Language In Clarissa, Evelina And Pride And Prejudice

politics of propertied power well into the nineteenth
century (37-38) . Rita Goldberg notes that those
eighteenth-century families owning the most property were
often the most politically powerful. It is Goldberg's
view that many of these families aspired to that kind of
power (53). Richardson provides the Harlowes as an
example of one of those families.
Lovelace and His Legacy
Richardson complicates further his already
convoluted plot with Robert Lovelace. A master of legal
language, more so him than the Harlowe men, Lovelace is a
consummate inheritor. Unlike the Harlowe men who depend
on a woman's inheritance and title to found their family,
Lovelace depends on his wealth coming directly from minor
aristocracy. His description is couched in terms of
inheritance. He was, "unused it seems from childhood to
check or control-a case too common in considerable
families," who "received from everyone those civilities
which were due to his birth" (L3 46). Later still, he is
described as a "generous landlord" choosing to "limit
himself to an annual sum," declining even equipage and
carriage in order to keep himself out of debt to his