Samuel Richardson was a famous English writer who lived and created during the eighteenth

century. He was born in Darbshire on August 19, 1689. His father died when he was five years
old, and his mother raised him. At the age of sixteen, he became an assistant in a printer's
office in London, where he learned printing and bookbinding techniques that would serve him
later in life. In 1739, he anonymously published the work "Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded", which
sold out in a few days and brought him great success. Also known works of this writer are "Sir
Charles Grandison" and "Lady Bradshaid Letters".

One of his most famous and extensive works is the novel "Clarissa: Or the History of a Young
Lady". This novel is an epistolary novel, which means that it is written in the form of a series of
letters. It is considered one of the greatest works of English literature. The main character of
this novel is a young girl from a rich family named Clarissa Harlowe. During this presentation,
we will talk about the importance of the novel, its role in English literature, but also the
development of society in general.

When I saw how many pages the book had, I decided to watch its film adaptation anyway. This
film is divided into four parts, making it a mini-series. However, I was not able to find all the
parts, so in order to understand the plot, I also read several reviews. The plot of the film
revolves around the life of Clarissa Harlowe, who is forced by her family to marry a man she
does not love. She tries to avoid that fate and goes to a nunnery. However, her family tries to
convince her to return home. It is already clear at this point that Clarissa is a victim of her
family's greed. They were willing to sacrifice their daughter's happiness in order to preserve the
family fortune, since the man she was to marry was also wealthy. She seems to be successfully
avoiding this fate, when she encounters the raunchy Robert Lovelace. He possesses various
characteristics. Unlike the wealthy man her family wanted her to marry, Robert is handsome,
brave and stylish, but his morals are highly questionable. He begins the story with Clarisse first
by stalking her while she ignores him. However, he presents himself as her savior from a
potential marriage and a family that did not wish her well, and manages to trick her into taking
her to London, where they will live in secret. With Clarissa now isolated from her family and
friends in an unknown city, Lovelace is free to do whatever he wants with her.

He was in love with Clarissa, but he did not want to marry her, only to possess her. Lovelace
saw women as titles. For him, winning the innocent Clarissa was a fun challenge. He wanted to
test her morals and ideals and somehow prove that she was the same as all the girls he had
destroyed up until that point. Mrs Sinclair's house in London, which she brings her to, is actually
a brothel, which she was unaware of. The girls who worked in the brothel were jealous of her
because it was clear to them that Lovelace felt something more than pure lust for her. Clarissa
even managed, with her purity, to awaken good qualities in him and make him forget about his
evil intentions. At one point she escapes from the brothel, but Lovelace finds her, drugs and
rapes her. He did this out of his lust, his animalistic nature that he could not control, but also at
the urging of the prostitutes, who wanted to defile her almost as much as he did. When she
regained consciousness, Clarissa temporarily lost her mind, which made Robert regret what he
had done. In these moments we see that he still has some kind of compassion.

He seems to have become more serious in his intentions to marry her, but that character is lost
and his barbaric nature wins out. Clarissa manages to escape from him. After being raped, she
loses her will to live and maintain her reputation. She continues to seek forgiveness from her
family, but to no avail.

Robert Lovelace is presented as a typical character from the cavalier and metaphysical poetry
that was current a century earlier, when, after all, Richardson was born. John Donne, Ben
Jonson, Robert Herrick, all of them had one common feature in their poetry, which is an
obsession with young and beautiful girls. The main characters of most of the poems they wrote
were older men, who longed for the love of those girls and tried to win them in every way. In
these efforts, they often used wordplay, persuasion, and threats, all in the hope that the girl
would agree to be with them. Lovelace is no different from all of them, except that he
succeeded in his intention, although the outcome was fatal. It is not difficult to see that there is
another motive in Lovelace that made him want to win the young Clarissa so much. Namely, he
was aware of his reputation, that he was regarded as dissolute and immoral, someone Clarissa's
family would never accept. She was noble, pure and uncorrupted, which made him want to
defile her. At this moment, Clarissa can also be seen figuratively, as a universal symbol of purity
and innocence that tries to preserve its qualities in a society that is the opposite of that. She is
an admirable ideal of a woman. Her physical beauty is in harmony with her spiritual beauty. She
is intelligent, a good person, she helps the poor, she is religious, she spends most of her days
praying. She was never a stranger to death. When faced with difficult situations, she would
rather choose death than a choice she doesn't want. An example of this is marrying the rich
Solmes. Her fate is tragic. Torn between her family's wishes and her morals being defiled, she
even thinks the rape is partly her fault, Clarissa prefers death.

Since she is portrayed as an independent woman who planned her own death all along, it is
assumed that she somehow caused her illness in order to escape from problems she could not
live with. The author intended to portray Clarissa, as a symbol of innocence and purity, as
something perfect that cannot exist in this world. Therefore, her only escape is death. Also, as
religious as she was, she saw death as a way to unite with God. In fact, her last words were: "Oh
come - blessed Lord - Jesus!".

A letter in which her family tells her they forgive her for running away and calls her to come
home arrives after she dies. Something she had been waiting for a long time came true, but too
late. It is not out of place to make an extremely crude comparison with the catchphrases used
by metaphysicians and cavaliers: "Seize the day" and "Remember the death". Although they
used them most often to motivate girls to take advantage of their youth and blossoming
sexuality, here we can apply it to the relationship between Clarissa and her parents, and the
farewell that came too late. The message we can take away is that we should not wait for
anything, that we should take advantage of every moment because life is short and maybe later
it will be too late.

Her best friend is Anna Howe. Unlike Clarissa, she is not perfect, she makes mistakes, she likes
to joke, to provoke others. Because of all this, Clarissa felt that Anna would not make a good
wife, which she would not be right about. However, she was a loyal friend to Clarissa and was
by her side all the time.

Another person who is important to mention is John Belford. He was Robert Lovelace's best
friend. Although his friend, over time he realizes that Lovelace is no good and goes over to
Clarisse's side.

One of the most important topics in this work is the social position of women in the 18th
century. Clarissa was unmarried, opposed to her family, therefore, she did not have many rights
and opportunities in the patriarchal society where she lived. Clarissa did not want to get
married because she believed that when a woman gets married, she becomes the property of a
man, which conflicted with all her ideals.

Although the whole story is completely tragic, in a way it can be said that it still has a happy
ending. Characters who are presented as evil are met with fatal fates: Lovelace dies in a battle
with Clarisse's cousin, her parents die shortly after her, her sister, Arabella, who has been
jealous of her all along, ends up in a bad marriage. Anna Howe and Belford end happily, and
Belford collects her letters with the intention of serving as an example to save other women
from the fate that befell Clarissa. Although the main protagonist died, we can still see her fate
as good. She, as a symbol of the perfection that she represented during her life, escaped from
this earthly imperfect world and merged with the only perfection that exists and to which she
belongs.