Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1747)

I read this thing in its epistolary-entirety over the summer before learning that only sections of it were assigned. I think I got a bit more out of it than my classmates and was impressed by how the character of Lovelace overpowered Richardson. ( )

More than any other book I write about, I feel in no way qualified to give an opinion on Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. Where do I start?

Firstly, this is a long novel. The Penguin Classics edition is 1,499 pages long. The font is very small and the pages are quite large. This reproduces Richardson's original version of Clarissa as first published in several volumes in 1747 and 1748. Richardson seemed to revise this original text quite heavily and some later editions have another 200 pages added. I think the free ebook versions use the longer, later texts but I'm not sure.

Secondly, if you decide to read Clarissa you'll need to get rid of all our 21st century and 20th century ideas about what a novel is or should be. This book is long and, most of the time, nothing happens. Even when something does happen, you don't get to read about it happening: Clarissa is an epistolary novel (written in the form of letters) so you only get to read about events through the characters' letters after they've happened.

Thirdly, do not attempt the Pearl rule* (or, if you do, you'll need to increase the Pearl rule by at least a factor of 10). I found it took me quite a long time to adapt to the style of writing and the pace and I struggled most in the first 500 pages. I found it really started to get going somewhere around the 700 page mark and the last 500 pages flew by.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to quote Samuel Johnson who said Clarissa was 'the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart'. With all the books published in the 250+ years since Clarissa was first brought out I can see there could be some uncertainty about Clarissa still being the first book but I would definitely argue for it being in the top ten. The characters are not all pleasant, but they are all real and they all have different voices and styles in the letters they write. I think that must be difficult enough to do in what we think of as a normal length novel, surely it must be harder when you have to sustain this across almost 1,500 pages?

Finally, I should note that Clarissa is not going to be a book for everyone (and that's ok). It's long and not much happens. Clarissa herself spends most of the novel in various unpleasant situations and that's difficult to read about - most of my struggles at the beginning of the novel were because it felt very emotionally claustrophobic. It is often described as boring and there is justification for that. I disagree (quite strongly I think) but I can understand why people find it boring. To quote Samuel Johnson again, 'if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself'. That's (thankfully) a bit of an exaggeration but there was a lot of frustration expressed on the group read thread.

I felt rather uncertain about rating Clarissa. In the end I gave it 5 stars because it's so memorable - I'm sure the book and the characters will stay with me for a long time and also because on finishing it, I found myself thinking that this would really reward rereading (not going to happen soon though) and it's rare that I think that on finishing a book. I would definitely say I enjoyed my experience of reading Clarissa, although there were points when I struggled. I'm pleased and sad to have finished reading it and I don't think there's higher praise to give a novel than to say I felt sad to have no more left to read. Recommended, with caution.

*The Pearl rule, courtesy of Nancy Pearl, says "If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages." ( )

Yes, it's the longest novel ever written (in the English language). Read it with a small group back in grad school for a class on Libertine literature, but as far as I know, Brian Bates and myself were the only ones to stick to it and finish it, and the others were not even apologetic about it. I could say a lot about this novel, but nothing that others have not already noted. I liked the book, and felt a kind of catharsis at having made it to the end (and not in way as a reaction to the narrative). Alongside it, I read Terry Eagleton's The Rape of Clarissa, and remember my professor saying once that people in her field were offended that Eagleton had "dive bombed" in their territory. I'm still awestruck by the how Richardson represented Clarissa's trauma through fragmented sentences scattered on the page. But overall, the book is disturbing for how Richardson attempts some ambiguity concerning the role Clarissa plays in her own rape, and there is much haunting subtext concerning the material and monetary cost of Lovelaces' attempts to seduce Clarissa-- where the rape becomes "cutting losses." I'll never read it again, of course.

I read Clarissa as part of the 75ers group read of the novel for 2012, and mostly kept to the plan of just reading each day's letters on that day (thus stretching the reading out pretty much over the course of the year). But i got a bit impatient at the end, and finished the last ninety pages or so at one go (so, from 15 September onward). That said, I'm glad I read the book this way, since I am fairly certain I wouldn't have made it very far had I just plunged in and tried to read it straight through.

The plot is simple: virtuous young woman's family tries to force her into marriage with a most unpleasant chap; she rebels and gets suckered into running off with libertine Lovelace, whose main gain is seduction. That accomplished, Clarissa declines and ultimately dies. The story is told through letters, mainly but not exclusively between Clarissa and her friend Anna Howe and Lovelace and his friend John Belford.

