Clarissa Part 2

As this is only a blog that no one reads, and not a commissioned essay for the Times Literary Supplement, I am just going to post my observations singly and not try to compose them into a comprehensive piece. The theme of female obedience is a dominant one in the early part of the book. To those of us in the modern age for whom the idea of compelling any woman to do anything we should bid is beyond the scope of plausible reality, this model of society under which our ancestors operated, seemingly comfortably and confidently, for so many generations, cannot help but be a source of some fascination. Clarissa demonstrates however, albeit with its usual overkill, that this obedience did not actually proceed as the course of nature unimpeded by modern ideologies(though it was proclaimed as such), but that its inculcation was an unrelenting project undertaken by every responsible member of the society, constituting almost the entirety of the genteel and aspiring genteel young woman's upbringing and education. In cases where women are headstrong and of high intelligence, it is always taken for granted in books of these types that she must find a man worthy of her submitting to the control of, or misery and disaster must inevitably follow. The progressive writers of this era were the ones who acknowledged that it was cruel to expect a woman who was superior in spirit and intellect to her husband to submit to his tyranny. Their solution however was to secure more appropriate matches for these viragos; allowing them to run their own lives under any circumstances was the last thing to be desired.


The rapist and all-around bad guy Lovelace emphasizes repeatedly that women are especially easy to control by fear if treated and threatened with brutality, which he possesses the temperament and the will to effect to achieve his ends. This aspect of his character is convincingly and repulsively drawn, for he really is relentless in his energy and brutality, drawing women into his power, isolating and forcing constant pressures upon them that it is beyond their capacities to resist alone (for he has enslaved/bribed many minions into his service in his seductions). This energy of ruling by fear is still the primary condition of life in most economically and educationally deprived societies. In such areas as this (i.e. poor parts of the West) where the bulk of poor and uneducated men lack the ability as well as the backing of society to have authority over a home or an extended family or a community the traditional structures of child rearing/family life/community have collapsed noticeably. This is not really related to the book any longer though. Lovelace s particular misogyny is actually quite strange and perverted. It serves no purpose other than his individual pleasure, to which extremes it really seems unnecessary for him to go, being acknowledged by as handsome, intelligent, witty, rich, etc.

The narrative of the book lacks any kind of flow. I have a note that says compare with Proust but I forget now what point I intended to make about Proust.

When Lovelace is with women he is really a tiresome and repulsive character. His boasts too much and is witty too little of the time in these chapters. His elaborate contrivances are also too much to be credible. He writes and dispatches false letters, he arranges false actions and introduces false people to deceive Clarissa, involving dozens of people, all of whose actions and conversations he controls, none of whom ever stand up to him or refuse him. It is too much. Economists would be aghast at the waste of human industry devoted to these shenanigans.

When I was on page 400 I was curious to see what the abridgements were like. I am not any longer.

At some point when I was reading this the NYT ran an article on how the invention of cell phones had rendered so many devices and dilemmas of classic novels obsolete. Certainly Clarissa s physical entrapment and isolation from the outside world would seem impossible now.

There are about twenty or thirty characters in the book more evil than anyone in Fielding or Sterne. The most similar 18th century book to this I have read is William Godwin s Caleb Williams, which is about a servant falsely accused of stealing from his master and the relentless persecution he undergoes from society. It is likewise dark and oddly devoid of a sense of atmoshere or of any life outside the principal characters and settings of the story. There is a vivid part when he is prison where his drinking water is fetched out of a muddy ditch.

I will post and do a part 3 tomorrow.