In Volume I, Letter 1 set much in motion. As Tony said, “It’s interesting how much Anna enables Richardson to frame in just a two-page letter: Clarissa’s nature and reputation, the immediate plunge into family disturbances, the violence between her brother and Lovelace, her brother’s unpleasant nature, the threats possible from Lovelace’s own temper, an excuse for Clarissa to write in as full detail as possible&emdash;and finally, a reminder of what the whole novel will be: ‘your account of all things . . . will be your justification.’” Jessica noted Anna’s need to reassure Clarissa that her public character is unaffected by the recent events. Steve pointed to “the circulation of Clarissa’s reputation. . . . More details make a better story. A better story makes for more repetitions, and more repetitions reinforce Clarissa’s good reputation,” and also suggested that this is a place “where the novel reminds us that identity can be as much about the stories people tell about you as it is about the stories you tell about yourself.” This became an important issue for us as we began our reading.

Letter 2 offers Clarissa as a narrator, here one who promises to “recite facts only.” Keri thought her failing to adhere to this promise was consistent with “the changing of her identity and the evolution of her thoughts,” and that these kinds of shifts, in turn, “reinforce the work’s epistolary nature that is episodic and constantly changing.” Megan, however, wondered “can we really trust Clarissa as a factual writer?” While Clarissa’s claims are not necessarily false, Clarissa is, as Megan emphasized “clearly writing from a specific point of view. She only knows her side of the story and what she has witnessed and noticed.” This inevitable consequence of the epistolary novel is something we returned to many times.

Towards the end of the volume, in our response to Letter 42, we returned to the kinds of narratives Clarissa constructs. Steve introduced Letter 42 with the observation that “kitty can scratch,“ referring to Clarissa’s angry and cutting portrayal of her sister, Arabella. Rachel agreed that this letter “shows Clarissa’s acts of supposed transparency in her letters, where they meet with her skewed perceptions of others,” and speculated that here she might “describe a past dislike of her sister to integrate better into her present dislike—in which case, Clarissa is bordering on what Kathleen Fitzpatrick (2007) saw as one of the distinguishing features of memoir (not of blogs): a kind of narrative unity or neatness, which presents the present in as much harmony with the past as possible.”