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Narrative

In this section, we summarize our responses to blogs posts that deal specifically with narrative or the acts of narrating.  In particular her, we look at instances in Clarissa where the idea of “stories” or “narrative writing” or related terms appear and where the issue of narrative is itself foregrounded.

Narrative

Volume I.  Letter 1 set much in motion.  As Tony said, “It’s interesting how much Anna enables Richardson to frame in just a two-page letter: Clarissa’s nature and reputation, the immediate plunge into family disturbances, the violence between her brother and Lovelace, her brother’s unpleasant nature, the threats possible from Lovelace’s own temper, an excuse for Clarissa to write in as full detail as possible–and finally, a reminder of what the whole novel will be: ‘your account of all things . . . will be your justification.’”  Jessica noted Anna’s need to reassure Clarissa that her public character is unaffected by the recent events.  Steve pointed to “the circulation of Clarissa’s reputation. . . . More details make a better story. A better story makes for more repetitions, and more repetitions reinforce Clarissa’s good reputation,” and also suggested that this is a place “where the novel reminds us that identity can be as much about the stories people tell about you as it is about the stories you tell about yourself.”  This became an important issue for us as we began our reading.

Letter 2 offers Clarissa as a narrator, here one who promises to “recite facts only.”  Keri thought her failing to adhere to this promise was consistent with “the changing of her identity and the evolution of her thoughts,” and that these kinds of shifts, in turn, “reinforce the work’s epistolary nature that is episodic and constantly changing. “ Megan, however, wondered “can we really trust Clarissa as a factual writer?  While Clarissa’s claims are not necessarily false, Clarissa is, as Megan emphasized “clearly writing from a specific point of view. She only knows her side of the story and what she has witnessed and noticed.”  This inevitable consequence of the epistolary novel is something we returned to many times.

Towards the end of the volume, in our response to the Letter 42, we returned to the kinds of narratives Clarissa constructs.  Steve introduced Letter 42 with the observation that “kitty can scratch,“ referring to Clarissa’s angry and cutting portrayal of her sister Arabella.  Rachel agreed that this letter “shows Clarissa’s acts of supposed transparency in her letters, where they meet with her skewed perceptions of others,” and speculates that here she might “describe a past dislike of her sister to integrate better into her present dislike—in which case, Clarissa is bordering on what Kathleen Fitzpatrick (2007) saw as one of the distinguishing features of memoir (not of blogs): a kind of narrative unity or neatness, which presents the present in as much harmony with the past as possible.”
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Writing

In this section, we summarize our responses to blog posts which foreground writing,both its material condition and its affordances for constructing narratives of the self.

Letters 9-11 introduced a very specific back-and-forth between Clarissa and Anna about the ways they would write each other when they write about Clarissa’s feelings for Lovelace.   Keri, responding to Letter 9, found the “author-reader relationship quite interesting and the ways in which Clarissa works through her own thoughts and feelings about Lovelace through her writing.” This letter, Keri suggested also contains “a lot of moments where the writing seems more for Clarissa herself than to Miss Howe. Several places contain punctuation such as dashes or several exclamation marks, which, in context, suggest the immediacy of the letter-writing that mimics the style of personal diary or journal more than a letter to a friend. . . . Some thing as seemingly insignificant as the punctuation here shows that Clarissa is, in fact, working through her own emotions and feelings about these gentlemen while writing to Anna. In addition, the back-and-forth nature of Clarissa’s request demonstrates the immediacy with which Clarissa writes, and there are moments within this letter and in others where Clarissa goes for quite a while without directing the content to the reader at all.”

In Letter 10, we noted again how writers attempt to shape reader response.  As Meghan noted, Anna here imagines a “kind of hypothetical dialogue between Anna and Clarissa. Though they aren’t talking to each other in the same room, Anna and Clarissa can still take into account the other person’s hypothetical reaction and can then plan their writerly moves accordingly.”  Keri agreed, noting that “there are several moments in these letters where the writer, after introducing a specific topic, then tells the reader how to respond to it. It seems that these characters, like Richardson, constantly try to exercise control over the content of their writing. I don’t really know what to think about this notion of depriving reader agency yet, but I do think that it is interesting.”  Anna also suggests to Clarissa that she may feel a certain “throb” or “glow” when she thinks of Lovelace, an idea Clarissa very firmly denies in Letter 11 Nevertheless the terms persist through several letters.

Volume II includes Clarissa’s “Ode” (Letter 54).  Keri noted that the Ode might be Richardson showing “generic versatility,” but more, that it is an instance of Clarissa using writing both as an escape and as a way of thinking through the situation she’s been forced into.   It “helps her write her way into a new identity capable of handling difficult situations while maintaining her sanity and a relatively strong sense of self.” Continue reading →

Writing

We saw issues of writing, and how they are related to issues of identity in the very specific back-and-forth between Clarissa and Anna in Letters  9-11.  Keri, responding to Letter9, wrote she found the “author-reader relationship quite interesting and the ways in which Clarissa works through her own thoughts and feelings about Lovelace through her writing.” This letter, Keri suggested also contains “a lot of moments where the writing seems more for Clarissa herself than to Miss Howe. Several places contain punctuation such as dashes or several exclamation marks, which, in context, suggest the immediacy of the letter-writing that mimics the style of personal diary or journal more than a letter to a friend. . . . Some thing as seemingly insignificant as the punctuation here shows that Clarissa is, in fact, working through her own emotions and feelings about these gentlemen while writing to Anna. In addition, the back-and-forth nature of Clarissa’s request demonstrates the immediacy with which Clarissa writes, and there are moments within this letter and in others where Clarissa goes for quite a while without directing the content to the reader at all.” 

Volume IIincludes Clarissa’s “Ode” (Letter 54).  Keri noted that the Ode might be Richardson showing “generic versatility,” but more, that it is an instance of Clarissa using writing both as an escape and as a way of thinking through the situation she’s been forced into.   It “helps her write her way into a new identity capable of handling difficult situations while maintaining her sanity and a relatively strong sense of self.”

Jessica wondered about error in Letters 59 and 60, specifically “what do we make of this silence on the distracting punctuation and spelling in Solmes’s letter?” In “a culture steeped in letter writing,” she continues, Richardson’s use of error in the letter to characterize Solmes raises questions about connections between writing and character.  Rachel wondered if Clarissa’s silence wasn’t due to a sense of delicacy – would it be bad manners to point such a thing out?  And so Clarissa’s lack of response becomes a way for Richardson to use the letter to characterize her, as well; Debra pointed out the contrast Richardson draws here between Solmes as “buffon” and Clarissa as mannered.

Narrative

It is difficult, in some ways, to separate narrative from identity, as one of our prevailing assumptions is that a person narrates a self.  However, there are times when the idea of “stories” or “narrative writing” or other terms come up, where the issue of narrative is itself foregrounded.  

For example, as early as Letter 1, Steve pointed to “the circulation of Clarissa’s reputation. . . . More details make a better story. A better story makes for more repetitions, and more repetitions reinforce Clarissa’s good reputation,” and also suggested that this is a place “where the novel reminds us that identity can be as much about the stories people tell about you as it is about the stories you tell about yourself.” 

I’m not sure whether this properly belongs in “Narrative” or “Identity” – or how useful it is to separate those two things out.  But here’s what I have for this section for my week.

Citing an article by John A. Dussinger, Rachel 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—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.