Introduction

In his monumental work The Rise of the Novel, which was first published in 1957, Ian Watt devotes two chapters respectively to Daniel Defoe and Henry Fielding but three chapters to Samuel Richardson, marking him as the greatest contributor to the early development of the English novel. While Defoe and Fielding are well known in several genres of writing, “Richardson was the first writer in England to win literary fame through novel writing alone” (Kay 160). When Richardson published his first novel Pamela in 1740, he was already over fifty years old. Thirteen years later, the publication of his third novel Sir Charles Grandison marked the end of his creative career. Among Richardson's three novels, Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady is his masterpiece which has enjoyed the most critical scrutiny. However, there are few studies on Clarissa in China, so this book is written in the hope of making more people know and enjoy this great novel. Since Clarissa is a complicated novel and critics in the West have examined it from various perspectives, my book will focus on Clarissa's struggle against patriarchy represented by the Harlowes and Lovelace who treat her as either property or possession.

Clarissa is universally known as a book of great length. Not many students of literature have ever read it, let alone those who are not in the literary field. No wonder Christopher Hill names Clarissa “one of the greatest of the unread novels” (102). What makes this novel so attractive to critics even though it is seldom read by people arouses my curiosity. We may still remember Dr. Johnson's famous comment that “if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment” (qtd. in Mullan 57). In the course on the eighteenth-century English novels, I read Richardson's first novel Pamela, but I did not actually like it. Later I read Clarissa, which, with more than 1,500 pages in the Penguin World Classics edition, took me a whole month to read from cover to cover.

Richardson published Clarissa in three installments from 1747 to 1748, and in spite of its great length, the novel made a hit at that time. Even Henry Fielding, who was quite different from Richardson in class status, cultural background and literary taste, shed tears after reading it (Battestin 442-443). Some people may think the novel is just a conventional seduction story about a playboy setting snares for a virtuous girl who is then raped and dies a tragic death, but Clarissa is far from being that simple. Richardson touches upon many complicated issues which can be interpreted from such different angles as the position of women in eighteenth-century England, the prejudices brought by class status at that time, property marriage, patriarchy, Christian virtue, Puritanism, libertinism, and so on.

Although the novel describes people's life in eighteenth-century England, it is also relevant to modern readers. After reading the novel, readers will first be impressed by the great courage of Clarissa in refusing to accept Lovelace's proposal of marriage to make an honest woman of her after the rape. As is well-known, in eighteenth-century England, a fallen woman was considered fortunate if the seducer offered her marriage (Ferguson 89-90). And Lovelace is always sure about his control of the situation because he, like everybody else, believes that “marriage covers all”. After the rape, Clarissa's friends and Lovelace's relatives all try to persuade her to marry him, but Clarissa withstands the pressure and chooses to die rather than marry the libertine. She firmly declares, “That the man who has been the villain to me you have been, shall never make me his wife.” (L263, 901) The admirable courage of Clarissa thwarts Lovelace's self-assurance. Even modern women may not possess such great courage and firm will.

Clarissa is a girl of a middle class family in eighteenth-century England and possesses both beauty and virtue. Yet she is not merely a decorative vase in the family, for she helps her grandfather manage the accounts of estates, holds the keys and keeps house for her mother. Besides, she cares for the poor in the neighborhood. She is observant, perceptive and also excellent in time management. Even when she is dying, Clarissa makes a clear list about the deployment of her personal belongings and properties. Not only is her business ability unique of the female sex of her time, but also her views on love and marriage are quite ahead of her time. It is her strong reaction against the arranged property marriage with Solmes that leads to her conflict with her family and all her later troubles in the novel. Unlike her passive mother, Clarissa does not want to lose her self after marriage. Neither does she cherish much fantasy about love and marriage, though she is only an eighteen-year-old girl. More than once in the novel, Clarissa declares her wish to live a single life because she does not want to give up herself to a stranger and lose her own will. This view, we must say, does not become popular until the modern times. Like Clarissa, many women nowadays are no longer considering marriage as the only way of living, and those who choose to get married also aim at pursuing the real equality in married life instead of becoming submissive wives.

The epistolary form helps readers know much about the psychology of characters in the novel. Referring to Boswell's Life of Johnson, John Mullan observes, “On one occasion, Boswell's admiration for Fielding's ‘very natural pictures of human life’ is met by Johnson's dismissal of the novelist as ‘a barren rascal’ and his declaration that ‘there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones’” (56). Though Dr. Johnson's view certainly shows his prejudice against Fielding, there is no question that the fictional letters in Richardson's novels reveal the characters' psychological depth accurately and vividly. And the letter form greatly enhances the revelation of characters' thoughts and feelings. Clarissa and Anna Howe exchange thoughts and feelings in letters while Lovelace shows off almost every move and design in his letters to Belford. In the crucial stage of the story, Lovelace even steals and forges letters between Clarissa and Anna, which directly leads to the heroine's disaster.

