Clarissa Group Read, Year 2

In 2012, a group of readers took on Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Clarissa in "real time"--meaning they were reading with the declared goal of reading each letter according to the date it was written. I tried to do the same, but owing to a genealogy class which caused me to abandon all of my reading for a period of 15 weeks, I found myself hopelessly behind schedule and soon became a Group of One.

I started this book last January, and I'm now (end of 2012) almost halfway through the book, reading the Penguin edition with the 5-point type and 1499 pages. I'm definitely hoping it won't take me another year to complete the book.

Rather than reading the book in real time, I would recommend a different strategy: the book lends itself to a reasonable amount of reading if read over one semester's period of time--15 weeks at 100 pages per week. If anyone is interested in reading this book, the longest book ever published in the English language, that is what I would recommend. However, be advised that a pace of 100 pages in the Penguin edition per week will require dedication, to say the least. I would add that I've been trying to read this same 100 pages per week--without success. However, the goal is a reasonable one, and continuing to try to meet that goal has kept me progressing through the novel.

I will use this thread to post comments about my reactions to what I'm reading. If you're interested in reviewing the 2012 group read thread, you can find it here.

If you've read Clarissa sometime in the past, or if you're reading it now, or if you feel like you might want to read the book in the future, please feel free to post any thoughts you have on this thread.

Hello!

with the declared goal of reading each letter according to the date it was written
What a wonderful idea! A shame you got sidetracked by RL, but still, you always have next year to try again. And any way you read it, it is an achievement in itself. Go you~!

I've added a new organizational thread for group reads (and added it to the group wiki). I've posted this to the organizational thread and added it to the joint wiki as well. Hope it goes well for you!

>3 drneutron:. Thanks very much, Jim.

>2 LovingLit:. Well, I honestly wouldn't recommend trying to read this book in real time, unless a person has pretty much unlimited flexibility in their time for reading. For example, I'm into the end of May letters right now, which are found not quite halfway through the book (the letters go from January to December), and if I remember correctly, the whole month of February is skipped. The letters also weave in and out, from different correspondents, going back and forth between earlier and later letters. So you'll be reading along for May 29 and all of a sudden there's one that goes back to May 20--that sort of thing. So if a person is reading them this way for the reason of imposing some sort of order on the book, then they may feel quite disappointed.

Another way of planning this read is to use the Table of Letters, found in the Penguin Classics editiion, and make a chart for your reading. That way a person wouldn't be surprised by 7 letters and 50 pages for one or two days, for example.

I think the ideal way to read the book would be in a class which is devoted to just this book--100 pages per week, 15 weeks. I know of at least one professor who teaches the book that way, and evidently the class is popular enough that she teaches it quite often. If someone tries to read this with a reading group where there is no particular consequence for not finishing that week's reading ("consequence" meaning a grade or whatever), then I would imagine the group would have a lot of dropouts. That's what happened with last year's Clarissa group--either people dropped out or they were reduced to "skimming" the book, which seems to me perhaps worse than not reading it at all--although evidently some actually finished the book. Of course if a person is fortunate enough to belong to a reading group that has been reading together for a long time, and the group is looking for a real challenge, then, at least in my opinion, Clarissa would be ideal.

Having said all that about the length, etc., I would add that I really love this book, and I don't think that people should let themselves get too twisted up about the length. Probably everyone has read a "series" which involves multiple volumes and the same characters. We usually don't add up all the pages for those, or at least I don't. I wish Penguin had published this book in a multiple-volume boxed set. I think in that format it would be a much more popular, palatable read. The edition I'm reading with the tiny Penguin Classics font and huge doorstop one-volume format isn't ideal, to say the least.

Making the rounds of the various threads here and found this one. I was thinking of tackling Clarissa in 2013 as part of my epistolary category for my 2013 Category Challenge, so I am so happy to have stumbled over here! I will still consider reading it but keep in mind that I will probably have the reading span more than one year - RL (and work) just won't take too kindly to being back-burnered by Richardson's huge tome!

Thread is starred and I look forward to following the further discussion here!

I've also starred the thread... I do want to read Clarissa some time, but I'm still a bit uncertain as to whether I want to try reading it this year, or leave it for some other time. So, I'll just ponder that for a bit longer :/

>5 lkernagh:,6. Lori and Britt--so glad you're here. I would warn you that you should expect these posts at times to have "plot spoilers"; however, as people who read this book in 2012 pointed out in nearly every post, the book's plot isn't complicated nor is it what most people read this for (there was a lot written on that thread about "nothing happening").

