Sex and death (Clarissa - Samuel Richardson)

Member Name: Athanasius Green

Product:	Clarissa - Samuel Richardson
Date:	04/12/00 (370 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Immensely subtle and powerful - an act of original genius

Disadvantages: Immense length, plot moves very slowly at times

They haven't even heard of Samuel Richardson in the pub in the village he was born in. I know, I went there specially to ask after him. But one day, I hope, they will acknowledge him. Richardson is a genius - but like all pioneers, his achievement seems less now than it is - simply because we take for granted what he achieved. If you love the classical English novel - Fielding, Austen, Dickens, the Brontë's - you will one day have to set the record straight by reading Richardson, for they all stand upon his shoulders.

The novel was first published in the 1740's. It is epistolary - written in the form of a series of letters. It is about a young woman, Clarissa, torn between her desire to obey her parents and her fatal attraction for the wealthy, charming, aristocratic Mr. Lovelace who is also the most appalling sexual predator.

Her parents, through the prompting of her jealous brother and sister, effectively drive Clarissa into the hands of Lovelace. They do this by demanding, for purely mercenary reasons, that she marry somebody wholly unworthy of her. What follows, when she falls into the hands of Lovelace, is an act of the most hateful and cynical exploitation.

"Clarissa", I suspect, is Richardson's masterpiece (I've not read his last novel, 'Sir Charles Grandison'- I'm not even sure if it's in print).

If you finish it, you will feel like you have REALLY achieved something. The reason for this is simple: the book is VAST. It makes "War and Peace" seem comparatively slim. It is 1,500 pages long in the Penguin edition - but bigger pages than the Penguin Classics edition of "War and Peace." In fact it took me a while to learn how to hold the book without my arms aching. My solution was to read it sitting on the sofa with the book rested on a cushion on my knees!

If you take this novel on, it will cost you dear in time, attention and, for the last 800 pages,
deep emotional engagement with the plot. There are times when it travels with maddening slowness - maddening, because you can't really skip the tough bits without knowing that you're losing something vital.

Beware of the Penguin dust cover - it irritatingly tells you the plot. Suffice it to say, "Clarissa" is a tragedy.

The main aim of the novel, like its predecessor, "Pamela", was to defend the virtue of chastity. But, in this respect, it is very strange: for a novel designed to extol chastity, it is deeply sex-obsessed. Mind you, he had learnt to tone it down because "Pamela" is TOTALLY sex-obsessed.

I was attracted to "Clarissa" for three reasons:

1 - It's reputation. It was read avidly and generated an enormous amount of interest when it was first published. It is constantly referred to by people writing about better known classical novels. Most sexual predators in most great novels for 150 years after "Clarissa" are mostly drawn on the lines of Lovelace. I suspect that everything from "Dangerous Liaisons" to Don Giovanni owes a debt to "Clarissa".

2 - Its size.

3 - The wonderful TV adaptation with Sean Bean as Lovelace. It was immensely powerful and poignant.

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