Today, we may feel puzzled how these people could spend hours in writing letters and copying the letters for preservation. In a digital age, the communication between people becomes more and more convenient, typed e-mails and text messages of cell phones taking the place of hand-written letters. However, the monotonously computer-typed words lose much of the writer's feeling and the delicious enjoyment brought by the personal handwriting. From the handwriting we could detect the moods of our friends; love and friendship grow with the exchange of letters. That's why Richardson says that corresponding by letters is the “converse of the pen”. In fact, all the eighteenth-century men of letters valued personal epistolary style, for instance, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Letters and William Cowper's much admired letters. Each letter writer took pride in his or her unique letter style, and it is not exaggerating to say that letter writing became an art in the eighteenth-century England, which explains why the epistolary novel saw its pinnacle in England at that time.

Thus, I am attracted by Clarissa not only for its impressive characterization with psychological depth, but also for its epistolary narration. Since there are too many things to discuss about this novel and I cannot do full justice to them all, this book will focus on the issue of tragedy caused by Clarissa's struggle against patriarchy which is represented by the Harlowes' treating Clarissa as family property and Lovelace's treating her as possession. Through the author's psychological sophistry and epistolary skills, this struggle is vividly presented, and Clarissa's truly unique self identity is gradually realized in the process.

The present literature review starts with Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel, for its publication in 1957 marked the pinnacle of the revival of Richardson criticism. In Chapter VII “Richardson as Novelist: Clarissa”, Watt presents a thorough study on its epistolary technique, characterization and moral theme, regarding the novel as “the greatest example of the genre ever written” (219). Watt discusses the complicated class conflicts and the patriarchal family system portrayed in the novel. He observes, “The authoritarian nature of the family is what precipitates Clarissa's tragedy.” (222) In the first chapter of my book, Clarissa's struggle against her authoritarian family will be extensively examined. Watt has also noticed the sexual code which creates the main psychological tensions in the early volumes. Watt's emphasis on Richardson's achievement in literary form and psychological complexity seems to be unquestionable though some critics still voice different opinions. In “The Rise of Richardson Criticism”, Siobhan Kilfeather argues that “Watt has a tendency to psychoanalyse” (256). In The Origins of the English Novel, Michael McKeon also points out the shortcomings of Watt's study, noting particularly “the inadequacy” of the “theoretical distinction between ‘novel’ and ‘romance’” and “the rise of the middle class” (3).

Two critical articles on Clarissa published before Watt's influential book deserve our attention. One is a chapter from Dorothy van Ghent's The English Novel: Form and Function; the other is Christopher Hill's “Clarissa and Her Times”. Van Ghent first criticizes the slow pace and thin plot of Clarissa, and then continues her discussion on images and symbols. She enumerates the images in different scenes in Clarissa. The focus of her essay is to regard the novel as a Puritan myth, a myth of class and a sexual myth, which she illustrates respectively. Van Ghent argues that Clarissa desires to be raped as she represents the extreme of Puritanism (63), which is challenged by many critics such as Terry Eagleton who produced The Rape of Clarissa (1982) as defense against such views heedless of the historical background of Richardson's time. Many later critics disagree with van Ghent's psychoanalytic criticism, either. For example, Allen Michie expresses his disagreement with van Ghent's views concerning the sexual psychology which will appall readers of Richardson. In “Clarissa Harlowe and Her Times”, Christopher Hill discusses the Puritan attitudes towards society, marriage and the individual against the background of the eighteenth-century economic developments. He argues that Clarissa represents the supreme criticism of property marriage which affects the individuals and the human relationships in the novel. In Hill's view, Richardson refuses to let the novel end happily with a repentant Lovelace marrying Clarissa, and this is regarded by Richardson's contemporaries as against the poetic justice. Clarissa has surpassed the conventional morality of “marriage-covers-all” which makes Pamela so depressing.