Today I finally hit the halfway mark in the Penguin Classic monster edition of Clarissa. I find it, in a somewhat schizophrenic way, both satisfying and also exasperating to be officially in the second half of the book at the start of my second year of reading the thing.

Finally, finally, the scales have fallen from Anna Howe's eyes (Anna Howe, the other side of the Clarissa correspondence and Clarissa's most loyal friend); she finally sees that Lovelace is a villain. She's very upset to be writing her "intelligences" to Clarissa: "I write, perhaps, with too much violence to be clear. But I cannot help it." She is also being closely watched by her mother, since naturally her mother is concerned about Anna's continued friendship and correspondence with Clarissa. There's another interruption from her mother, as she writes, as when "she comes poking in with her face sharpened to an edge, as I may say, by a curiosity that gives her more pain than pleasure.--The Lord forgive me; but I believe I shall huff her next time she comes in."

Anna Howe continues to be my favorite character in the book. Now that Clarissa has been secreted away by Lovelace in a "devilish house," the letters between the two young women are few and far between. Most of the letters in this section are from Lovelace to his friend John Belford. The reason we are reading this one letter from Anna Howe is because it has been intercepted by Lovelace: "a letter from Miss Howe. . . . {Lovelace says that he} made no scruple to open it. It is a miracle that I fell not into fits at the reading of it. Oh this devilish Miss Howe!--Something must be resolved upon, and done with that little fury!"

What fascinates me, however, is that although Anna Howe has discovered for certain that Lovelace is the "worst of villains," she continues to encourage her friend to marry the rake. Obviously it's necessary to know something about the 18th century gentlewoman's concept of marriage in order to be able to understand why Anna Howe would encourage marriage with such a devilish man.

I'm one of those who started last year trying to read in Real Time and fell behind. I have skimmed some sections but still manage to read 'properly' some of the time. I won't give up as, having expended so much effort already, I'm determined to finish. I've got this thread starred and will be interested to follow others' progress.

Hi Kerry! Great to see you here. As someone who has actually read/is reading this book, please feel free to add any thoughts you might have. I'd be interested to know where you are in the book?

>7 labwriter:. It would probably be helpful when reading this book to understand something about the Marriage Act of 1753, also known as "The Clandestine Marriage Bill of 1753." Clarissa was published in multiple volumes, and the first appeared in December of 1747. Obviously the book was written before the law was passed; however, this must have been something that was under discussion when Richardson was writing the book. Before its passage, the law provoked "one of the most heated debates of the eighteenth century" in the House of Commons (this comes from "Clarissa and the Marriage Act," an article written by Mary Vermillion and published in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 9, Issue 4).

Under the act, verbal promises of marriages were no longer considered binding. Clandestine marriage had been on the increase, and the intent of the act was to make these marriages illegal. Lovelace sounds like he was the type of man that the law was directly aimed at: a rake who would promise marriage and then desert the woman when she became pregnant. That was Lovelace's history; however, when he went after Clarissa, he was aiming at a higher-class woman. Young women of Clarissa's class would be kidnapped by fortune hunters and then forced to marry secretly, and then the marriage would be recognized as a lawful marriage--and then of course any estate that she might be entitled to would go to her husband.

The law was focused on young women under the age of 21, making marriage before that age illegal without parental consent. Richardson was an advocate for parents' rights to veto their minor childrens' marriage choices; however, he also criticized the landed elite's abuse of undue pressure to restrict their children's marriage choices. Especially since Clarissa is under the age of 21, his book makes more sense if it is read with the controversy in mind.

Here's an excellent website about eighteenth-century British marriage with information about many of the issues Richardson was writing about.

I'm near the beginning of Volume 4 (of 9); the next letter, from Clarissa to Miss Howe, is dated Sunday 30th April. She has left her parents' house and is under Lovelace's 'protection' in lodgings.

Although I have read a fair number of modern historical and contemporary novels I think this period is under-represented and I do find it hard to appreciate the social niceties of the time, in that I'm not really sure what is usual behaviour for Clarissa's social station and what is her own peculiar fastidiousness.

ETA: you were writing #10 as I was writing this! I shall read up on it.

>11 CDVicarage:. One of my frustrations with the Penguin Classics edition (one of several frustrations) is that it doesn't indicate volume breaks. The letters are numbered, and of course most of them are dated. Does you edition also number the letters?

