Narrative identity for Clarissa at first seems to be primarily constructed through her correspondence with Anna Howe. In Volume III, however, Clarissa and Anna have an added hurdle—the fact that Anna’s mother has prohibited their exchanging of letters due to Clarissa’s unfaithfulness to her family. What is interesting in this volume, though, is that Clarissa continues to write to Anna regardless of when and if she might receive a response. And these letters do not simply document the events that have unfolded since their previous correspondence; in these letters, Clarissa continuously asks questions of Anna to receive guidance about how to proceed in her current situation with Lovelace. Furthermore, Clarissa seems to recognize that Anna will likely be unable to respond to her letters. For instance, she writes to Anna in Letter 30 of Volume III: “I may send to you, although you are forbid to write to me; may I not?—For that is not a correspondence (is it?) where letters are unanswered”. Later in the same letter, Clarissa asks, “What think you, Miss Howe?—Do you believe he can have any view in this?” Though Clarissa recognizes the lack of correspondence, she continues to write on to her friend and request her guidance.

But why? One possible answer to this question is that Clarissa needs to confirm to someone that she maintains her honor and her steadfast nature in hopes of one day regaining her reputation. In Volume III, for example, Clarissa writes of Lovelace: “I am strangely at a loss what to think of this man. He is a perfect Proteus. I can but write according to the shape he assumes at the time. Don’t think me the changeable person, I beseech you, if in one letter I contradict what I wrote in another; nay, if I seem to contradict what I said in the same letter….” Here, Clarissa writes to Anna to prove the stability of her own character by comparing to that of Lovelace’s malleable, unpredictable one. Though Clarissa recognizes that she often changes her opinion of Lovelace based on his actions in a given circumstance, she must prove to Anna that she is, nevertheless, stable and capable of maintaining a positive self identity. Her sense of self depends entirely on her ability to write to someone even if she cannot receive a response, pointing to the power of writing alone in helping Clarissa develop and maintain a healthy sense of self.

We see later, however, in Volume IV, a disruption in the correspondence when Lovelace makes his initial attempts to intercept the letters between the two women. He, of course, successfully intercepts several of the letters and begins forging letters by learning the letterforms the women use. What is striking in these instances is that Lovelace does not merely invade Clarissa and Anna’s privacy, but his forgery also disrupts the identity-formation and understanding of the self that Clarissa so desperately needs in her time of crisis. As Marta Kvande (2013) consistently argued, a tight bond exists between the body, letter, and self, and this bond understandably loosens (and possibly breaks) when Lovelace secretly becomes so invested in the correspondence between the women. On this note, manuscript culture necessitates this bond with writing, an idea that emerges numerous times throughout Richardson’s novel. For instance, Clarissa refers to her physical tears interacting with the writing on her paper; she writes, “these [tears] mingling with my ink, will blot my paper” (Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 567). The letter provides a rhetorical space for Clarissa to connect physically and emotionally with her dear friend Anna, and in the instance referenced here, we quite literally see her body connecting with the letter in ways that print or digital cultures cannot allow.

Furthermore, as we noted in our class discussions, Clarissa and others are always very much aware of the physical location of the letters; in fact, she often keeps the letters inside of her clothing, again reinforcing Kvande’s (2013) argument about the relations among body, letter, and self. While Lovelace does gain access to the letters, Clarissa’s vigilance and concern for where the letters are located suggest she suspects Lovelace much more than she did previously. Lovelace notes in Letter 198: “I was sure, that this fair-one, at so early an age, with a constitution so firm, health so blooming, eyes so sparkling, expectations therefore so lively, and hope so predominating, could not be absolutely, and from her own vigilance, so guarded, and so apprehensive, as I have found her to be” (Richardson, 1748/1985, p. 632). Her extreme apprehensiveness later proves to be a positive characteristic, as Clarissa ultimately discovers these intrusions and regains a bit of the control and sense of the self she lost because of Lovelace’s disruptions and obsessive need to possess both her body and mind.

Equally striking is the way Clarissa’s sense of identity through writing continues after her death, when we finally see her posthumous letters to her family and friends and her will. As I have discussed elsewhere on the blog, Clarissa attempts to extend her “autobiographical end” by planning and sending letters after she dies (see Volume IX responses). These are letters that Clarissa plans and composes very carefully as she slowly awaits her death. In the combination of these letters to the various characters, I think that we get a glimpse of Clarissa’s true character and self as she writes her way to her death: she has found peace in her religion and has been able to forgive everyone for their transgressions against her in her time of despair. Her last letters indicate a control that she has over her self and over her relationship with her family and friends that she could not achieve during her time with Lovelace. The sense of control and intimacy we get from these final moments again shows how the body/self/letter interact in crucial ways for Clarissa throughout the entire novel.