Maybe it was because Watt's argument was such an impressive landmark in Richardson's criticism that the 1960s seemed to have produced no remarkable study on Clarissa, and for another truly influential study we have to wait till 1973 when Mark Kinkead-Weekes published Samuel Richardson: Dramatic Novelist, which offers detailed reading of Richardson's three novels in the way it is due to “the nature of the dramatic art” (2). Part Two of this book is a close reading of Clarissa following an introduction to the novel's publishing history as three installments. He analyses in great detail the psychological conflicts of the hero and the heroine scene by scene and on some important occasions even line by line. Kinkead-Weekes argues that Lovelace always presents himself as an image of the rake who regards Clarissa's resistance as only a pretentious delicacy. Besides, he points out some shortcomings in Clarissa's character which are revealed in the dramatic scenes of the novel. He also maintains that Richardson is a writer conscious of his dramatic art of fiction, which is contrary to the claims made by other critics preceding him.

One year later, Margaret Anne Doody devoted five chapters in A Natural Passion: A Study of the Novels of Samuel Richardson (1974) to the discussion of Clarissa. She argues that Lovelace's dominant passion is his obsession with power, “which is both his object and his function” (100) while Clarissa's natural passion is the love of God. She considers Clarissa's death as a holy death, regarding her to be fully repentant as a Christian martyr. Doody also examines the relationship between Clarissa and Richardson's earlier novels of love and seduction. What's more, she examines the implications of doors, keys, brothel, prison, coffin and tomb.

Anthony Kearney analysed the lengthy novel in his short but insightful book—Samuel Richardson: Clarissa (1975). In this study, he argues that Richardson's purpose in this novel is not moralizing, but the “exploration of conflicting attitudes and feelings and its presentation of particular experiences” (11). Then he analyses the two major characters, Clarissa and Lovelace. In his view, Richardson has created a human Clarissa in the first half of the novel and a saint-like Clarissa at the end. He regards Lovelace as a character full of “exuberance and energy” who becomes “a victim both of his own rake's creed and of his feelings for Clarissa” (31). Furthermore, he analyses the supporting roles and the style of this novel, and finally makes comments on Richardson's achievements, limitations and his influence on later novelists.

From a deconstructive point of view, William Beatty Warner studies Clarissa in relation to its reception history. He argues that modern critics, especially George Sherburn and the other abridgers of the novel, have not done justice to Lovelace. In Warner's view, most critics have neglected the importance of Lovelace who is actually a more vivid and complicated character than Clarissa. But he lays emphasis on beautifying Lovelace's rape of Clarissa and even thinks that Clarissa should be raped because she is too perfect. That he refuses to take Clarissa's suffering seriously and even sings praise of the rape and the rapist arouses much criticism because he does not pay attention to the particular background of the author's time. Terry Eagleton's The Rape of Clarissa was written under this circumstance. For another critic Terry Castle, the novel's narrative method—narrating through the interaction of different letter correspondents—creates a basic problem of reading, which splits the novel into pieces. So, formally, Clarissa's story is split by “gaps in its linguistic surface, and in its structure of meaning” (36). The title of Castle's book, Clarissa's Ciphers, comes from what Clarissa herself says in the novel: “I am but a cypher, to give him significance, and myself pain.” In the introduction, Castle claims that her book is “an attempt to elaborate Clarissa's fateful metaphor, to measure the range of its power, both within and without Clarissa” (16). She also comments on many of her contemporary critics' interpretation of Clarissa. Both Warner and Castle are strongly influenced by deconstruction, and their works indicate the impact of this theory on the study of Clarissa.

Terry Eagleton uses three methods of reading in The Rape of Clarissa: poststructuralist theories of textuality, a feminist and psychoanalytical perspective and historical materialism (viii). Eagleton analyses the sexual politics and class politics in the eighteenth century and argues “the paradox of Clarissa is that Clarissa's writing is ‘masculine’ whereas Lovelace's is ‘feminine’” (52). He examines how “the feminization of discourse prolongs the fetishizing of women at the same time as it lends them a more authoritative voice” (13). Furthermore, he also devotes much space of his book to analysing Clarissa criticism. Eagleton criticizes Dorothy van Ghent's and William Beatty Warner's criticism as being “flagrantly prejudiced” and “obtusely unhistorical” (68). Van Ghent emphasizes that Clarissa has no less violent sexuality than Lovelace, which is often criticized by many critics. Eagleton calls Warner's book Reading Clarissa “a fashionably deconstructionist piece out to vilify Clarissa and sing the virtues of her rapist” (65). He also points out Ian Watt's “blind spots” in his famous study The Rise of the Novel. Ian Watt thinks that Clarissa has a kind of unconscious love for Lovelace. But Eagleton contends, “Lovelace ... is for the most part simply a wolf, and is perceived by Clarissa to be so.” (69) Eagleton's criticism, however, is also problematic, which has been discussed by many of his contemporary critics. But the simple fact that Warner, Castle and Eagleton all wrote on Clarissa within a few years shows clearly how appealing this novel was at that time.

