it is not that simple) of ourselves as sources of our representations of other people's minds, we remain humbly aware of the possibility of making a mistake in our interpretation of their thoughts. So in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy can change for the best and deserve happiness with Elizabeth Bennet because he is aware of himself as the source of his misinterpretation of Jane Bennet's mind (i.e., his former belief that she did not really love his friend Mr. Bingley). By contrast, Lovelace does not correct, until it is too late, his readings of other people's states of mind—he would rather try to correct reality to fit his delusions.
Any manifestly successful instance of mind-reading then becomes a trap for the person whose ability to keep track of himself as a source of his representations of other people's mental stances is somewhat compromised. Although I am not interested in diagnosing Lovelace as mildly schizophrenic, I do want to apply here, albeit tentatively and perhaps more metaphorically than literally, Friths suggestion that the reason schizophrenic patients go on reading minds even though they do it all wrong is
10: Richardon's Clarissa
that, unlike patients with autism, who have never had a chance to attribute mental states to people around them, schizophrenics "know well from past experiences that it is useful and easy to infer the mental states of others [and] will go on doing this even when the mechanism no longer works properly."5 Lovelace's dangerous propensity to ignore himself as the source of his representations of Clarissa's mind and instead perceive these representations as accurate reflections of her mental stances is so persistent because it gets positive reinforcement on the occasions when he does read her mind quite correctly, as so happens, for example, in the above-discussed episode of Miss Partington as Clarissa's intended bedfellow. Like schizophrenic patients—and, again, I am using this comparison guardedly—Lovelace knows from his "past experiences" that he can be very perceptive in inferring mental states of others and has clearly benefited from doing so in his endeavor to seduce one virgin after another. With these memories of past and present successes alive in his mind, he will continue to treat his interpretations of other people's mental states as objectively true, even if this strategy backfires again and again in his relationship with Clarissa and finally makes any amicable communication between them impossible.
(b) Enter the Reader
At this point, we have to start considering