It has become so easy to celebrate the superiority of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa over his early, less mature Pamela that recognition for the sophistication and vision of the early novel must be rescued. M. Kinkead-Weekes notes that between the writing of Pamela and the writing of Clarissa "there is much evidence of technical development," but considers "the moral and spiritual concerns of the novels . . . remarkably similar."' In The Rape of Clarissa, Terry Eagleton diminishes Pamela to