Two important collections of essays on Samuel Richardson published in the 1980s deserve our special attention. Samuel Richardson: Passion and Prudence (1986) is a collection of essays edited by Valerie Grosvenor Myer. Though Richardson's three novels are all covered in the ten essays, the emphasis of this collection is on Clarissa. One article by Angus Wilson makes a good analysis of Clarissa's reception history and the great power of the novel. He points out that Richardson combines the language of theatre and the letter form, which creates “an exceptional innerness, a sense of penetration into the central secrets of human purpose” (Wilson 44). Thus, the readers would feel being taken into the battle of good and evil in the novel, and that's why the novel is still relevant for modern readers. Samuel Richardson: Tercentenary Essays (1989) is edited by Margaret Anne Doody and Peter Sabor. There are a series of essays analyzing Richardson's three novels respectively and some comprehensive essays dealing with his writing techniques and his novels in general. Siobhan Kilfeather's “The Rise of Richardson Criticism” traces the development of Richardson criticism and comments on many famous critics' views. James Grantham Turner analyses the character of Lovelace and the paradoxes of libertinism.

In addition, there are several individual studies. Carol Houlihan Flynn's Samuel Richardson: A Man of Letters (1982) combines Richardson criticism with biographical commentary. Flynn examines the tension between Richardson's moral and aesthetic principles in his novels and letters. Jocelyn Harris' Samuel Richardson (1987) is a study on the themes of Richardson's three novels, in which she devotes four chapters to detailed analysis of Clarissa. Elizabeth Bergen Brophy's book Samuel Richardson (1987) is a comprehensive study which aims at providing a guide to new readers. In the part dealing with Clarissa, Brophy discusses the conventional view of “Clarissa's imputed sexual frigidity and the problem of Lovelace's appeal for readers” (ix). She further argues that Clarissa and Lovelace are both tragic figures with potentials for greatness that have been destroyed by a vicious system of values. She praises the psychological depth Richardson has achieved in this great novel.

Responding to the development of space studies in the 1970s, Christina Marsden Gillis wrote The Paradox of Privacy: Epistolary Form in Clarissa (1984) which regards the epistolary form “as a spatial construct” and examines “the tension between private and public in spatial terms” (4). She traces back her predecessors' criticisms, such as John Preston's reading of Clarissa as “a novel of isolation and estrangement” (3), Alan McKillop's notion of paradox, Antony Kearney's view of seeing Clarissa as a “study in isolation” and his examining of the tension between isolation and a “reaching out for contact”, and Mark Kinkead-Weekes' argument of Clarissa finally getting freed though confined through the major part of the novel (Gillis 4). Gillis argues that “rooms and texts image each other” (5). This argument has not been emphasized by former criticism of privacy and private space in Clarissa. There are two parts in this book, namely, “Spaces” and “Letters”. In her view, Clarissa is a novel “that images and explores, rather, the tension between private language and public form, part and whole, individual and outside world”. The rape of Clarissa is the key incident because “it destroys not only the privacy of the body but the individual letter as an image of that privacy” (Gillis 12).

The 1990s witnessed more individual studies of Richardson and Clarissa. In Richardson's Clarissa and the Eighteenth-Century Reader (1992), Tom Keymer studies the epistolary form and the reader's reception of it. This study is not a simple account of Richardson's narrative techniques since the main body of this book is a detailed analysis of Clarissa. Keymer focuses his attention on the difficulties and challenges with which the readers might be confronted, and on the activities required of them in the process of reading. The emphasis of his study is on “the underlying complexities of the multiple epistolary form” (xix). Tassie Gwilliam studies the issue of “gender” in Richardson's three novels in Samuel Richardson's Fictions of Gender (1993). According to Gwilliam's understanding of Clarissa, “The novel itself seeks to exhibit a complete, authoritative view of gender and sexuality at the same time it develops the case against Lovelace's imperial assertions of his intimate knowledge of both sexes” (51). More specifically, Gwilliam believes that Clarissa, as an “exemplar of and to her sex”, actually “thwarts the aims of Lovelace's experiments and disrupts Richardson's investigation of gender by complicating the category of femininity in the same way masculine identification with the feminine complicates the category of masculinity” (53).