I guess I read something about it before I started, but I don't even know which edition of Richardson's work the Penguin Classics used. I'm only mentioning this because at one time I assumed that there was one edition of the book, but then I found out that there were actually several that Richardson worked on in his lifetime.

Mine is a free kindle edition from Project Gutenberg, also available from Amazon. The letters are numbered but the numbering starts from one with each volume.

I'm continuing on with Clarissa at a pace of something around 10 pages per day. I managed almost 50 pages while I was without the internet at the fishing lodge--not bad, although I had hoped to do more.

I'm at page 826/1499 in the Penguin edition. Clarissa has run away from Mrs. Sinclair's house and has been found by Lovelace living at Mrs. Moore's. This whole section at Mrs. Moore's is a confusing mash of deceit coming from Lovelace. He disguises himself, he lies to Mrs. Moore, he has friends impersonating people who pretend to be emissaries from Clarissa's uncle, he intercepts letters from Miss Howe and re-writes them before Clarissa sees them to change their meaning. Through it all he keeps Mrs. Moore's head spinning, trying to figure out whether it is Lovelace or Clarissa who is telling the truth. I think today Lovelace would be defined as a sociopath. He's a smooth operator, able to pull the wool over people's eyes, and at the same time he has no moral compass. In the 18th century, Lovelace is a serial sexual predator; if he were living in the 21st century, he would most probably be a serial killer, something along the lines of a Ted Bundy.

Some musings on the editions, then and now, of Clarissa.

The Penguin edition of Clarissa that I'm reading (the one-volume paperback doorstop published in 1985) is the complete text of the first edition (C1) of Richardson's book. The first edition was published as seven volumes given out in three installments during the twelve months from December 1747 to December 1748. I'm hugely annoyed at the Penguin people for not at least indicating where the volume breaks occur.

Richardson put out a second edition of the novel (C2) which included a Table of Contents at the beginning of the first volume. In the third and final edition (C3), he distributed the TOC between the ends of the other volumes. This TOC is excluded from the Penguin edition because it is based on C1. In its place, the editor has added a Table of Letters at the end of the book, listing the letter numbers, headings, and dates.

The Penguin edition also includes a Glossary of Words and Phrases that would be unfamiliar to readers today.

Several people in the 2012 group who read the book together evidently read the Kindle edition (although that shouldn't be confused with the Project Gutenberg edition, also available from Amazon). What I'm trying to do is to figure out which edition the Kindle version is based on. At this point, while I'm not sure of what edition it is, I am sure of what edition it's not--the Kindle edition is not based on the first edition, C1.

Kindle edition: Contains a list of NAMES OF THE PRINCIPAL PERSONS. Example: "MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, a young lady of great beauty and merit."

Penguin edition: Contains a list of THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS. Example: "MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, a young lady of great delicacy, mistress of all the accomplishments, natural and acquired, that adorn the sex, having the strictest notions of filial duty."

Where does "beauty and merit" come from? That couldn't be said to be an abridgement of Richardson's work, since the description uses completely different words. So does the rest of this version of the book--what I'm calling the Kindle edition--change Richardson's words??

The Kindle edition is divided into Volumes. Evidently the letters in each volume are given Roman numeral numbers, but the numbers start over with "I" at the beginning of each volume. Since I haven't bought this edition for my Kindle, I'm not able to see how many letters are contained in each volume.

This is one of the real problems I have with these "classic" Kindle editions. What edition have they used? There's at least one abridgement of Richardson's novel that I know of--is that what this one is based on? The "print length" of the Kindle edition is 864 pages. My Penguin edition, with the very small font, is 1499 pages. Therefore, there is literally no way that the Kindle edition could be the complete edition as published by Richardson.

So . . . anyone reading the Kindle edition who was bitterly complaining of this book's "great length"--I think you were reading approximately half or maybe even one third of what Richardson published, although I'm pretty sure that no one cares all that much. However, if you are interested in getting Richardson's complete novel, then I recommend the Penguin Classics edition. And shame on Amazon for not clearly indicating the parentage of their bastardized edition.

ETA to add that when I was in my senior year of an English lit degree, we read an abridgement of Clarissa by George Sherburn, published by Riverside Editions (Houghton Mifflin). From what I remember, that edition was about one-third the length of the orginal. However, in that abridgement there are no volume or letter numbers, so the Kindle version isn't taken from the Sherburn. I think the reason we read the abridgement was because it was a summer class and the professor took pity on us. But I remember loving the book so much that I ran out after the class was finished and bought my present Penguin edition--which only sat on my shelf for something like 15 years--ha.

