I had begun a letter to my cousin; but laid it by, because of the uncertainty of my situation, and expecting every day for several days past to be at a greater certainty. You bid me write to him some time ago, you know. Then it was I began it: for I have great pleasure in obeying you in all I may. So I ought to have; for you are the only friend left me. And, moreover, you generally honour me with your own observance of the advice I take the liberty to offer you: for I pretend to say, I give better advice than I have taken. And so I had need. For, I know not how it comes about, but I am, in my own opinion, a poor lost creature: and yet cannot charge myself with one criminal or faulty inclination. Do you know, my dear, how this can be?
Yet I can tell you how, I believe—one devious step at setting out!— that must be it:—which pursued, has led me so far out of my path, that I am in a wilderness of doubt and error; and never, never, shall find my way out of it: for, although but one pace awry at first, it has led me hundreds and hundreds of miles out of my path: and the poor estray has not one kind friend, nor has met with one direct passenger, to help her to recover it.
But I, presumptuous creature! must rely so much upon my own knowledge of the right path!—little apprehending that an ignus fatuus with its false fires (and ye I had heard enough of such) would arise to mislead me! And now, in the midst of fens and quagmires, it plays around me, and around me, throwing me back again, whenever I think myself in the right track. But there is one common point, in which all shall meet, err widely as they may. In that I shall be laid quietly down at last: and then will all my calamities be at an end.
This excerpt begins with Clarissa's reference to the letter from her Cousin Morden. After reading his letter, she indicates that she has become very lost — looking for "certainty" in a world of "uncertainty." The references here speak so loudly to our previous discussions of Clarissa's attempt to write to find herself and write her way into a more certain identity where she feels safe rather than threatened and confused. I have also highlighted the moment at the end of the excerpt where Clarissa references death, as I was getting the sense that she thinks death is the only certainty her life offers. But again, we must ask — what is Anna's role as the audience? How can Anna aid Clarissa in her quest to find her identity? What are some other ways we might analyze this excerpt (or others) in terms of Clarissa's search for her identity? And how does the act of writing play into that desire for certainty here? Furthermore, how might we situate this reference to death with the other wishes for death Clarissa has mentioned previously?
Anna's role does so much as an audience to Clarissa's letters. To name a few, Anna is like an anchor, link, and a mirror in her role as audience for Clarissa. As an anchor, Anna helps keep Clarissa in place in terms of who she is, her morals, and providing relatively sound advice to keep Clarissa on track — so to speak. Anna is also the link to the outside world that lets Clarissa know what's going with her family and what everyone thinks of the situation. Finally, as a mirror Anna is reflecting and confirming the identity that Clarissa is writing into being, and at times appears to be questioning. While Clarissa could have written a journal that readers might read and validate her identity, Anna is the one reads the letters and who helps Clarissa remember that she does have an identity and reflects it back to both Clarissa and the readers. Clarissa writes to Anna to confirm her certainties and to ascertain her actions. Anna is given Clarissa's thoughts and letters to help reflect to Clarissa's family and the readers that Clarissa is doing all that she can and is innocent in all that has transpired. Lastly, Clarissa's references to death are now more concrete than they had originally been. Anna is the only one to whom Clarissa has staunchly confirmed that when she is "laid quietly down at last: and then will all [her] calamities be at an end." She has only threatened to accept death as a proposal to everyone else, such as her family and Lovelace, but only to Anna does the reader see that Clarissa is serious about death being the only moment she will have a resolution to her situation.
I also noted the two solaces that Clarissa seems to turn to here: death and God.In the beginning of the letter, she writes, “I wish for the one [death], and every now and then, am on the brink of the other [despair].” I think this letter marks a formative point for Clarissa—at least in her letters as we see/read them—in which she touches again on the question of death and acknowledges, at long last, her own despair.Then, later, she writes, “I too little, perhaps, cast up my eyes to the Supreme Director: in whom, mistrusting myself, I ought to have placed my whole confidence!” While thinking of death as her only option, she also gives some rhetorical space to her faith, which commands her to maintain hope even in the darkest of circumstances.Even when, as she writes, Clarissa has been led “so far out of my path that I am in a wilderness of doubt and error,” she has God to act as her Supreme Director. I think it’s telling, of course, that Clarissa situates herself within a religious metaphor—lost in the Wilderness (which reminds me of Hester in “The Scarlet Letter”)—whereas Lovelace uses the nature metaphor of the bird in previous letters.It further cements their positions: he as a force of nature (the nature of man, the nature of human beings as sinners) and she as a patient penitent (waiting for absolution, waiting for divine intervention).Then what would Anna be? The watchful disciple? Of Clarissa—not of God, necessarily. She watches, reads the letters, responds, but (though she offers advice) cannot act on behalf of her idol Clarissa to intervene—either between Clarissa and Lovelace, or between Clarissa and her Supreme Dictator.
I like the 'Anna as mirror' analogy, because it suggests something about her agency, too: while Anna watches or looks, and reflects Clarissa's identity as she perceives it throughout the novel, ultimately the mirror takes no direct action in events as they unfold. The mirror may change the way Clarissa sees herself, but it cannot force her to do anything–and cannot do anything for her.
Clarissa says: "Yet I can tell you how, I believe—one devious step at setting out!— that must be it:—which pursued, has led me so far out of my path, that I am in a wilderness of doubt and error; and never, never, shall find my way out of it: for, although but one pace awry at first, it has led me hundreds and hundreds of miles out of my path/"In narrative terms, Clarissa is struggling for a coherent story of her self. In his discussion of Freud's case history of Dora, Steven Marcus says that Freud "implies assumptions of the broadest and deepest kind about the nature of coherence and the form and structure of a human life. On this reading, human life is, ideally, a connected and coherent story, with all the details in explanatory place, and eerything (or as close to everything as is practically possible) accounted for" (60). Freud's patients construct this "coherent" story through psychoanalytic dialogue. Clarissa tries to construct it through her letters to Anna. (I'm not saying Anna is her psychoanalyst, but she is a receptive and encouraging listener). Earlier, in Letter 136, Anna has said " You can no more go out of your road, than I can go out of mine. It would be a pain to either to do so." Clarissa has been pushed out of her "road," the coherent narrative she believed to be the story of her life, and doesn't know what to do. Her desperate attempt to square appearances with truth in the earlier letter is a way to restore this experiential coherence of who she is.
These responses are so thoughtful. It seems that Anna plays a very crucial role in helping to direct Clarissa on a path toward (re)constructing herself and finding a path of “certainty” that Clarissa desires. Certainly, too, death and God offer Clarissa ways of coping with her current despair. As the novel progresses, we certainly see these religious references becoming more prevalent. It seems that there are quite a few “characters” involved in Clarissa's quest for a coherent narrative, and the interplay between them reveals fascinating things about Clarissa's understanding of herself, her relationship with Anna, and her relationship with God.