Clarissa Harlowe, the most beautiful and exemplary of her sex, is being imposed upon by her implacable family

to marry one Mr. Solmes, a man of no mean fortune, but whose ethics, especially with regard to his own family, are suspect. Simultaneously, Clarissa's sister, Arabella, has just rejected a proposal from one Robert Lovelace, the heir of a nobleman, educated and refined, but known for his libertinism - his tendency and enjoyment of seducing young women and then abandoning them. Lovelace falls in love, or in lust, with Clarissa, and after he and Clarissa's brother James, heir to the Harlowe fortune, engage in a near fatal duel, Clarissa's continued correspondence with Lovelace becomes a major thorn in the side of the Harlowes' plans for Clarissa. The Harlowes continue to urge the addresses of Mr. Solmes while vilifying Lovelace - Clarissa not approving of either - and when her family's insitence becomes insupportable to Clarissa, the utterly demonic Lovelace takes advantage, whisking her away from a seemingly inevitable union with Solmes. Thus begins an absolutely terrifying journey for Clarissa through the darkness of humanity, as Lovelace plots and executes his seduction of the 'divine' Clarissa. An epistolary novel, "Clarissa" is written in the form of a series of letters spanning nine months, principally between Clarissa and her best friend

and iconoclast, Anna Howe, and between Lovelace and a fellow libertine, John Belford. Richardson's 'to the moment' style of writing gives a minute account of everything that happens to the main characters almost as it happens, giving the novel a highly dramatic sense of urgency. The four major correspondents, as well as others, also give the novel a well-developed sense of perspective, as we get not only the events, but biased opinions and readings of all the other characters, making the events at times difficult to follow, but at the same time, marvelously rich and complex. Some of the most interesting facets of this novel are its interactions with the law, primarily inheritance law, the contrast between history and story, and at the forefront, the debate over gender roles in marriage. Almost of a piece with the novel's legal issues, Richardson examines the vagueries of semantics - what do words mean? How are words regarded and used differently by men and women? Richardson also confronts the way we read and interpret 'truth' - in a book composed of letters, subjectively written and read, where can we look to for 'truth'? Among the characters in the novel, by far the most captivating and challenging in "Clarissa" is the aforementioned Anna Howe. The ways she clashes with tradition and propriety throughout the novel are entertaining, and very much reminiscent of the

eponymous heroine of Defoe's "Moll Flanders." An amazing and influential novel to say the least, anyone with a few weeks on their hands who is interested in the history of the novel in English should pick up and give "Clarissa" some serious attention, stat! Though the psychological parallelism between Lovelace and Clarissa has been previously examined, their analogous sexual identifications have received only brief attention. From Clarissa's threats of suicide and Lovelace's anesthetized rape of her, to her drawn-out death and funeral and Lovelace's desire for her exquisite corpse, Richardson continually points us to the however unpleasant realization that the sexual taboo Clarissa and Lovelace share is death-in-sex. Indeed Clarissa can be seen as Richardson's own courtship of death: the novel is riddled with descriptions and imageryLike Richardsons first novel, Pamela, Clarissa begins in the shadow of a family death and a bequest of property that causes familial disharmony. Clarissa Harlowe is a virtuous and intelligent young woman of a good family who has been made heir to her grandfathers estate. Property offers no power or agency for Clarissa, however, who agrees to give control of her inherited dairyhouse to her father. Rather, the preference shown to Clarissa in her grandfathers will provokes jealous reactions from her brother (James) and elder sister

(Arabella) and causes the heroine to wish that God [had] taken me in my last fever, when I had everybodys love and good opinion [than] that I had never been distinguished by my grandfather. These contestations of Clarissas inherited estate and the early thematic link made between death and inheritance establish one of the novels central themes: the heroines struggle to maintain control over her property. Soon the struggle over Clarissas material property becomes internalised in a bitter contest over the spiritual property of the heroines self. Arabella is being courted by the attractive and witty aristocrat Robert Lovelace. Soon, however, Lovelace turns his attention to Clarissa, thereby angering the family and provoking James to engage the hero in a duel, in which the heroines brother is wounded. Clarissas parents subsequently attempt to force their younger daughter to marry Roger Solmes, a rich but intellectually inferior man whom Clarissa loathes. Refusing to heed her implacable familys dictates, Clarissa is forcibly held against her will in her room and enters into a correspondence with Lovelace. Lovelace persuades Clarissa to meet him and offers to help her escape from her confinement. Agreeing to meet Lovelace, but having decided not to run away with him, Clarissa is tricked by the hero and taken to London where she is unwittingly

confined in the brothel of Mrs. Sinclair, a physically and morally grotesque woman. Lovelace makes repeated, though thwarted, attempts to seduce the heroine, who eventually manages to escape her imprisonment. She is duped once more when Lovelace finds two prostitutes to pose as his family members and bring Clarissa back to the brothel where she is subsequently drugged and raped by Lovelace. After a temporary period of insanity, Clarissa regains her mental strength. Refusing to marry Lovelace, or live as his mistress, the heroine once more escapes Mrs. Sinclairs house and temporarily lodges with a kindly mercantile family (the Smiths) in Covent Garden. Here her peace is once more shaken when Mrs. Sinclair has Clarissa arrested for debt. She is freed only when John Belford, Lovelaces friend and confidante who has become won over by Clarissas exemplary morality, pays the heroines debts. Following the rape, Clarissa is resolved upon death and much of the rest of the novel is spent in outlining the heroines funeral preparations. The cause of her death remains curiously obscure, however. Though Richardson prudently avoids the suggestion that his heroine commits suicide, at times Clarissa seems to will death upon herself and becomes, in the process, a martyr to the suffering that has been forced upon her. Elsewhere, the novel