ETA #2: I found a description of the $4.95 Kindle edition of Clarissa that discusses the Richetti and Bowers abridgement of the novel--one I've never heard of. That one is something around 800 pages, so maybe that's where the Kindle edition is from: "Eager to introduce rather than replace a masterpiece, Richetti and Bowers offer a practical classroom compromise to the familiar problem of Richardson's prolixity. Surely an abridgment of this magnitude—with its smart choice of the 1751 third edition as copy text, its accessible introduction and notes, and an appendix that resurrects important historical contexts—will tempt new generations of readers to consider, eventually, all of Clarissa."

I downloaded the nine kindle volumes from Project Gutenberg but I have now found another version (downloaded from MobileRead), divided into 7 volumes but using the same character descriptions as in your Penguin edition.

Would you like to compare? PG: total number of numbered letters over nine volumes is 538; MobileRead: total number over seven volumes is 520. Both also have various extra prefaces, conclusions etc

PG: Vol 1 - 44 letters, vol 2 - 48, Vol 3 - 62, vol 4 - 55, vol 5 - 36, vol 6 - 73, vol 7 - 85, vol 8 - 71, vol 9 - 64 = conclusion

MR: Vol 1 - 44, vol 2 - 46, vol 3 -79, vol 4 - 56, vol 5 - 62, vol 7 - 113 + conclusion.

Thanks so much! Yes, the Penguin edition has 537 numbered letters and 538 if you include the conclusion written by "Mr. Belford." So it seems, if you go by just the number of letters, the Penguin edition that I'm reading from matches the Project Gutenberg edition. However, there's a problem with that, since the Penguin is "a complete text of the first edition (C1)," but the first edition was published in seven volumes, not nine.

It almost seems as if these various versions are "mix and match." But thanks for your post, since now I'm fairly certain that the PG version and the Penguin are pretty much the same.

My Kindle edition came in a bundle with Pamela and it cost around 3 USD.

I am sure it was the 3rd version, with nine volumes, 538 letters + conclusion, the TOC between volumes + short preview of each letter, and I am sure with all those changes that depict Lovelace as 'really, really bad' and Clarissa as 'really really virtuous'. I read that there had been too many people sympathizing with Lovelace after reading the first edition, so Richardson saw the need to exaggerate a bit more on the characters to make people understand his intentions. In my edition it was impossible to misinterpret anything from a certain point in the story.

I always try to get complete and final editions, but sometimes you're trapped into abridged versions. I almost bought an abridged version of Les Misérables in German some days ago, because there was no hint of that in the description. Luckily I looked at the reviews first where some readers angrily complained about those concealed cuts. Now I bought a complete English translation.

Length issue: the problem for me was the reading by date, although that idea had seemed very appealing in the beginning. There were many days with 'too much book' where it was impossible to keep up and then there were long breaks again. And then the letters were often repetitive, I assume that's where Richardson added the changes to show the reader again and again how bad Lovelace/ how virtuous Clarissa was.

>18 Deern:. Hi Nathalie. I hate abridgements, especially, as you say, those that are either ambiguous about the changes or just plain say nothing. That's something I plan to be more careful about in the future when snagging books for my Kindle, particularly "classic" literature.

Richardsons's first edition (which I'm calling C1) was published in three sections: Vol. I and II appeared in Dec. 1747; III and IV came out in April, 1748; then V, VI, and VII were published in Dec. 1748.

He published C3 in 1751. The Introduction (not Richardson's introduction) to my Penguin edition says that C3 is actually 200 pages longer than C1--thus the nine volumes rather than seven. The Penguin editor says that the decision to use C1 was made "not because it was thought to be Richardson's 'real' intention later frustrated by his reactions to criticism, but because the first version is appreciably shorter, often livelier and, though the additions occasionally present worthwhile improvements, to a large extent the added material seems relatively inert." Anyone reading C3 has to suffer through (my editorial opinion) twice as much of Joseph Leman's "funny servant" writing, not to mention 200 extra pages. I'm very glad the Penguin went with C1.

Nathalie, I had the same issues you did with trying to read the letters by date, in real time. As you say, it sounds like a good idea, but we immediately, if I remember correctly, had a break of about 3 weeks or so in February, and that really threw me off. And then there are so many places where two or three days might be covered in two or three hundred pages. It just didn't work out for me.

