Onegin et al.

[Tatyana Buzina]

The 
>classic (Freudian) psychoanalytic explanation of Don Juanish behavior is 
>that it affords indirect homosexual contact ('bridge effect') with the 
>other men with whom all those women have sexual relations.  

If I understand this explanation correctly, then it's largely inapplicable to Lovelace for sheer technicality: he seems to have particularly enjoyed seducing virgins which effectively precludes any bridge effect. Or does it work forward, too? I mean, if Lovelace presumes Clarissa to go on whoring and offering her body to anybody willing, does having sex with her represent "virtual" sex with her future lovers? 
The later explanation concerning narcissism seems more appropriate but what kind of worth are we talking about? Richardson has Lovelace think that every woman is at heart a whore, and by seducing them, Lovelace proves it. Clarissa refutes his theory since for her, the loss of virtue equals the loss of life, and she dies a few months after being raped by Lovelace. Does proving woman's ultimate hunger for sex equal Lovelace's demonstrating his own sexual prowess time and again? Richardson strives for the spiritual explanation behind the carnal. Would it be fair to Richardson to turn the tables on him and posit the carnal as the ultimate explanation for the spiritual? I guess here I am going back to what Edward Dumanis repeatedly and justly wrote about different interpretations of literary texts and their relation to the authorial intention, however tentatively we might establish that. I would also join him in arguing that any approach is interesting and fruitful, as long as we remember which is which (for instance, if we read Vyacheslav Ivanov on Dostoevsky as first and foremost Vyacheslav Ivanov on Vyacheslav Ivanov). 

Regards,
Tatyana

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