Lois E. Bueler examines the structure of the novel in Clarissa's Plots (1994). She argues, “Richardson's technical innovations and indebtedness to a variety of narrative traditions render the novel's plot structure far from obvious and thus additionally worth investigating.” (12) She points out that there are three plots in the novel, namely, “the Tested Woman Plot”, “the Don Juan Plot” and “the Prudence Plot”. Her purpose is to describe the interweaving of these plots in order to explain why Clarissa possesses the greatest appeal to readers among Richardson's three novels. In the third chapter of Domestic Misconduct in the Novels of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (1994), Jacqueline Elaine Lawson analyses the Harlowes' class status and their ambition to climb up the social ladder by means of forcing Clarissa to marry Solmes. Furthermore, Lawson states the reason why the Harlowes refuse to be related to Lovelace in marriage. And there are also detailed analyses of the parts her father, mother, brother and sister play in Clarissa's tragic story. Stephanie Fysh's The Work(s) of Samuel Richardson (1997) combines bibliography, biography and modern Richardson criticism. Fysh examines Richardson's three novels respectively, each time with a new emphasis different from traditional views. This book provides useful materials for Richardson criticism and biography as well as his place in literary history.

During this decade, two collections of essays about Richardson and his works appeared. New Essays on Samuel Richardson (1996) is edited by Albert J. Rivero. The essays cover all three novels by Richardson, but the focus is still on Clarissa. In “Asserting the Negative: ‘Child’ Clarissa and the Problem of the ‘Determined Girl’”, Michael F. Suarez discusses Clarissa's incessant no-saying to her family members' persuasion. He maintains that neither Clarissa's family nor Lovelace will accept her “no” because they want to infantilize her and deprive her of the right of autonomy. Clarissa's tragic death in the end also reflects the pathetic status of women in the eighteenth century. Clarissa and Her Readers: New Essays for the Clarissa Project (1999) is edited by Carol Houlihan Flynn and Edward Copeland. This is a collection of essays discussing the Clarissa subject exclusively. Flynn offers a thorough introduction to all the essays collected and arranges them into different thematic groups.

Towards the end of the 1990s three new critical studies on Clarissa were published. Donnalee Frega's Speaking in Hunger: Gender, Discourse, and Consumption in Clarissa (1998) is about the female hunger and eating habits which are regarded as a form of discourse. Frega's major argument is that “the language of hunger is one of accommodation”. She believes that “it depends on an internalized disposition toward oneself, a shared system of evaluation which forces men and women to interact in self-destructive ways” (4-5). Anger, Guilt and the Psychology of the Self in Clarissa (1999) is written by Victor J. Lams who uses psychoanalytical methods to analyze the characters' actions and motives. Gordon D. Fulton studies the novel from a stylistic approach in Styles of Meaning ＆ Meanings of Style in Richardson's Clarissa (1999). He adopts the systemic-functional linguistic theory, the theory of foregrounding and the theory of register in this study.

The study on Richardson and Clarissa in the new century is first marked by the collection entitled Passion ＆ Virtue: Essays on the Novels of Samuel Richardson (2001) edited by David Blewett. The essays cover all three of Richardson's novels, with the focus on two important themes: passion and virtue. As Blewett states, “Virtue can withstand passion, as in Pamela or Clarissa, or may be the appropriate reward of passion, as, in different senses, it is in all three novels.” (7) The essays about Clarissa examine “the major political, economic, philosophical, moral, and religious ideas at work in the novel, the turbulent undercurrents stirring beneath the surface of the vast expanse of Richardson's great work, creating its apparent—and real—inconsistencies” (4) and “the religious, moral, and emotional sources of Richardson's creative imagination” (5).

Victor J. Lams' Clarissa's Narrators (2001) is a companion volume to his previous work Anger, Guilt and the Psychology of the Self in Clarissa. This study deals with the question: “How is the novel's narrative configured and conducted?” Lams demands the readers of his work to be familiar with the unabridged third edition of Clarissa and acquainted with his previous study. In Autonomous Voices (2003), Alex Townsend applies Bakhtin's theory of polyphony to his analysis of Richardson's three novels. Kathleen M. Oliver analyses Richardson's novels from a cultural point of view in Samuel Richardson, Dress, and Discourse (2008). She believes that since clothing and identity are intimately entwined, there is a need to study “how the attire in which Richardson arrays his characters confirms, contributes to, or challenges the characters' fashioning of the self and the self as others (characters or readers) perceive it” (1). The use of the phrase “fashioning of the self” clearly indicates that Oliver is influenced by Stephen Greenblatt's study Renaissance Self-Fashioning, but still her special focus is on the importance of dress in Richardson's novels. Oliver admits, “Dress is but one way of entering Richardson's texts, yet, I believe, it is a highly productive way, due to the emphasis on dress in both eighteenth-century English society and in Richardson's own novels” (18). These studies show the prosperity and diversity of Richardson studies today.