At any rate, I'm back at it again after taking a couple of weeks off. And now, thanks to Kerry's post (#16), I've been able to figure out that I'm just now at the beginning of Volume 6/9. Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to find the C1 volume breaks for the original seven volumes. I'm sure there's a literary monograph out there somewhere that spells all of this out; I just haven't found it.

>18 Deern:. I read that there had been too many people sympathizing with Lovelace after reading the first edition, so Richardson saw the need to exaggerate a bit more on the characters to make people understand his intentions. In my edition it was impossible to misinterpret anything from a certain point in the story.

I've read that too, that one reason Richardson felt compelled to work on another edition is because readers were "too sympathetic" of Lovelace and that Richardson worked in later editions to "blacken" Lovelace's character. I've seen his character described as "dazzlingly mixed." The back cover of my Penguin edition describes him as "witty and debonair."

I can't for the life of me understand any of this. To me, Lovelace is a thoroughly vile character. I think I've said it here somewhere before, that if he were living in the 21st century, he would be considered to be a sociopath along the lines of a Ted Bundy. I just finished a letter (June 11) where he tells his friend Belford that he is under the necessity of committing "either speedy matrimony, or a rape." What about this is witty or mixed?

Clarissa has also been accused of finding Lovelace's charm "alluring"--another quote from the back of the Penguin, which makes me think that whoever wrote these notes perhaps read only the Cliff Notes to the book, which would be no surprise. Perhaps at times Clarissa is annoying in that she thinks too much of herself, but I don't see examples of her being won over by Lovelace's charm. In fact, she has a lot of spunk, since even when she finds herself in a situation where she's in Lovelace's clutches--I can't help but think of the melodrama of Snidely Whiplash and poor Nell in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show--poor Clarissa doesn't have a Dudley Do-Right to save her, but she's such a spitfire, you hope (at least as of Volume 6) that she doesn't need one, that she'll get out of this on her own. She stands up to Lovelace, saying, "My mind, I believe, is indeed superior to yours, debased as yours is by evil habits. But I had not known it to be so, if you had not taken pains to convince me of the inferiority of yours." I like her spunk.

ETA--Although come to think of it, I'm sure there were people who thought they knew Ted Bundy who would have described him as witty and debonair. However, the notes on the back of the Penguin edition offer that description without a hint of irony--as if they were describing Lovelace's true character. The man is a snake.

I'm at page 883/1499 in the Ross Penguin edition, letter 257. Ellen Moody is a professor at George Mason University. Here's part of a blog post she wrote about Clarissa:

Monday, June 12 through Friday, June 19, Letters 255-64 (Ross Penguin, p. 874-907) comprise some of the most famous passages in the official canon. Here is intense excitement, one feels the ink leap off the page. . . .I find Clarissa's letters poignant and beautiful in a strange way. Here at least we reach her most inward self. There is a lovely soft tone to them. She is stripped and we find no ugliness, no hatred really, self-reproach in fact. I also find in these her curious brand of courage. She begins to realize her mind has slipped ("I began to be mad at Hampstead, Ross Penguin, p. 896). I see irony in her letters, I see the vein which will come out and allow her to face Lovelace and refuse. . . .

I did a quick internet search of Ellen Moody and found some student reviews of her classes. Ha--"She makes us read far too much." "This class is waaaay too much work." A woman after my own heart. The excuse students gives usually runs along the lines of --"I have a full-time job and I'm taking a full load of classes, so I don't have time for so much reading." So exactly what, then, is the point of being in school? You might as well just buy a diploma from an internet site somewhere.

It's easy, when reading these letters from Clarissa, the ones she wrote after the rape, to forget that they're written by Richardson and not some real person named Miss Clarissa Harlowe living in the mid-1700s. That's the highest praise, I think, that I can give to Richardson.

She is begging Lovelace to have her put in a madhouse--and he'd better do it quickly--because she's going to discover all of his lies and villainies, and when she does, it will be good for him if she's in Bedlam: "Then all will pass for ravings that I can say, as I doubt not, many poor creatures' exclamations do pass, though there may be too much truth in them for all that--and you know I began to be mad at Hampstead--so you said--Ah! villainous man! what have you not to answer for!"

One of the things that amazes me most about this book, and I've said it before, is the voices of all these letters. Once you've read this far (I'm at 898/1499), you could read a letter by each one of these people without seeing the signature and know who wrote it.

>18 Deern:. I read that there had been too many people sympathizing with Lovelace after reading the first edition, so Richardson saw the need to exaggerate a bit more on the characters to make people understand his intentions. In my edition it was impossible to misinterpret anything from a certain point in the story.

