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A review by sherri22
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson
5.0
My goodness! Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady is a masterpiece. It did take me a very long time, but even with all the time I wasn’t reading this, Clarissa was always in the back of my mind. I had to catch up on some literature to better understand the references Samuel Richardson compared this tragedy to, like The Romance of Tristan and Iseult.
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady is known as one of the longest English novel, with 1534 pages. Samuel Richardson has done a massive feat, for this large tome is written in only letters. The series of letters are written in a double yet separate correspondence. One set of letters are between Clarissa and her best friend Anne. Samuel views them as “virtue and honor, bearing an inviolable friendship for each other and writing upon the most interesting subjects.” Absolutely love their friendship. The second main correspondence is between two gentlemen of free lives: “one of them glorying in this talent for stratagem and invention, and communicating to the other in confidence all the secret purposes of an intriguing head, and resolute heart.” Throughout it all, there are other letters in-between giving the reader how the whole community who knows Clarissa their feelings, perceptive, and their opinions on such an important matter.
Set in the mid-18th century, we mostly follow Clarissa and her desperate pleas to allow herself the ability to refuse any man she deems she could and would not love, turns into a far bigger explosive of lies, perils, and risks that Clarissa could never begin to imagine. Samuel Richardson wrote this large tome to be read as a cautionary tale; “to caution parents against undue exertion of their natural authority over their children in the great article of marriage: and children against preferring a man of pleasure to a man of probity, upon that dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband”
Mr. Richardson made me feel so many emotions: frustration (a lot), anger, disbelief, disgust, hope and almost everything in-between. He also made me laugh and cry. This epistolary was so real and the tension building through-out was amazing. I could pick this book back up knowing right where I left off when I been absent from it for months. As I was reading I couldn’t help but noticed Samuel Richardson was an inspiration to many other writers throughout the years. One of them, for me, is Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility character, Willoughby. To me he seemed to be inspired by one of the free “gentleman” in the novel.
Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady is known as one of the longest English novel, with 1534 pages. Samuel Richardson has done a massive feat, for this large tome is written in only letters. The series of letters are written in a double yet separate correspondence. One set of letters are between Clarissa and her best friend Anne. Samuel views them as “virtue and honor, bearing an inviolable friendship for each other and writing upon the most interesting subjects.” Absolutely love their friendship. The second main correspondence is between two gentlemen of free lives: “one of them glorying in this talent for stratagem and invention, and communicating to the other in confidence all the secret purposes of an intriguing head, and resolute heart.” Throughout it all, there are other letters in-between giving the reader how the whole community who knows Clarissa their feelings, perceptive, and their opinions on such an important matter.
Set in the mid-18th century, we mostly follow Clarissa and her desperate pleas to allow herself the ability to refuse any man she deems she could and would not love, turns into a far bigger explosive of lies, perils, and risks that Clarissa could never begin to imagine. Samuel Richardson wrote this large tome to be read as a cautionary tale; “to caution parents against undue exertion of their natural authority over their children in the great article of marriage: and children against preferring a man of pleasure to a man of probity, upon that dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband”
Mr. Richardson made me feel so many emotions: frustration (a lot), anger, disbelief, disgust, hope and almost everything in-between. He also made me laugh and cry. This epistolary was so real and the tension building through-out was amazing. I could pick this book back up knowing right where I left off when I been absent from it for months. As I was reading I couldn’t help but noticed Samuel Richardson was an inspiration to many other writers throughout the years. One of them, for me, is Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility character, Willoughby. To me he seemed to be inspired by one of the free “gentleman” in the novel.