CLARISSA; OR THE HISTORY
          OF  A  YOUNG  LADY

            The seven volumes of Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady appeared between 1747 and 1748.  Volumes I and II are about the bourgeois materialism and family tiranny. The acquisitive of the Harlowes (Clarissa's parents), their authoritarianism and cruelty, slowly enclose her in a trap from which there are only two exits: marriage to a man she despises, in obedience, or elopement with the rakish Lovelace, into which is eventually tricked. Volumes III and IV (April 1748) explore the conflict between Clarissa's absolute moral values and the unscrupulous sex-war code of Lovelace, who uses her propriety and delicacy against her in a plan to seduce her if he can, and marry her only if he must. He tricks her into a London brothel, from which she escapes, only to be brought back as the darkest phase of the novel opens. In volumes V, VI and VII (December 1748), Lovelace, incapable of giving up the view of men and women on which his view of life is based, his heart hardened by the urgings of the prostitutes and by his own wounded pride at his failure to win Clarissa, and obsesser with the need to satisfy that pride and impose his will, rapes Clarissa while she is under the influence of drugs. She temporarily loses her reason, her appeals to her family are rejected, and she herself rejects a Lovelace now aware of what he has done. She dies: but it is a holy death which Richardson clearly sees as a mark of divine grace, releasing her from a world in which him and beings torture one another and themselves.
            This novel is many things. Most significantly, perhaps, it explores the two chief forces in the world from which Richardson himself sprang. It is a sombre indictment of a life lived in terms of money and power; both the bourgeois Harlowes and the aristocratic Lovelace are opposed to deeper and truer values. It is also, however, a revealing exploration of the strength and weakness of  the absolute, ultimately puritan, code of ethics to which Richardson himself subscribed. In his imaginative realization of Clarissa he brings out the implications of her passivity, her vulnerability to people less scrupulous than herself, her inability to understand evil. Yet, in tragedy and dissolution, he triumphantly vindicates her integrity, the ultimate moral and religious strength of her holy living and dying.
            Formally Clarissa represents a great advance on Pamela. Though most of the narrative is carried by Clarissa's letters, Richardson uses three further points of view to explore all the implications of the events: the conciousness of her vivacious and rebellious friend, Anna Howe; that of Lovelace; and that of his reforming friend, Belford. There is thus a continuous complexity of analysis; but the reader must be constantly aware of the implications of each attitude, continually building up an understanding that is fuller, deeper, and more complex than that possessed by any character in the novel. The disadvantage is the novel's great length, as a events are repeated from different points of view. Yet few who have experienced its slow inevitability and the depth of its gradully unfolding meaning count it too long. There are also letters from numerous minor characters, in all of which Richardson gave rein to his belief that styles differ, too, as much as faces, and are indicative of the mind of the writer.
            In short, Clarissa is the plight of a young, innocent girl, destroyed by the man she loves, is represented through lengthy letters interchanged among the characters. This device permits an unprecedenter revelation of motives and feelings, so this novel is considered his best work.