I wrote in post #20 that's it's hard to understand why people reading the first edition of this work felt sympathetic towards Lovelace--or why the back of this edition would describe Clarissa as finding his charm "alluring" or that she would profess some sort of "unconfessed desire." It reminds me of the way rape was often viewed years ago--What was she wearing? Maybe she deserved it. I think it's interesting that these notes on the back of the book are from a 1985 edition.

Clarissa is being held against her will at the house of Mrs. Sinclair. She's tried several times to leave and has been stopped each time. Lovelace writes to his friend, John Belford: "Terror, Jack, as I have heretofore found out, though I have so little benefitted by the discovery, must be my resort if she make it necessary--Nothing else will do with the inflexible charmer" (938). I don't know how Richardson's readers of the original version could read Lovelace's character as anything but vile.

Clarissa is unable to send or receive letters at this point, but what strikes me about her is that she continues to stand up to Lovelace: "I am a woman--my life is in my own power, though my person is not--I will not be thus constrained" (938). "I am a person, tho' thus vilely betrayed, of rank and fortune" she says to him. Then she says to him, "You are even more dreadful than the Lovelace I have long dreaded."

Clearly, Lovelace has never met a woman like her: "I am confoundedly mortified to find that this lady is able to hold me at bay, and to refuse all my honest vows." He honestly can't understand her "fixed resentment" against him--"How her proud rejection stings me!"--"Now indeed do I from my heart wish that I had never known this lady. But who would have thought there had been such a woman in the world? Of all the sex I have hitherto known, or heard, or read of, it was once subdued, and always subdued (emphasis mine). The first struggle was generally the last."

One of the most poignant remarks from Clarissa at this point in the novel, reported in a letter from Lovelace to his friend Belford: "And am I then (with a kind of frantic wildness) to be detained a prisoner in this horrid house?--Take care! Take care, how you make me desperate!--If I fall, though by my own hand, inquisition will be made for my blood--Make sure work, I charge thee: dig a hole deep enough to cram in and conceal this unhappy body: for depend upon it, that some of those who will not stir to protect me living, will move heaven and earth to avenge me dead!" And sadly, we have to believe that she is most probably right.

ETA: Okay, okay, I still don't get it. Richardson's readers of the first edition sympathized with Lovelace? How? This is from another letter to his friend John Belford: "Thou wilt curse me when thou comest to this place. I know thou wilt. But thinkest thou that, after such a series of contrivance, I will lose this inimitable woman for want of a little more? A rake's a rake, Jack! --And what rake is withheld by principle from the perpetration of any evil his heart is set upon, and in which he thinks he can succeed?

From today's point of view there's no question about his vileness. But when you consider that 'rape was only a crime when the woman fell unconscious and the man admitted she did, otherwise she must have agreed in some way' and that even then it was seen as the best option for the woman to marry the rapist, because - crime or no crime - she was 'dishonored' forever and no other man would ever marry her... I fear, and it is hard for me to write this, that rape was something 'forgiveable' in those times, as long as the man still offered to put things right by marrying his victim. Almost a prank.

In fact, I felt quite sick during certain passages of the book. Not because of LL's vileness, but because what had happened was so widely tolerated. When in the novel a hundred people urge Clarissa to pleaseplease still marry him, we can assume that most of the readers were just as ready to forgive him.

It is difficult for us today to accept that a woman was so close to a nothing. And being Protestant, Clarissa didn't have the monastery option she might have had as a Catholic. She is in a completely hopeless situation here. She really is an incredibly virtuous and courageous character.

>25 Deern:. I guess I'd encourage you to look at the rape from another angle--the economic value of a woman's chastity. Right or wrong, to be viable on the marriage market, particularly a woman of Clarissa's class, she had to remain a virgin. Legislation was designed to protect patrilineal blood lines. In order to marry, a woman needed a reputation for chasity, and that reputation was an economic asset on the marriage market. It was because of a wife's virtue that a husband could know his heirs were legitimate. That was just a fact of life. So Clarissa was "ruined" long before the rape. She was ruined for marrying anyone but Lovelace the moment she left her home with him. There really was never any going back for her. The best she could have hoped for, which as she says over and over again is the thing she wants, was to be allowed to live her life as a single woman. Fortunately for her, the fortune left to her by her grandfather would have allowed her to do that.

