Clarissa Part 3

I reason somewhere around page 850 that if the book did not ring somewhat true, it could not be so disturbing as parts of it are.

Of the incident where Lovelace has the fallen women (fallen by his machinations) impersonating his noble relations wait upon Clarissa I thought that a more athletic author like Fielding would have seized on the opportunity to introduce some humor and had the real people being impersonated happen to show up at the same time. There are several situations in the book which cry out for this kind of plot device, which probably explains Richardson`s being such an inviting target for parodists.

After endless wearying pages of Lovelace in obsessive and repeated detail arguing in defense of rape and subduing women by force ("the haughty beauty will not refuse me, when her pride of being corporally inviolate is brought down"), I began to think the author might actually have been afflicted with some disturbance of insuperable attraction in his mind at the contemplation of these subjects.

On a lighter note, whenever I am reading a lot of 18th-century material, some of the goofy slang of the period naturally gets into my head and I take to addressing Mrs Bourgeois Surrender as "My ownest", "My dearest life", etc. This does not go over big with the object of these effusive sobriquets.

It took me about 900 pages to realize how serious our author and his heroine were about the proper preparation of the soul for the world after this. Pretty much the entire last third of the book (Clarissa is actively dying due to the loss of her honor for 300 or 400 pages at least) is given over to the excruciating details of this preparation.

I know this was one of the first novels, and that therefore the whole thing is kind of an experiment, but whereas in a normal book where a person is confined against her will in a locked room one or perhaps two hopeless attempts at escaping will be described, Richardson gives us ten or fifteen. Does it work? As far as inducing a feeling of claustrophobia and hopelessness of delivery on the part of the reader I suppose it does, though readers being free agents it is not certain why any would choose to submit to this (I view much of my own habit as a form of penance, but I will elaborate on that later.)

The time--not just a few days--that Lovelace gives up hanging out with the guys or basically doing anything to single-mindedly pursue this seduction does not convince as consistent with his character.

A major theme of the book is that once one enters on a bad course, it is hard to turn back and escape serious damage. What, you weren`t looking for something comforting, were you?

The relentless pressure and deceptions of Lovelace, aided by a large cast of hellhounds under his direction and employed upon one single person, is actually very reminiscent of the (more pretentious of course) `godgame` in The Magus.

This book arouses no desire whatsoever to spend so much as an hour living in this time period, which other authors such as Johnson, Sterne, Fielding, on and on, make appear at times at least to be a good deal of fun.

Illustration: Samuel Richardson, Surrounded By His Second Family, by Francis Hayman

With all the declamations and hysterics about Clarissa`s honor I cannot help but think of the scene in Crime and Punishment where Sonya`s (is that the right name?) mother is about to send her out to be a prostitute and ridicules her for her delicacy and pride when she recoils.

Other characters such as Lord M and the vicious members of the Harlowe family were interesting and would have helped the book considerably by being utilized more, instead of completely disappearing for 800 pages at a time.

Clarissa is imprisoned either by her relatives or by Lovelace for almost the entire novel, until she takes it upon herself to die.

Why shouldn t I believe the world is generally as wicked as it is made out to be in this book? Do I not myself hate and rave inwardly against pretty much all of the people in it?

A custom from the Isle of Man described: -If a single woman there prosecutes a single man for a rape, the ecclesiastical judges impanel a jury; and, if this jury finds him guilty, he is returned guilty to the temporal courts: where, if he be convicted, the deemster, or judge, delivers to the woman a rope, a sword, and a ring; and she has it in her choice to have him hanged, beheaded, or to marry him.- The writer of this letter, Clarissa`s sauce-box friend Miss Howe, goes on to add that -One of the two former, I think, should always be her option.-

I think I had better stop here and do one more post on this.