In Volume IX, there were some interesting and vital juxtapositions of the narrative construction—and closure—of characters. Clarissa’s “narrative life” may have ended with Belford’s words in Letter 481, “And thus died Miss CLARISSA HARLOWE, in the blossom of her youth and beauty….” As Tony noted, Belford’s “sudden elegiac tone” acts “almost like the end of an obituary”—and yet, in another very important sense for us as readers, her death is not an end but the beginning of narrative closure in the novel. At this important moment, in the same letter, we also discussed why Belford would have asked Lovelace to tell Clarissa’s story as only he can: “A better pen than mine may do her fuller justice. Thine, I mean, O Lovelace! For well dost thou know how much she excelled in the graces of both mind and person…. And thou also can best account for the causes of her immature death….” Keri directed us to an important quote from Morden from a few letters later, where as she wrote, “Colonel Morden describes Lovelace as the ‘sole author of woe’… Lovelace ‘authored’ Clarissa’s fall from grace, so he should finish the tragic narrative because only his narrative will do justice to the horrific acts he has inflicted upon her.”

And yet this is not exactly what we find in the remaining letters of Volume IX. When Anna sees Clarissa’s body, in Letter 502, she laments that her dear friend’s death is “the end” of her “story”: “I am not myself!—I never shall be!” Anna cries, “Repeating, This cannot, surely, be all of my CLARISSA’S story!” Jessica summed it up best in her post: “there’s probably nothing more appropriate at that moment than to call Clarissa’s life a story. It reminds us of the narrative (the story of Clarissa, Lovelace, and the bad things that happen in this novel), but also of the exhaustive exercise that Clarissa joyfully undertook in composing her own narrative (and identity). That’s over with her death.” Yet we discussed the ways in which Clarissa’s story was not over, that much more does occur than mere “wrap-up” in the last 35 letters. As Jessica further suggested, “I wonder if Richardson really wanted to see what happens to the family and acquaintances in the aftermath of a woman’s death…from the standpoint of a storyteller who explores relationships, identity, and letter writing.”

It was precisely this “aftermath” that we see in the final letters of the novel—several of them authored by Clarissa herself, albeit posthumously. Keri also noted within those letters, 488-492, that Clarissa does, in fact, act as the author to her story even after death, from the paratextual features of the black wax (indicating her death to her family even before the letter is opened) to her choice of addressee and language within. Keri also directed us to the fact that this is in contrast with Lovelace’s request later in Letter 497 to have her letters so that he can write her story. Thus, in the end, though both Belford and Lovelace suggest that Lovelace, as the “author” of her woe, should be the author of Clarissa’s story—it is Clarissa herself who continues her own narrative on her terms.

This stands in particular juxtaposition with Lovelace—who we see losing control over his own narrative construction. This is clearest in Letter 497, as Debra argued, where “Lovelace has literally lost the narrative line of his life: he has nothing to move towards and is unable to move back. That he writes a hysterical letter (and is described as mad by his family and friends for the next week) seems inevitable.” Tony closed out the remarks on this letter by reminding us that Lovelace, like Clarissa, revealed much in his moments of “madness” that we had not seen previously—and which we did not see again, once he had gained some distance and was somewhat “recovered” to his previous “self.”

In the end, then, what kinds of narrative closure does Richardson offer us? Although many of the letters in Volume IX addressed the issue of narrative—and we debated about the end of the novel both on the blog and in class discussions—it is interesting to see that much of what we concluded drew our attention to the act of judgment in the narrative closure that Richardson did offer us. In Letter 508, Tony noted that we see some of Richardson’s judgment—and ours—of the Harlowes in Colonel Morden’s responses to them: “The will and Morden’s reflections offer the same thing: the will both bequeaths and judges, and Morden–as Clarissa did in her letter to Lovelace–adds further judgment on her family’s real responsibilities.” In Letter 502, Megan also suggested that Anna was acting as a proxy for us as readers, so that perhaps we could most closely identify with Anna in her grief for Clarissa—and her judgment of Lovelace and the Harlowes, which was consistent from the very first letter. And finally, in Letter 514, Tony wrote that Richardson would’ve been heartened to know that the instructive value of his letters—that his judgment as an author—was still shining through, too, even centuries later.

Ultimately, we can see part of the narrative closure of the novel in Clarissa’s legacy: namely, our judgment of Belford as a truly reformed rake, whom Tony suggested was offered to us as a better balance between good and evil, angel and devil, Clarissa and Lovelace. This kind of balance is perhaps not what we were expecting—but neither was Clarissa’s strength and reclamation of her narrative after her rape, and neither was Lovelace’s loss of his own narrative power after her death. Yet these juxtapositions—of our audience expectations and the complexity of what Richardson really offered us—made our reading of Clarissa most robust and fascinating in the end.