I agree with you that she was virtuous and courageous. She never acknowledged that Lovelace had any authority over her. In the scene where she confronts the prostitutes of Mrs. Sinclair's house who have been helping Lovelace, she says to them:

"And ye, vile women, who perhaps have been the ruin, body and soul, of hundreds of innocents (you show me how, in full assembly), know that I am not married--ruined as I am by your helps, I bless God, I am not married to this miscreant--And I have friends that will demand my honour at your hands!--And to whose authority I will apply; for none has this man over me. Look to it then, what further insults you offer me, or incite him to offer me. I am a person, though thus vilely betrayed, of rank and fortune. I never will be his; and to your utter ruin will find friends to pursue you; and now I have this full proof of your detestable wickedness, and have heard your base incitements, will have no mercy upon you!"

"What right do you have to detain me?" is her continuous refrain.

I'm not yet to the part of the book where her friends or family are aware of what has happened to her, so I can't speak to what advice they might be giving her at that point. But Lovelace makes a reasonable point, I think (maybe the only one he makes in the book) when he begs Clarissa to marry him, reminding her of the consequences if she does not: "not only to ourselves but to both our families, may be fatal if you cannot be moved in my favour" (Ross Penguin 953). Of course, Lovelace has shown again and again that he doesn't really mean to marry her, so we can't take him at his word here.

ETA: I don't think it's a case of people forgiving Lovelace for what he's done to her. In fact, his friend Belford writes, "Meantime, let me tell thee that my heart bleeds for the wrongs this angelic lady has recieved . . . ." I think it's more a case of people bowing to the inevitable--sort of a "You broke it, you bought it" attitude (I know--that's vulgar), and the only person who can possibly marry her, therefore, is Lovelace.

Wednesday night, June 28

Today is a good day in the saga of this long read. After 65 letters, and having put up with the dominating voice of Lovelace almost exclusively, we finally hear Clarissa's voice in a letter again. Whoo-ah! Although sadly, her friend Anna Howe's mother has intercepted Clarissa's letter and sent her one that scolds and scalds, forbidding Clarissa to write to her daughter: "The whole sex is indeed wounded by you: for who but Miss Clarissa Harlowe was proposed by every father and mother for a pattern for their daughters? . . . . But you seem to be sensible enough of your errors now! So are all giddy girls, when it is too late--and what a crest-fallen figure then does their self-willed obstinancy and headstrongness compel them to make!"

I passed the page-1,000 mark this weekend.

I'm having such a good time with this. Clarissa has escaped, for the moment at least, and has written to Lovelace's two aunts to tell them what really happened between her and their nephew. They come to visit their brother, where Lovelace is staying and waiting for Lord M to die, he hopes, so that he may receive his inheritance. Lovelace has been telling his family that all is well with his plans to marry Clarissa Harlowe. From letters received from Miss Harlowe, Lady Betty has found out the truth, which she reports to her brother, Lord M.

Richardson must have had fun with this one:

Letter 323, Lovelace to (his friend) John Belford, Sunday night, July 9. (This is near the beginning of Volume 7.)

"I am in the very height of my trial for all my sins to my beloved fugitive."

"With horrible grave faces was I received. The two antiques only bowed their tabby heads; making longer faces than ordinary; and all the old lines appearing strong in their furrowed foreheads and fallen cheeks."

Lord M looked "horribly glum; his fingers clasped, and turn round and round, under and over, his but just disgouted thumbs; his sallow face, and goggling eyes, cast upon the floor, on the fireplace, on his two sisters, on his two kinswomen, by turns; but not once deigning to look upon me."

He learns that Lady Betty has two letters from Miss Harlowe "which have told us what's the matter--Are all women alike with you?"

"Yes, I could have answered."

He stands, looking on his aunts, "the two maiden monkies."

From Lord M: "Damned, damned doings! vociferated the peer, shaking his loose-fleshed wabbling chaps, which hung on his shoulders like an old cow's dew-lap."

I'm to a point that is arguably my favorite part of the novel--Lovelace at his uncle's ancestral home with the family gathered around because of Lord M's illness. For such a black-hearted wretch, Lovelace has a very decent family--Lord M, his sisters, Lady Sarah and Lady Betty, and his two nieces, the Misses Charlotte and Patty Montague.

We get letters back and forth from Lady Betty and Clarissa; to and from Anna Howe and young cousins; to and from Lovelace to his friend Belford. We even get a letter from Lovelace to Anna Howe (Wow! that's one I thought I'd never see), saying that he must write, even though, aware as he is that his name is hateful to her. It's the livliest group of letters yet because we get so many different point of view about the current happenings.