suggests medical reasons for her decline: Clarissa displays the vague symptoms of a fatal consumption. Speculations upon the cause of Clarissas death are largely irrelevant, however, in the context of Richardsons moral project. Medicalized descriptions of the heroines physical decline would only detract from the novels emphasis upon her spiritual ascension and symbolic function of her death as a reward for and testimony to her inviolable goodness. After her death, Lovelace becomes ill and embarks upon a journey to the continent where he is subsequently killed in a duel by Clarissas cousin, Colonel Morden. Any attempt to describe the plot of Clarissa inevitably does the novel a disservice, reducing its carefully worked and multi-layered narrative to inadequately one-sided summary and its nuanced and intricately woven morality to glib platitudes. Much of the novels complexity is derived from its form as an epistolary novel. While Richardson deployed this narrative strategy in all three of his novels, his manipulation of the form is at its most brilliant and evocative in Clarissa. Where critics of Richardsons first novel, Pamela, had condemned the heroines letters as wilful fictions created to falsely attest to the servants moral purity while hiding her wilful desire to attract and marry her aristocratic master, Richardson exploited the status

of letters as artefacts of perception rather than incontrovertible fact in Clarissa to a strikingly different end. Throughout the novel run two parallel correspondences: one between Clarissa and her spirited friend Anna Howe and another between Lovelace and his confidante John Belford. Events, remarks, thoughts and feelings are expressed, revisited and re-worked from two perspectives in this dual correspondence, in order to establish a tragic divide between Clarissas perception and Lovelaces manipulated reality. The text is therefore a novel of fictions within fictions, a battle of plots and subplots, narratives and counter-narratives explored and exposed through the letters that circulate throughout the text. The overwhelming impression is, as Terry Castle has argued, that the novels characters are absorbed in a vision of the world itself as a Book open to interpretation (Clarissas Ciphers, p. 49). Lovelace, however, is a skilful manipulator of language and text, liberally scattering his letters with literary allusions. Clarissas tragedy, therefore, lies, in the first instance, in her inability to see through Lovelaces fictions. While she is suspicious of the aristocrats volubility, the fine things [he says] of me, and to me, and recognises that true value [] lies not in words: words cannot express it, Clarissa is persistently duped

and imprisoned by Lovelaces false words and sentiments. But if Lovelace is duped by Clarissas fictions, then he too is captivated by Clarissas words and the exemplary morality they convey. Like B., the male protagonist of Pamela, Lovelace seeks to strip down the heroines words and selfhood to prove that women who seem to carry their notions of virtue high [] when brought to the test [abate] of their severity. Where Pamelas trials end when she relinquishes the property of her self by giving her letters to Mr. B., Lovelace forcibly takes possession of Clarissas body by drugging and raping her. This physical and symbolic act of violation, however, merely compounds the readers sense of Clarissas elusiveness and her resistance to Lovelaces attempts to contain her. In seeking to expose the paragon as a woman, Clarissa is, paradoxically, confirmed as an angel and, contrary to Lovelaces hopes, remains more fiercely independent of him than she has appeared throughout the earlier narrative. After a temporary insanity symbolic conveyed through the textual fragmentation of Clarissas written poetry Clarissa finally regains possession of her self by refusing to become Lovelaces mistress or wife and in preparing for her death. Clarissa sells her clothes to purchase a coffin and makes plans for her burial and estate in a

meticulously detailed will. While she dies in perfect charity with all the world, requesting that she be buried in the family vault and bequeathing her estate to her father, in death Clarissa remains curiously independent, perhaps even triumphant. She asks her executor, Belford, that Lovelace will not be permitted to see her corpse, but recognises that Lovelaces wilfulness might overrule her dictates. In a final potent gesture of defiance to an act which would recapitulate the violation of rape, however, Clarissa requests that should Lovelace ignore her wishes, he should be given a paper whilst he is viewing this ghastly spectacle containing the words Gay, cruel heart! behold here the remains of the once ruined, yet now happy, Clarissa Harlowe!See what thou thyself , must quickly be and REPENT! Clarissas tragic demise divided contemporary readers. When rumours spread, after the publication of only the novels first four volumes, that Clarissa was to die, readers beseeched Richardson that he revise the concluding volumes. It was her abject alarm at the prospect of Clarissas death that provoked Lady Bradshaigh, one of Richardsons most influential female correspondents, to initially write to the novelist, while Bradshaighs sister, Lady Echlin, proposed an alternative ending to the novel in which Clarissa is not raped and Lovelace reforms.

Modern critics are no less divided on the issue of the heroines death, which is read alternately as axiomatic of the novelists proto-feminist or patriarchal stance. On the one hand, Clarissas death can be read as a triumphal defiance of her familys and Lovelaces efforts to prescribe her destiny and a positive assertion of her right to claim possession of her self and body. On a more troubling note, her death might be read as a symbol of Clarissas inability to resist patriarchal authority: that the only resistance she can exert is a passive acceptance of death and withdrawal from a society which has no place for her. Clarissa proved immediately successful and a second, revised, edition followed swiftly on the originals heels in 1749. Its exploration of female filial duty and the conflicts between duty and heart proved resonant for female readers who like Clarissa and Anna Howe were encouraged or forced to marry objectionable men like Solmes or virtuous yet ineffectual suitors like Hickman. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, herself locked in an unhappy marriage, reported that reading Clarissa forced her to weep like a milkmaid.