Samuel Richardson published his second novel in seven volumes, the first two in 1747, and the remaining five the next year. Like his first work, Pamela (1740), Clarissa is an epistolary novel, made up of letters written between characters.
While Pamela focused on the letters of only three characters—the protagonist and her parents—Richardson expanded his approach in Clarissa to focus on two sets of correspondents: Clarissa Harlowe to Miss Howe, and Robert Lovelace to John Belford, with occasional letters from additional characters. Thus, he avoided the first novel’s restricted point of view, which forced the narrator to step into the novel to explain certain circumstances to the reader. In Clarissa, that need no longer existed, as the two pairs commented upon each other.
In the longest novel in the English language at more than one million words, Richardson did have to take care to avoid repetition and overlapping. While he still occasionally intervened as the “editor” to provide explanation, his voice did not prove as intrusive as in the first novel. One problem caused by the epistolary form was slow movement in the rising action, as time needed to pass between the delivery of letters.
Clarissa seemed in other ways an attempt by Richardson to improve on Pamela. He had expressed concern that Pamela may have carried the false message that “a reformed rake makes the best husband,” and he reacted to critics’ claims that Pamela’s speech and expressions were too vulgar, although that merely reflected her station as a servant. As a member of the upper class, Clarissa Harlowe was not vulgar.
A beautiful and musically inclined young lady, Clarissa is pressured by her family to marry well. When she falls in love with the misogynist Robert Lovelace, family members discourage her flirtation, as they prefer she marry Mr. Solmes. Spending about 500 pages of the novel locked in her room, Clarissa considers her situation and attempts to make a decision, although she lacks the power to act. While willing to agree not to see Lovelace, Clarissa protests her planned marriage to the elderly, mean, but quite wealthy Solmes.
Clarissa’s brother fights and loses a duel to Lovelace, who declares revenge on the Harlowes, prompting Clarissa to write and beg him to change his mind. He will comply only if Clarissa agrees to move in with the women of his family. On the verge of having to marry Solmes, she agrees to Lovelace’s plan, then backs out, but he abducts her. Clarissa assumes they will marry, but Lovelace delights in humiliating her first, trying many tactics to seduce her, all of which she repels.
Clarissa shares all these events through correspondence with her best friend, Anna Howe, while Lovelace writes to fellow rake, John Belford, to assure him that he retains his reputation as a womanizer.
When Lovelace carries her away to London to what he claims will be a respectable boarding house, Clarissa hopes they will finally marry. Their destination turns out to be a brothel where, under the watch of the bawdy Mrs. Sinclair, Clarissa remains in captivity. Lovelace at last drugs Clarissa and rapes her. Before Lovelace’s attack, Clarissa had vacillated between love and revulsion for him, but after the rape, she refuses his offers of marriage. Lovelace grows desperate, as he did all along plan to marry Clarissa, but she continues to reject him.
The strain of the events causes Clarissa to fall ill and then escape from Lovelace, and the final part of the novel focuses on her vindication. Through many pages, those important to Clarissa discover the truth, as does the only family member who believes her, a cousin, Colonel Morden. Some of her friends urge Clarissa to accept Lovelace’s frantic proposals, but she stands firm. She will die from her shame, killed by her era’s moral code, but her death before an audience of ardent admirers frees her to represent a shining example of virtue to others.
When the Harlowes discover Lovelace’s dastardly actions, Morden kills him in a duel. Others who betrayed and mistreated the innocent young woman receive their just deserts, while Clarissa lives on in her admirers’ memories as a martyr. Belford, the one-time rake, reforms, becomes Clarissa’s executor, and provides an edited version of her letters as an example to others.
Richardson’s abundant imagery of reflection, or the gaze, locked upon Clarissa objectifies but also liberates her from the confines of self-expression. When readers see her dressed in white, they confirm her innocence; when framed by a keyhole, Clarissa’s imprisonment behind closed doors becomes clear; when caught kneeling in prayer, her devout attitude cannot be faked.
The massive rising action, climax, and denouement take place over less than a year, during which times the correspondents produce hundreds of letters. Richardson appreciated the epistolary approach for its immediacy and inherent sense of the urgent, spoken by his characters through their own writing. Richardson confessed to shocking himself with the development of Lovelace’s evil character. His talent at building tension was so great that many readers admitted to pleading aloud with Clarissa not to give in to Lovelace.
Henry Fielding, a jovial critic and satirist of Richardson, reviewed the first two volumes of Clarissa and wrote to Richardson, requesting that he not kill his heroine. Samuel Johnson labeled the novel as “the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart.”
For all of Richardson’s sermonizing in his novels regarding high moral behavior, he revealed his fascination with the prurient details involved in seduction. He converts readers into voyeurs, as well, in the rape scene, for instance. The door to Clarissa’s room remains open, and the women who live in the brothel walk back and forth in front of it, watching the act in progress and inviting readers to do the same.
According to Lionel Stevenson, the English poet Samuel Coleridge later expressed a view that many shared. He supposedly admitted vexation when forced to admire Richardson’s works, while at the same time declaring Richardson’s mind “so very vile . . . so oozy, so hypocritical, praise-mad, canting, envious, concupiscent.” Although not vulgar on the surface, Richardson’s works gave way to the next stage of novel writing, led by Tobias Smollett, in which vulgarity would reign.
However critics judge Richardson’s motives, they continue to admit to the popularity of his writing, readily available into the 21st century in print version as well as electronic text.
Bibliography
Phelps, Gilbert. “Samuel Richardson: Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady.” An Introduction to Fifty British Novels: 1600–1900. London: Pan Books, 1979. 81–88.
Stephenson, Lionel. The English Novel: A Panorama. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Form and Function. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1953.
Categories: British Literature, Epistolary Novels, Literature, Novel Analysis
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