manuscript
03-19-2013, 05:54 AM
right now i am reading Samuel Richardson's "Clarissa" and i am greatly enjoying it! i am at page 850/1500. i fully appreciate that it may be of limited value to comment on a novel that i have not actually finished, but here are just a couple of thoughts i have had on reading it so far, and i hope they will be interesting anyway.
i decided to read this book because it was mentioned several times by my teachers when i was studying for my degree as a significant work of literature in english. i thought that if a book was mentioned so many times it must be worthwhile. it has been very difficult to read at times as i find myself becoming so emotional about the content, but it has not disappointed me.
this book interests me in many ways and here are some of them. it interests me that an english man living in the 1740s cared so much about rape that he decided to write what is still probably the longest novel composed in english about it; the length of the novel is a real statement about the importance of its subject. the technical mastery of english language displayed in its composition is mesmerising and it seems to me that Richardson is very gifted in using language to realise his characters. i love the characters Clarissa and Anna, and i hate Lovelace! i am fascinated by the pace of the novel and it seems that despite its length, a fresh insight into the human mind is offered on almost every page - the many ways we lie to ourselves and twist perspectives on things in order to get what we want, or what constitutes a "good" person and why and how we can decide to be "good" and why that is meaningful.
Austen, although she was a reader and admirer of Richardson, clearly had aims in her writing that were different from Richardson's (and perhaps, having read "Clarissa", did not wish to embark on an attempt to equal his achievements). but it seems to me that Richardson achieved something with his characters that Austen was not capable of. Clarissa and Lovelace are extremes of human nature, to a point at which they can be said to represent "types", and it seems plain that Richardson wishes for them to be perceived this way. Clarissa is a beautiful, intelligent, morally virtuous, young woman, while Lovelace on the other hand is a very handsome and superficially charming man who is emotionally and physically manipulative and abusive (he might perhaps be seen as a "narcissistic", disordered personality type in our terms). but to me, these characters are not stereotypes, they are real in a way that Austen's characters are not. i feel like Clarissa and Lovelace make George Wickham and even the very beautifully realised Fanny Price look like cardboard cutouts. he really went deep into Lovelace's mind, he didnt shy away from giving this character a sensitive, naturalistic treatment. Richardson knew that he had to make his characters seem real to his readers, or they would dismiss his book as a very cheap product, like a piece of pure sensation fiction. but the subject was so urgent to him, that he went to these extraordinary lengths of writing this very very long and involved and "real" novel, to get people to pay attention.
"Clarissa" has never been out of print. when it was first published it was translated into french and german and consumed voraciously. i have read that by the victorian era, attitudes had changed so that the primary consideration in marriage was popularly considered to be love. it is easy to underestimate the historical impact that this novel has had.
i have been surprised by the attitudes i have encountered in people when i have told them i am reading "Clarissa". overwhelmingly, the general response has been something like "we cannot pretend that this novel is still relevant to a current audience, outside academia". i find it bizarre that there seems to be an ingrained assumption that the novel is not relevant. partly because, the idea of relevance suggests that the novel can have nothing to say to us that we can find useful, and this just does not make any sense to me, for the reasons i have explained. but also, the normal approach that people take to reading a work of literature does not require a text to justify its relevance to them. instead, it asks impartially "what varieties of meaning are constructed in this work, and how?" then, it discusses the meanings, their complexity and interdependence, the efficacy with which they are communicated, and THEN, possibly, ideas about their application. that is just not the case here. there is no honest examination of content; just an implicit assumption of irrelevance. i even read an essay by Susan Sontag on erotica in which she dismisses Clarissa as a woman who is afraid of exploring her sexuality. i am sorry to say that this scholar appears to be only pretending to have read "Clarissa", or how could she make such a totally ridiculous judgment on it, that is so blatantly irrelevant to any of the actual content of the text?
when people say that "Clarissa" is no longer relevant, i think what they mean, is that people dont want to read it, or they themselves have chosen not to read it. this is not the same thing as relevance. it is very naive to suppose that human beings have gone through fundamental change in 265 years. we havent, we are still the same. young women are still pressured into sex. people continue to lie to each other. despite all of this we still try to be good and do the right thing even when our circumstances seem futile.