The above is a brief introduction to Richardson criticism abroad in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. There are some critical works which are written without taking the historical background into full consideration, such as Dorothy van Ghent and William Beatty Warner's views on the rape of Clarissa. In The English Novel: Form and Function, van Ghent offers a close reading of Clarissa in the style of new criticism and shows sympathy for Lovelace; similarly, Warner's Reading Clarissa: The Struggles of Interpretation sings praise of the rapist. Warner argues that the best way to deconstruct the monotonous unified perfect self of Clarissa is to rape her. These distortions of Richardson's work greatly anger the Marxist and Feminist critics represented by Terry Eagleton and Terry Castle who then wrote The Rape of Clarissa and Clarissa's Ciphers respectively to attack these misrepresented views.

Unlike the flourishing Richardson criticism abroad, critical studies on his works are few in China. In 1995, Liu Yiqing published Samuel Richardson as Writer of the Female Heart: Epistolarity in Sir Charles Grandison, which is based on her dissertation at the University of Chicago. She studies the characteristics of Richardson's epistolary novels with a special focus on his third novel Sir Charles Grandison. Liu also offers a quite extended analysis of Clarissa in History of Eighteenth-Century English Literature (184-187). Huang Mei provides an excellent analysis of Clarissa in one chapter of her book “Selfhood” under Scrutiny: Novels in Eighteenth-Century Britain. She examines the war staged between Clarissa and her family, elaborating on the tragedy of pursuit—Clarissa for her freedom of will and Lovelace for his obsession with power. Besides, there are about thirty journal articles on Richardson studies, among which many are devoted to the study of Pamela. Till now there are only two doctoral dissertations on Clarissa, namely, Reading Clarissa: An Interpretation of a Polyphonic World by Zhong Ming and On the Carnivalistic Characteristics in Clarissa by Li Xiaolu, which clearly show the influence of Bahktin's theory. Comparatively speaking, due to the lack of Chinese translation of the great novel (most probably because of its length), there is still much to do about this subject. This book is meant to contribute something new to Richardson study in our country.

Richardson criticism has developed rather rapidly in the last few decades with the most critical attention focusing on Clarissa. Critics have different views about whether Clarissa is a tragedy, and what kind of tragedy it is. Before we move further, we need to consider the definition of tragedy. Aristotle offers his classic definition in Poetics:

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action which is serious and complete and has a [proper] magnitude, [expressed] in speech with forms of enhancements appropriate to each of its parts and used separately, [presented]by performers in a dramatic and not a narrative manner, and ending through pity and fear in a catharsis of such emotions. (Aristotle 6).

Aristotle's definition is based on ancient Greek drama. Since we are dealing with Clarissa which is a novel, we are more concerned with the tragic attitude or mood of representation, and many modern literary theorists have discussed it. For example, in Tragedy: A View of Life, Alonzo Henry Myers contends that the tragic attitude is neither optimism, nor pessimism. He considers the representation of the relation between good and evil as the tragic attitude toward values and believes that “the perception of this relation, and not the good of the action itself, is the source of the spectator's pleasure; and the relation itself, which has various significances in different contexts—metaphysical, aesthetic, dramatic, and ethical—is the essential element in tragedy” (Myers 8). This definition of tragic attitude is quite relevant to Clarissa, which essentially presents the relation between good and evil in the conflict between Clarissa and Lovelace.

In An Introduction to the English Novel, Arnold Kettle makes an excellent analysis of Clarissa's tragic power. He describes the intensity readers feel as “the sense of being trapped, of being unable to break through the web of misunderstanding and hatred and jealousy and sheer insensibility that are going to destroy her” and “this peculiar intensity is that it is tragic” (Kettle 65). Kettle contends that if Richardson is not the first English novelist, “he is the first tragic novelist, and this is where the power of Clarissa lies” (66). In his views, the essence of the tragedy is that Clarissa refuses to give in to her bourgeois family which regards her as a piece of property to make profit in a marriage of convenience. Mark Kinkead-Weekes believes, “Clarissa's tragedy is an exposure of a materialist and acquisitive society; of the moral decay of both the aristocracy and the ‘middle class'; of a view of human relationship grounded on money and property” (124). Terry Castle maintains not only that “Clarissa's experience is fundamentally tragic, but that her tragic status is inseparable from her representation, within Richardson's fiction, as an exemplary victim of hermeneutic violence” (22).

