Clarissa or The History of a Young Lady

892 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The history of english literature

Clarissa or The History of a Young Lady

In the Johnson age there are many popular writers. One of these authors is Samuel Richardson, who was a novelist. His most popular novels were Pamela and Clarissa, which are both constructed of a series of letters. Clarissa, however, was regarded as one of his most popular European novels. "His masterpiece, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady, one of the greatest European novels, was published in 1747-8" (Richardson, 1).

When Richardson wrote Clarissa his intention was to write a novel of a series of letters that were written by an unskilled author. This book contains 537 letters written by various characters in the novel. Because the book is so long I could not read the whole thing nor have I ever read it before. As a result I can not say a lot about it. Because I find it is a little hard to read I was not able to read as much as I would have like to in the four hours that we were to set aside to read the book. I did, however, manage to read the first eight letters in the novel. The first letter was written to Clarissa Harlowe from her good friend Anna Howe. This letter is used to introduce the reader to the problems that have been going on in the Harlowe home that lead to Clarissa being the topic of gossip.

The letters that follow this one are from Clarissa to Anna and they explain what had happened. The trouble begins when Mr. Lovelace begins to visit the Harlowe home; it is believed that he is there to court the eldest daughter. However, this does not work out and he then decides the he would like to date the younger daughter, who is Clarissa. This is not well liked by her brother because Mr. Lovelace was his enemy all through college and there is now a grudge between the two. As a result, Clarissa's brother and Mr. Lovelace get into a fight and Clarissa's brother is injured. It is because of this that no one else in the family cares for him anymore either. However, this does not stop him from pursuing Clarissa.

Show More
Related

  • Characterization Of Miss Hancock In Budge Wilson's The Metaphor

    1163 Words  | 3 Pages

    Miss Hancock, her personality and beliefs were contrasted entirely by her character foil, Charlotte’s mother, “this civilized, this clean, this disciplined woman.” All through Charlotte’s life, her mother dictated her every move. A “small child [was] a terrible test to that cool and orderly spirit.” Her mother was “lovely to look at, with her dark-blond hair, her flawless figure, her smooth hands. She never acted frazzled or rushed or angry, and her forehead was unmarked by age lines or worry. Even her appearance differed greatly to Miss Hancock, who she described as,” overdone, too much enthusiasm. Flamboyant. Orange hair.” The discrepancy between the characters couldn’t escape Charlotte’s writing, her metaphors. Her seemingly perfect mother was “a flawless, modern building, created of glass and the smoothest of pale concrete. Inside are business offices furnished with beige carpets and gleaming chromium. In every room there are machines – computers, typewriters, intricate copiers. They are buzzing and clicking way, absorbing and spitting out information with the speed of sound. Downstairs, at ground level, people walk in and out, tracking mud and dirt over the steel-grey tiles, marring the cool perfection of the building. There are no comfortable chairs in the lobby.” By description, her mother is fully based on ideals and manners, aloof, running her life with “sure and perfect control.” Miss

    Read More

  • Deaf Like Me by Thomas S. Spradley and James P. Spradley

    1677 Words  | 4 Pages

    The author Thomas S. Spadley is Lynn’s father. He is the one that was with them all the time and saw all that his wife Louise tried for their daughter to understand them. The greatest qualification for him to write this book is that he is Lynn’s father. A father’s perspective is great throughout this book, as the reader I can see the intensity of what the family is going through. Since he is a math professor, and does not have a lot of knowledge in English and time, through the whole book he skips around with what they did and when. Later, on in the book that James P. Spradely, Lynn’s uncle also got involved and helped write the book.

    Read More

  • The two characters of Ruby and Ada are brought to the reader of Cold

    1469 Words  | 3 Pages

    a passage from the letter she is writing to add a personal feel to the

    Read More

  • Comparing Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

    1672 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa Dalloway undergoes an internal struggle between her love for society and life and a combined affinity for and fear of death. Her practical marriage to Richard serves its purpose of providing her with an involved social life of gatherings and parties that others may find frivolous but Clarissa sees as “an offering” to the life she loves so well. Throughout the novel she grapples with the prospect of growing old and approaching death, which after the joys of her life seems “unbelievable… that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant…” At the same time, she is drawn to the very idea of dying, a theme which is most obviously exposed through her reaction to the news of Septimus Smith’s suicide. However, this crucial scene r...

    Read More

  • Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette

    4243 Words  | 9 Pages

    Writing a journal from the perspective of a fictional eighteenth century reader, a mother whose daughter is the age of Eliza's friends, will allow me to employ reader-response criticism to help answer these questions and to decipher the possible social influences and/or meanings of the novel. Though reader-response criticism varies from critic to critic, it relies largely on the idea that the reader herself is a valid critic, that her critique is influenced by time and place,...

