The Prison of Perspective: Narrative Containment in Johnson’s Rasselas and Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard
In the intellectual landscape of the eighteenth century, the concepts of confinement, freedom, and the subjective self were deeply intertwined. Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) and Alexander Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard (1717) serve as profound meditations on the limits of human agency. While Rasselas presents an expansive, philosophical inquiry into the “choice of life,” and Eloisa to Abelard captures an intense, claustrophobic emotional journey, both texts converge on a shared realization: that human happiness is often trapped within the borders of one’s own perception. By examining Rasselas’s search for purpose and Eloisa’s strategic reconstruction of her past, this paper argues that both protagonists find their agency constrained not by external walls, but by the narratives they construct to justify their existence.
The Illusion of Choice in the Happy Valley
In Rasselas, the Happy Valley represents the ultimate Enlightenment fantasy: a space where desire is neutralized through total fulfillment. However, Johnson utilizes this setting to demonstrate that the absence of external limitation leads only to internal decay. Rasselas’s desire to escape is not born of a specific goal but of a generalized, pervasive discontent. As he famously remarks, “I am pained with want, but am not satisfied with fullness” (Johnson 48).
Rasselas’s subsequent journey serves as a structural critique of the Enlightenment belief that reason can perfect the human condition. Every encounter he has—with the hermit, the astronomer, and the scholar—proves that no “choice of life” is free from inevitable suffering. Johnson’s genius lies in showing that Rasselas’s mobility is merely a change of prison; he replaces the physical cage of the Happy Valley with the intellectual cage of perpetual, unsatisfied inquiry. The freedom he seeks is an illusion because the “want” he experiences is an inherent, unresolvable component of the human mind.
Eloisa as a Strategic Architect of Self
Where Rasselas is a seeker of external truths, Eloisa in Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard is a strategist of internal emotion. Eloisa is physically contained by the convent, but she exerts a powerful form of agency through the act of writing. Her letter to Abelard is not a simple plea for reconciliation; it is a carefully curated archive of her own suffering. By emphasizing the intensity of her “stubborn” heart, she maneuvers between spiritual duty and secular desire.
Eloisa’s strategic storytelling serves as a defensive mechanism. By framing her history as a tragic, monumental romance, she elevates her confinement to a status of moral superiority. She refuses to allow the convent to define her; instead, she defines herself through her refusal to forget. As Pope writes, “The crime was common, common be the pain” (104). By externalizing her guilt and projecting her narrative onto Abelard, she transforms her enclosure into a theater of individual expression. Her choice is not to escape, but to remain in the prison of her memory, which she makes more vibrant and “real” than the spiritual life expected of her.
Confluence of Confinement
The narrative commonality between these two works lies in the failure of the “outside” to resolve the conflict of the “inside.” Rasselas seeks the world to find himself, only to find the same vanity of wishes everywhere. Eloisa retreats from the world to save herself, only to find that the world—in the form of Abelard—is already etched into her psyche.
Both texts imply that the “choice of life” is inherently paradoxical. For the Enlightenment subject, the freedom to choose is accompanied by the burden of knowing that every choice entails a loss. Whether in the vast, open world of Rasselas or the singular, confined cell of Eloisa, the protagonists realize that their internal narratives are the true architects of their captivity. Their struggle is ultimately with the realization that the self is an archive that cannot be easily rewritten.
Conclusion
Samuel Johnson and Alexander Pope present characters who are, in different ways, forced to confront the limits of their own perspective. Rasselas learns that the world cannot satisfy a soul built for endless pursuit, while Eloisa learns that the memory of desire can override the vows of the spirit. Through these narratives, both authors challenge the audience to consider whether true agency is found in the outward movement of the world or in the inward understanding of one’s own, often self-imposed, limitations.
Works Cited
Johnson, Samuel. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. Edited by Jack Lynch, 2008. Jack Lynch’s Webpage, https://jacklynch.net/Texts/rasselas.html. Accessed 7 Mar. 2026.
Pope, Alexander. “Eloisa to Abelard.” The Poems of Alexander Pope, edited by John Butt, Yale University Press, 1963.
“Eloisa to Abelard Poem Analysis.” SuperSummary, 2024, https://www.supersummary.com/eloisa-to-abelard/analysis/. Accessed 7 Mar. 2026.
Narrative containment and the self in 18th Century Literature