has anyone else enjoyed Clarissa as much as i have been? i hope so!!
i decided to read this book because it was mentioned several times by my teachers when i was studying for my degree as a significant work of literature in english. i thought that if a book was mentioned so many times it must be worthwhile. it has been very difficult to read at times as i find myself becoming so emotional about the content, but it has not disappointed me.
this book interests me in many ways and here are some of them. it interests me that an english man living in the 1740s cared so much about rape that he decided to write what is still probably the longest novel composed in english about it; the length of the novel is a real statement about the importance of its subject. the technical mastery of english language displayed in its composition is mesmerising and it seems to me that Richardson is very gifted in using language to realise his characters. i love the characters Clarissa and Anna, and i hate Lovelace! i am fascinated by the pace of the novel and it seems that despite its length, a fresh insight into the human mind is offered on almost every page - the many ways we lie to ourselves and twist perspectives on things in order to get what we want, or what constitutes a "good" person and why and how we can decide to be "good" and why that is meaningful.
Austen, although she was a reader and admirer of Richardson, clearly had aims in her writing that were different from Richardson's (and perhaps, having read "Clarissa", did not wish to embark on an attempt to equal his achievements). but it seems to me that Richardson achieved something with his characters that Austen was not capable of. Clarissa and Lovelace are extremes of human nature, to a point at which they can be said to represent "types", and it seems plain that Richardson wishes for them to be perceived this way. Clarissa is a beautiful, intelligent, morally virtuous, young woman, while Lovelace on the other hand is a very handsome and superficially charming man who is emotionally and physically manipulative and abusive (he might perhaps be seen as a "narcissistic", disordered personality type in our terms). but to me, these characters are not stereotypes, they are real in a way that Austen's characters are not. i feel like Clarissa and Lovelace make George Wickham and even the very beautifully realised Fanny Price look like cardboard cutouts. he really went deep into Lovelace's mind, he didnt shy away from giving this character a sensitive, naturalistic treatment. Richardson knew that he had to make his characters seem real to his readers, or they would dismiss his book as a very cheap product, like a piece of pure sensation fiction. but the subject was so urgent to him, that he went to these extraordinary lengths of writing this very very long and involved and "real" novel, to get people to pay attention.
"Clarissa" has never been out of print. when it was first published it was translated into french and german and consumed voraciously. i have read that by the victorian era, attitudes had changed so that the primary consideration in marriage was popularly considered to be love. it is easy to underestimate the historical impact that this novel has had.
i have been surprised by the attitudes i have encountered in people when i have told them i am reading "Clarissa". overwhelmingly, the general response has been something like "we cannot pretend that this novel is still relevant to a current audience, outside academia". i find it bizarre that there seems to be an ingrained assumption that the novel is not relevant. partly because, the idea of relevance suggests that the novel can have nothing to say to us that we can find useful, and this just does not make any sense to me, for the reasons i have explained. but also, the normal approach that people take to reading a work of literature does not require a text to justify its relevance to them. instead, it asks impartially "what varieties of meaning are constructed in this work, and how?" then, it discusses the meanings, their complexity and interdependence, the efficacy with which they are communicated, and THEN, possibly, ideas about their application. that is just not the case here. there is no honest examination of content; just an implicit assumption of irrelevance. i even read an essay by Susan Sontag on erotica in which she dismisses Clarissa as a woman who is afraid of exploring her sexuality. i am sorry to say that this scholar appears to be only pretending to have read "Clarissa", or how could she make such a totally ridiculous judgment on it, that is so blatantly irrelevant to any of the actual content of the text?
when people say that "Clarissa" is no longer relevant, i think what they mean, is that people dont want to read it, or they themselves have chosen not to read it. this is not the same thing as relevance. it is very naive to suppose that human beings have gone through fundamental change in 265 years. we havent, we are still the same. young women are still pressured into sex. people continue to lie to each other. despite all of this we still try to be good and do the right thing even when our circumstances seem futile.
has anyone else enjoyed Clarissa as much as i have been? i hope so!!