In our discussion of Volume II, Rachel, citing John A. Dussinger (1989), noted that “there are, in practice, three different Clarissas: the proud feminist, the religious martyr, and the ‘sentimental heroine.’ This forces the reader to constantly renegotiate who Clarissa is in one particular letter vs. another&emdash;and forces us to think about, too, how this makes Clarissa human, how we too contain multiple, shifting selves, and how we are all always perceiving ourselves.” But, as Rachel also observed, Clarissa sees herself, and wants others to see her, as “sincere.” We discussed at length in class how/whether Clarissa could form a coherent self-narrative in the face of all the forces in the novel that ask her to be not only feminist/martyr, but also dutiful/disobedient.

Debra noted that “Clarissa is always engaged in a rhetorical action: writing TO someone else, to describe what has already or is about to happen. She is necessarily selecting what to include (and exclude). The narrative is circumscribed by the fact that she MUST choose what to say, not only to keep her reputation but also to keep her sense of what is her own self.” Others noticed the level of “anxiety about language” in Letter 64, Megan in particular thought it ironic that a large part of Lovelace’s argument was to point out the “transience of words” as compared to action, ironic in that “Lovelace, of all the characters we have heard from so far, is the one who most understands the power of words.” Keri thought it was important that we take into account the context of Lovelace’s writing here. Its “erratic punctuation…demonstrates the urgency with which Lovelace was writing.” Though the class noticed previously that “Lovelace is able to use language and rhetoric very successfully even with short notice,” Keri wondered “given Clarissa’s obvious disgust with Lovelace here…was his letter really all that successful after all?”