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with Clarissa and needs to work himself up into the state of mind of the injured bridegroom; that is, he needs to temporarily forget that he himself is the source of his representation, "I am an injured bridegroom." Hoivever, we get no direct textual evidence of his nervousness, and all we see instead is a manfully committed to his version of reality. Richardson explicitly and brilliantly articulates here, for the first time in Western literary history, the mental stance of the stalker. This stance is crucially bound with the stalker's tendency to eliminate himself as a source of his representation, "She loves me and she wants me, but she is coy and she is hurting me by her excessive coyness, so she needs to be punished and then

forgiven," and instead perceive this representation as an objective reflection of what is going on.]

The chariot at the door!—I come! I come!—

[Lovelace is fully in his role of an eager bridegroom on the way to attend his beloved, who, he is joyfully confident, will soon make everything right between them.]

I attend you, good captain— Indeed, sir—

[This is MacDonald speaking.]

Pray, sir—civility is not ceremony.

[We infer from this exchange that Lovelace is treatiyig the fake Captain with an exaggerated courtesy, perhaps bowing and politely inviting him to walk through the door before himself. Had MacDonald been who he and Lovelace pretend he is—a respectable gentleman who does not approve of Lovelace's libertine ways but has to deal with him to oblige his old friend, Antony Harlowe—Lovelace's humble behavior would have made some sense. Given, however, that Lovelace is a rich aristocrat and MacDonald a proscribed criminal, sold to Lovelace soul and body, Lovelace's obeisance looks decidedly out of place. It is possible that Lovelace is ironic, but, considering the overall tone of the scene, it is also possible that the fictitious scenario that he has created has temporarily replaced a?iy other reality for him.]

And now, dressed like a bridegroom, my heart elated beyond that of the most desiring one (attended by a footman whom my beloved never saw), I am already at Hampstead! (761)

This last sentence introduces an interesting variation on Lovelace's delusional reasoning. Lovelace is still stubbornly treating his own fantasy of the passionate romance between him and Clarissa as a true representation of reality. At the same time, his interjection about the footman whom his "beloved" never saw shows that he is aware that Clarissa will not be happy to see her "bridegroom" at all. Lovelace knows that the moment she saw her torturer's servant at Hampstead, she would flee again—hence his precaution about taking along the man she has never met. As any successful stalker, Lovelace thus retains some ability to see the world through the eyes of his victim, even though on a certain level his capacity for monitoring the source of his representations is compromised. And, contrary to what we often assume, seeing the world through another's eyes does not necessarily translate (it certainly does not in Lovelace's case!) into feeling compassion for that person. As cognitive psychologist Robert W. Mitchell observes in a related argument about the relationship between a successful deceiver and his/her victim:

Surprisingly, such ability to take the part of the other demonstrated in acumen need not result in any sympathetic or compassionate response to another's turmoil at being deceived. The deceiver can invent reasons why the other deserves to be deceived even while the deceiver recognizes that

10: Richardon's Clarissa

the victim would be psychologically better off without the deception. So the same imaginative propensity which allows someone to take the perspective of the other also allows the person to imagine the other from a perspective which discounts the other's perspective.6

Though coming from a different research angle, Mitchell's observation about the possibility of a "perspective which discounts the other's perspective" is compatible with the present argument about the "selectively compromised"