Lady Betty has offered her home to Clarissa--her protection from "the wretch"--with the hopes that there might be a reconciliation and Lovelace and Clarissa might marry. But she's a decent woman, and even if Clarissa were in no way willing to consider what the family proposes, surely Lady Betty's would still be a good place for Clarissa to land until she can get her life straightened out.

However, we almost know, before we even hear from Clarissa, that she will unfortunately refuse any help from Lady Betty, since that's the mistake she's made throughout her ordeal--refusing the help offered to her from the people who love her or are willing to befriend her. It's easy to get exasperated with Clarissa for her stubborn refusal to accept help, but then again, her life has taken such a terrible turn that it's impossible not to feel sympathy for her.

You knew it had to come at some point: the cat fight between Clarissa's best friend, Anna Howe, and Clarissa's horrible sister, Arabella. Hilarious.

Yes, that was great!
Btw Clarissa is one of those books which partially annoyed me during the read (there were also some things towards the ending which you'll still see...) but which is still fully with me months later. I go through my ratings every few months and upgrade/ downgrade depending on the longtime-effect, and this one is due for an upgrade. Compared to other classical works the characterization is outstanding.

And re. your earlier post: Lovelace might be a very bad man, but he is so smart, and he sure knows how to write entertaining letters. Richardson must have had fun writing those funny/ bitchy/ biting letters as part of a novel that celebrates virtue.

>31 Deern:. Oh, great assessment of Lovelace! His letters sometimes just destroy me--he's so articulate (and often funny) and yet such a consummate jerk.

I think it's simply amazing how Richardson was able to write with such a distinctive voice for all of these characters. It was nothing short of geniius, IMO.

Finally, we hear from Clarissa's family (357 letters into this thing). Since Clarissa left Harlowe Place, the family has been largely silent throughout this ordeal, and I've been wondering when Richardson would bring them back onstage. Mrs. Harlowe writes to Norton, Clarissa's nanny (who is, emotionally, probably her real mother). Mrs. Harlowe is weak, and, as she says, she must "sail with the tide," and so consequently she won't stand up for Clarissa.

The family has heard of the marriage plans and promises, but they don't believe Lovelace will marry her: ""He values not his relations; and would deceive them as soon as any others; his aversion to marriage he has always openly declared." As she says, he hates and despises the entire Harlowe family: "which do you think would soonest be chosen here, to hear of her death, or of her marriage with such a vile man?"

Wow, that's harsh--but also totally in line with the way the family has treated her throughout the novel.

Mrs. Norton, Clarissa's former nurse. She loves Clarissa like a daughter, but hasn't been able to go to her in her distress because of illness. Finally, she and Clarissa are writing back and forth again. Mrs. Norton finds herself in the unenviable position of being in the middle of Clarissa and the Harlowe family. She reports to Clarissa that the family is sending Mr. Brand, a young clergyman, to find out the "truth" of Clarissa's situation. This is the sort of small passage that makes a reader fall in love with this book:

He is a very officious young man: and, but that your uncle Harlowe (who has chosen him for this errand) regards him as an oracle; your mother had rather anybody else had been sent. He is one of those puzzling, over-doing gentlemen, who think they see farther into matters than anybody else, and are fond of discovering mysteries where there are none, in order to be thought a shrewd man.

It is said that Richardson was one of Jane Austen's favorite writers, and the suggestion has been made that Richardson's Mr. Brand was inspiration for Mr. Collins of Pride and Prejudice.

I'm less than 200 pages from the end, and Clarissa is dying from a "broken heart," but actually it would seem that she has been slowly starving herself to death. Her one true friend, the one who has seen her through the entire ordeal (by letter) remains Anna Howe, who is concerned about Clarissa's illness and begs not to lose her. Here's my Clarissa quote of the day:

She encourages Anna not to be concerned by what she is calling "my last stage. For what is even the long life which in high health we wish for? . . . . when arrived at the old age we covet, one heavy loss or deprivation having succeeded another, we see ourselves stripped, as I may say, of everyone we loved; and find ourselves exposed as uncompanionable poor creatures, to the slights, to the contempts, of jostling youth, who want to push us off the stage, in hopes to possess what we have--and, superadded to all, our own infirmities every day increasing: of themselves enough to make the life we wished for the greatest disease of all!"

I'm at 1474/1499--25 pages left to go, with just one little plot thread left to snip. I'll be back for a final post when all is finished.