Lovelace abducts Clarissa (Clarissa, Nourse 1751, fig10) - Eisen

Lovelace leads Clarissa away from the family estate to the carriage he has prepared to take her away. Clarissa follows him, frightened by the cries of Leman: Lovelace's accomplice, he pretends that the Harlowe family is arriving and feigns chasing the couple. Lovelace has drawn his sword to oppose his enemies; Clarissa turns back towards the door (CH1985, pp. 379-380; CH1999I, pp. 540-541, p. 570).
Here, Eisen spectacularly demonstrates his discomfort in ordering a stage space whose classical structure has been deconstructed in a way: he cannot oppose the two sides of a wall behind which there is actually nothing (in fact, no one is pursuing Clarissa; it is a trap, a set-up); yet the wall fundamentally structures the stage design, even in this scene where it does not really oppose an outside and an inside. Based more or less on a detail in the text, ‘the corner of a wall [which] prevented me from seeing’ mentioned by Clarissa, Eisen therefore imagines dividing the stage between the cries of the fake servant on the left and the carriage waiting for the fugitives on the right, making the interior space of the Harlowe park an impossible space, caught between two almost contiguous walls.