On the other hand, there are also critics who do not consider Clarissa as a tragedy. Dorothy van Ghent observes “that far from being the tragedy which Richardson, as a literary man with some knowledge of the traditional structure of tragedy, worked hard to make it”, Clarissa is a “divine comedy” (58). The reason for van Ghent's argument is that “Clarissa's death does not provide a tragic ending for the story, but a ‘happy ending,’ inasmuch as her death is equated with supernatural joys and rewards” (van Ghent 63). Similarly, William Warner who refuses to see Clarissa's suffering seriously would not consider the novel as a tragedy, either. But clearly, this view has not won wide support, and as noted earlier, both van Ghent's and Warner's views have been disputed by Terry Eagleton and others.

As the discussion in the previous section clearly shows, Clarissa is widely read as a great tragic novel or a novelistic tragedy. So my reading of Clarissa as tragedy is not meant to break new ground but to offer a detailed study of the particular nature of tragedy in this novel. This is because despite the generally shared agreement about Clarissa as a tragedy, critics tend to simply take this point for granted without further illustration. Furthermore, when talking about the novel as a tragedy, critics usually just mean Clarissa is a tragic character, with only a few taking Lovelace into account. In this book, although Clarissa is still my primary focus, much attention will be paid to Lovelace as well, since he is an important part of the patriarchal power against which Clarissa struggles. I will take property as a crucial concept in the tragedy of Clarissa and discuss her struggles against her family, Lovelace, and the world in general as a resistance against being treated as property or possession and as a road leading to her own self or personal identity.

The importance of property to eighteenth-century novels is widely recognized. Eleanor Shevlin writes in her contribution to The Cambridge History of the English Novel:

Though scheming and intrigue certainly persist in early English novels, these elements emerge domesticated and subordinated to property concerns; and their narratives favor mapping representations of social relations drawn to the scale of the everyday. The stratagems propelling the plots of Daniel Defoe's novels from Robinson Crusoe (1719) to Roxana (1724), for instance, are undertaken to accumulate property and solidify a protagonist's place in the world. Similarly, the machinations found in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749)—be they executed by the Blifils, Sr. or Jr., by Molly Seagrim, or by Mr. Fitzpatrick—are all motivated by property interests. (51-52)

This passage is interesting not only in noting the importance of property in the early development of the English novel, but also in demonstrating one striking difference between the two writers: in Defoe's novels, accumulating property is the hero's or heroine's primary concern, while in Fielding's Tom Jones it is the bad characters who are particularly concerned with property. In Richardson's Pamela, property is also very important. For example, in one dialogue between Pamela and Mrs. Jewkes, Pamela tries hard to deny that she is Mr. B's “property”, while Mrs. Jewkes considers this denial to be “downright rebellion” (163).

In Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel, James Thompson examines the changing concept of property. He carefully examines the property chapter in John Locke's Second Treatise of Government, noting that by denying the divine rights of kings, Locke also manages to provide a new theory of property that emphasizes individual efforts as the origin of property. His conclusion deserves a full citation:

First, in deconstructing Filmer's theological justification for the division of wealth (as God owns his creation, so the king owns his subject, and the father owns his child), Locke interiorizes or psychologizes ownership into a question of character and rationality, making a crucial connection between property and biography... Secondly, in deconstructing Filmer's logocentric model of patriarchal authority, Locke's justification for private property passes from etiological to teleological, concentrating not on where it comes from, God or the king as the originary source, or even the father, but rather on where it goes, thereby connecting personal development and capitalist accumulation. (150)

This passage has important implications for the study of fictional writing. With Clarissa in mind, we can see that the passage notes something crucial for our understanding of the novel and Clarissa's character. While Mr. Harlowe considers Clarissa as his property, Clarissa seems to be holding a different view: even though she is her father's daughter, she desires to pursue her own happiness instead of being simply disposed in the marriage market. Property emphasizes material wealth, but to the Harlowes, Clarissa is also their property. Property can be managed, displayed, possessed, disposed, and used for gaining more property, and that is what the Harlowes do with Clarissa who tries every way to resist.

Possession emphasizes the state of possessing, and in this novel Lovelace's association with Clarissa is mainly for gaining her affection, conquering her will, and possessing her body. He considers the possession of her body essential for his triumph over the Harlowes, but in fact the brutal possession of Clarissa's body by rape deprives him of the only way to win Clarissa's love. Personality or self is also important in this novel, but the tragedy is that the Harlowes and Lovelace pay little attention to Clarissa's personality or self, and only after the rape when Clarissa has given up all the connections with her family and the world in general can she assert her own self, so it is justifiable to regard the last part as the triumph of Clarissa's personality or selfhood. My book is primarily influenced by the social historical studies of Watt, Hill and Eagleton, but I will also pay special attention to women's social status in examining Clarissa's conflict with Lovelace. Besides, my interpretation of the novel is based on a close reading of the rich text which well pays a careful reader's effort.

