For Clarissa, the relationship between writing and identity is a constitutive one. By writing, she documents, preserves, and gives voice to a self that goes unrecognized in her family. Her writing reflects the circumstances and events that shape her, so writing reflects her identity; but she also constructs a version of herself that can make sense of her life. As a result, this self is resistant to outside forces that put constraints on her life (e.g., the pressure to marry). Writing strengthens Clarissa’s sense of self and reaffirms her life goals, and it is a method for re-animating events and feeling out their boundaries and nuances. Clarissa relives experiences in writing while constructing new reactions and responses to the people who have a stake in the choices she makes: Anna, her family, and Lovelace.

Clarissa’s letter writing also serves as a method for documenting events and even authorizing legal actions, such as making Belford the executor of her will. She writes so that this constructed, resilient self is proven to have existed. Signing her full name at the end of each letter, beyond being a convention of letter writing, certifies the existence of this self. We understand this more fully toward the end of Clarissa’s life when she entrusts Anna and Belford with maintaining a collection of her letters. The collection will come to represent her story to those outside the letters’ original trail of correspondence.

Writing is also a compulsion for Clarissa. She writes because she has to. She says she has “no other employment” and would write even if she did not intend to communicate. Writing is compulsory because it is a way for her to process, on her own, the events of her life. Writing enables her to decompress after an encounter with Lovelace or an argument with her family, which suggests that the practice of writing is therapeutic, a necessary practice for persevering through difficult situations. In the midst of multiple constraints, writing is Clarissa’s method for acting in concert with her deepest motives.