Not a whole lot happens for incredibly long stretches of time: months and hundreds of pages pass with Clarissa shut up in her room trying to get her family to quit trying to marry her off against her will, and then hundreds more pages as she lingers at death's door. Instances of anything much actually happening are few and far between. But, as Richardson points out in a postscript, these long stretches "are the foundation of the whole ... The letters and conversations, where the story makes the slowest progress, are presumed to be characteristic. They give occasion likewise to suggest many interesting personalities, in which a good deal of the instruction essential to a work of this nature is conveyed."

Reading it as I did, a bit at a time, does much, as Richardson suggests, to "preserve and maintain that air of probability, which is necessary to be maintained in a story designed to represent real life; and which is rendered extremely busy and active by the plots and contrivances formed and carried on by one of the principal characters." If you do tackle it, I'd recommend trying it this way.

It's interesting to watch some of the characters evolve over the course of the book through their letters, and the view of English society at the time is fascinating. It's certainly no easy slog to get through, though. ( )

This is a 1500 page beast of a book, told through a series of letters (such a quantity of letters, indeed, that one wonders how Clarissa ever managed to find the time to do anything else!). I have a slight knowledge of the story from an old BBC adaptation of the book, starring Saskia Wickham, with Sean Bean as the wicked Lovelace. In the past I've been delighted to read 18th century novels that are often far less prolix than Victorian ones, but Clarissa is clearly an exception.

Clarissa is, as far as I'm aware, the longest novel in the English language. There is no getting away from the fact that, at some 1500 pages, it's a book that demands a great deal from the reader, not least in terms of the amount of time s/he is prepared to devote to it. One is hardly encouraged by Samuel Johnson's famous comment that, "[I]f you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself." The plot, indeed, is so simple that until you read the novel it's hard to see how Richardson managed to stretch it out to 1500 pages: a beautiful but virtuous woman of good family excites the jealousy of family members when she is made heir to her grandfather's estate. Clarissa's parents try to force her to marry Roger Solmes, whom Clarissa cannot stand. Banished to her room until she agrees to marry Solmes, she enters into correspondence with the known rake Lovelace. He tricks her into fleeing with him to London. Lovelace has one aim only - to seduce Clarissa.

The whole novel is told through a series of letters - notably Clarissa's to her dearest friend, Anna Howe, and Lovelace's to his fellow rake, Belford. Although very little happens in the novel for great stretches of time, the epistolary nature of the novel affords the reader a great deal of insight into the minds of the characters (although the reader should of course bear in mind that people aren't necessarily being entirely honest, or 'themselves', in letters - one is always aware of the sensibilities of the person to whom the letter is addressed).

As Jennie Batchelor puts it, "the reader is drawn into an intensely claustrophobic world". It is actually quite an extraordinary achievement, the depth with which Richardson explores the 18th mores concerning sexuality, duty, and family dynamics. Worth reading, then, purely as a social document, but also for the exploration of character, particularly Clarissa's and Lovelace's.

Clarissa herself can be a little hard to swallow - virtuous, dutiful, religious, and - in all honesty - rather humourless. However, she is an 18th century woman, a product of her time. The reader should never forget that for a woman to 'fall' was a hugely serious matter, and that a woman's virtue was something she must protect at all costs - particularly, of course, if she was of a 'good family'. I enjoyed the first batch of Lovelace's letters - they have an immediacy, his character has a vibrancy, an aliveness; but further on it is hard to square his obvious charm with his cold-blooded desire to seduce Clarissa - with or without her consent. He has little respect for the female sex, and his claims to love Clarissa sound hollow taken in the context of his ruthlessness where she is concerned.

Much of the last several hundred pages are devoted to Clarissa's physical decline, death, and the repentence of her family. It's never made clear what, exactly, causes Clarissa's fatal illness - at one point she's described as dying from grief, but that surely isn't entirely plausible. There are a couple of hints that she might have been pregant - in two letters she is asked outright if she is pregant, and she avoids answering the question. Richardson couldn't have her overtly willing herself to death (to do so would be un-Christian), but it's very clear that she welcomes death, indeed encourages it. Consumption? Deliberate starvation? Such suggestions have been made, but don't entirely convince. I suppose ultimately we just have to accept that Clarissa does, indeed, die from grief.

Although a part of me got annoyed with Clarissa's death-wish, it seems fairly clear from reading the text that - after the rape - her position in society is a difficult one. Although rape was at the time a capital offence, it's clear that many of the characters do not treat the crime with a great deal of seriousness. Even her dearest friend, Anna Howe, urges Clarissa to marry Lovelace. If she refuses to marry him, it seems her only options are either to go abroad, where she can no longer disgrace her family, or die.

[May 2008]