Chapter One deals with Clarissa's rebellion when the Harlowe family treats her as a piece of property to be manipulated for gaining more property. I will first discuss what the grandfather's legacy has led to. After noting why the grandfather leaves Clarissa the estate, I will focus on the influence this legacy has on Clarissa's father and her siblings. The discussion then moves to the introduction of Lovelace to the family, focusing particularly on the jealousy he causes when he changes his interest from Bella to Clarissa. In order to prevent the alliance between Lovelace and Clarissa and, more importantly, to increase family property, the Harlowe family members unite to force Clarissa to marry the fulsome Solmes, an action which leads directly to Clarissa's running away from the family.

Chapter Two focuses on Clarissa's resisting Lovelace treating her as his possession. Here I will first discuss Lovelace's triple image as rescuer, protector, and (potential) lover. After a careful consideration of Clarissa's difficult situation, I will elaborate on the most crucial incident in the whole novel: the rape of Clarissa. For Lovelace, since he has now controlled Clarissa, she belongs to him or is his possession, but Clarissa does not think so. Clarissa's attitude towards Lovelace goes through a complex process: she is first deceived, believing Lovelace to be a true rescuer; then she partially wakens and attempts to escape; but she is deceived again and brought back to be drugged and raped. The rape itself is a kind of complicated incident: on the one hand, it is Lovelace's triumph, but on the other hand, the use of drug encouraged by the prostitutes indicates that the triumph is rather ironical, and more importantly, the temporary possession of Clarissa's physical body will ultimately lead to his complete loss of her.

Chapter Three discusses Clarissa's responses after the rape and argues that the last part of the novel can be seen as the final triumph of Clarissa's self identity. The rape means both the loss of the original chaste Clarissa and the birth of a new one; it also makes Clarissa see Lovelace's true nature, disillusioning her of any love for him. The rape makes her value in that world damaged, so there is no way to reconcile with her family. Therefore, her connections with both her family and Lovelace are broken. But Clarissa's triumph proceeds very slowly: she has a short period of insanity at first; she is then moved to a new place, which means she has fully got rid of Lovelace's control. Afterwards, we see a series of Clarissa's new actions: reforming Belford, rejecting various suggestions, writing letters to her family members and Lovelace, distributing her property, and arranging the publication of her letters. In this period, Clarissa is enjoying her full individuality for the first time in the whole novel.

Through the process of fighting against her family, Lovelace and conventional ideas, Clarissa manages to show her unique character, and the last part of the novel indicates a kind of divine triumph of a single woman against the dominant patriarchal order. Death, which conventionally means defeat or tragedy, becomes for Clarissa a kind of victory, for only through death can she escape from the control of the patriarchal order in this world. Moreover, Clarissa's refusal of marriage and acceptance of death show to Lovelace that she is truly different from other conventional women who would very willingly accept his hand after the rape. The tragedy for Lovelace is that it is too late when he recognizes Clarissa's character, and finally he meets his death willingly in the duel with Clarissa's cousin Morden.

1. Defoe was best known as a prolific and polemical writer before publishing Robinson Crusoe in 1719; W. R. Owens and P. N. Furbank divide Defoe's writings into five categories in their 44-volume edition published by Pickering and Chatto in the last decade. Fielding was the most important dramatist in the 1730s and later became a political journalist and a successful magistrate; although he only wrote 4 novels, the Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding has 16 volumes.
2. That is why even American graduate students read George Sherburn's abridged edition of Clarissa until the early 1980s.
3. Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, 1st edition, ed. with an introduction by Angus Ross (London: Penguin Books, 1985, rpt. 2004 with corrections). All textual quotations are from this edition, and parenthetical references in the text will give the letter number followed by the page number. All italics in quotations, unless otherwise specified, are in the original.
4. See Bruce Redford, The Converse of the Pen: Acts of Intimacy in the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
5. For the criticism of George Sherburn's abridgement, see “Clarissa Censored” by Margaret Anne Doody and Florian Stuber. In this article, they criticize Sherburn's sloppy scholarship, slovenly proofreading, typographical errors and omission of many pages. Sherburn has chopped away over three-quarters of Clarissa. The grandfather's will, which is quite important, has vanished from Sherburn's edition.