And indeed, my dear, I know not how to forbear writing. I have now no other employment or diversion. And I must write on, although I were not to send it to any body. You have often heard me own the advantages I have found from writing down every thing of moment that befalls me; and of all I think, and of all I do, that may be of future use to me; for, besides that this helps to form one to a style, and opens and expands the ductile mind, every one will find that many a good thought evaporates in thinking; many a good resolution goes off, driven out of memory perhaps by some other not so good. But when I set down what I will do, or what I have done, on this or that occasion; the resolution or action is before me either to be adhered to, withdrawn, or amended; and I have entered into compact with myself, as I may say; having given it under my own hand to improve, rather than to go backward, as I live longer. I would willingly, therefore, write to you, if I might; the rather as it would be the more inspiriting to have some end in view in what to write; some friend to please; besides merely seeking to gratify my passion for scribbling. (Letter 135, Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 483)

Clarissa is often described as understanding her self as autonomous and seeing writing as a way of revealing what is already present in her mind. There is, for her, an unbroken connection between what is in the mind and what is in the writing hand. And indeed, this is the epistemological and spiritual rock upon which Clarissa’s identity is founded. However, even a writer who believes so explicitly in language as a clear window to what is already known can be brought up short when experience exceeds what the self thought was already established. In the passage quoted above, we see how some of these complexities work out.

Before the novel’s start, Clarissa had a clear sense of self, an identity that seemed to conform to those atemporal, acontextual norms John A. Dussinger (1989) described. These norms offered Clarissa a canonical self that was accepted and admired: she was a paragon for her sex. After the events narrated in the novel—her family’s isolating her and insisting she marry a man she despises and her eventual running away with Lovelace—Clarissa’s sense of self becomes more tenuous. Although she continues to hold on to identity through characteristics Dussinger (1989) described as “categorical, atemporal assertions about the world” (p. 40), these norms are inadequate to connect her sense of self with the identities she is now performing. Her letters reflect also a “self-consciousness [that] is inherently unstable and contingent” (Dissinger, 1989, p. 40).

In her letters, Clarissa often turns to categorical, atemporal assertions when she explains her self, only to return to her “limited, momentary account of a situation” (Dussinger, 1989, p. 40) (e.g., “You know, my dear, that I have an open and free heart, and naturally have as open and free a countenance; at least my complimenters have told me so. At once, where I like, I mingle minds without reserve, ecnouraging reciprocal freedoms,and am forward to disipate diffidences. But with these two young gentlewomen, I can never be intimate—I don’t know why” [Letter 157, Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 531]). Through writing, Clarissa tests her understanding of the world she inhabits: “Their eyes, upon this hint had the advantage of mine. Yet was I not conscious of guilt. How know I then, upon recollection, that my censures upon theirs are not too rash?” (Letter 157, Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 531).

Clarissa writes, she explains, because it helps her remember her thoughts, to fix them as resolutions, to make a compact with herself. Here writing seems not just recording events but constituting their meaning. In the act of writing Clarissa constructs a narrative of her self, one in which may “improve” rather than go backward.

She would write even without a reader, but she would rather write to Anna because then she has an “end in view”  (Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 483). The letter becomes a compact not just with herself, but also with the world she lives in—embodied in its most receptive and sympathetic form in Anna Howe.