    Read More

  • A Pair Of Tickets

    1395 Words  | 3 Pages

    The letter was given to her aunt and he asked her to write back to the girls and as nicely

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Winning Hearts And Minds In War On Plagiarism

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    Scott Jaschik discusses various situations of plagiarism in college in his article, “Winning Hearts and Minds in War on Plagiarism,” in order to argue that there are more efficient solutions to prevent plagiarism. Having his article published in an online news source, Inside Higher Ed, allows for Jaschik to have an audience of first year English and college instructors interested in learning about higher education. Jaschik writes in general to an audience who is interested in academic integrity and those who want to either stop or learn more about plagiarism. Jaschik employs various situations such as an online student discussion board and an assignment to purposely plagiarize in order to highlight common issues with why students plagiarize.

    Read More

  • Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Letters to Martha

    6058 Words  | 13 Pages

    Despite her exhaustion, Charlotte gathered up a pile of stationery and began to write in a refined version of her usual scrawl. "Dear Martha", she wrote, "You knew and loved me once. You do not know me now, and I am not sure that you would love me if you did… I have grown and changed wildly, darkly, strangely, beyond a mother's recognition, beyond my own."

    Read More

  • Plagiarism: The Big Picture

    895 Words  | 2 Pages

    With plagiarism comes a variety of consequences and penalties. This form of “academic dishonesty” can mean little to no credit on an assignment, discipline at school, expulsion from a university, loss of a job, and especially loss of credibility and a professional reputation. Outside of education, an act of plagiarism can result in fines, jail time, and it will go on your criminal record. Recently, a Uni...

    Read More

  • Theme Of Letters In Pride And Prejudice

    962 Words  | 2 Pages

    An important feature of Jane Austen’s novel, “Pride and Prejudice,” is the utilization of letters, which were the prevalent form of communication in the nineteenth century. “The novel is packed with correspondence, with forty-four letters referred to, and eighteen of those either heavily quoted from or given in full” (Fullerton 46). Letters are used as a dramatic device in the novel to advance the plot, uncover character and benefit in the composition of theme in “Pride and Prejudice.”

    Read More

  • Clara Barton

    4187 Words  | 9 Pages

    The youngest of five children, Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on December 25, 1821 to a middle class family in North Oxford, Massachusetts. In this rocky New England countryside, Clara, as she quickly became known, learned the value of hard work and hard principles through her labors on the family farm. From the beginning, Clara's family had an immeasurable influence on her. Her older siblings, who were all quite intelligent, helped educate Clara and could scarcely keep up with answering her never-ending barrage of questions. Her active mind readily absorbed new lessons and novel stories about famous ancestors. Something of a tomboy, she portrayed exceptional equestrian skills and could play sports with surprising aptitude, compliments of her brothers and male cousins.

    Read More

  • The Social Upheaval in Persuasion by Jane Austin

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    Before the major upheaval occurs Jane Austin gives us a glimpse of what social life, the class distinction, was like through the perspective of Ann Elliot. Ann is the second out of three daughters to Sir Walter Elliot, the proud head of the family (Austen, 2). The Elliots are an old landowning family that seems well known in the upper echelons of British society. The most important piece of background we are presented with as central to the plot of the story is that eight years prior to the setting Ann was engaged to a man she loved, Frederick Wentworth. They were soon engaged, but her family along with mother-like figure, Lady Russell, soon persuaded Ann that the match was unsuitable because Frederick Wentworth was essentially unworthy without any money or prestige (Austen, 30). This piece of background echoes exclusivity among the upper classes of Britain. In that time it would seem unacceptable for a girl like Ann with a family like hers to marry or even associate with someone not of ...

    Read More

  • Plagiarism

    592 Words  | 2 Pages

    Plagiarism has been present in society for longer than one might like to think. But what is even more upsetting is the fact that it is a recurring problem in innumerable school systems across the country. By definition, plagiarism is the “unacknowledged and inappropriate use of ideas and wording of another writer” and can be considered “a grave violation of academic integrity” (http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/writing/tools/plagiarism.html). This may seem slightly harsh, but it is indeed true. However, to put in layman’s terms, an act of fraud or deception is committed when someone plagiarizes, either from a textbook or the internet. And, as with every mistake, consequences arise that affect the individual greatly.

    Read More

  • The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

    1200 Words  | 3 Pages

    I read this book out of interest for another Henry James piece, liking Daisy Miller so much. I found that this book, as in Daisy Miller, has a female point of interest throughout. Isabel Archer is a young American girl brought to Europe after her father has died in America. Isabel is an independent girl, easily noticed by many others in her circle. I felt that Isabel was a woman in her time, in that she took notice of things that she wouldn’t have without certain without the opportunities she was given. In America she would have see and done other things, but in Europe she saw so much opportunity. I like the carefree attitude she had, but with the regard for her elders and common courtesy. The example in the book about being a proper young lady when it was not looked at very well that she stay up ‘alone’ with her cousin and another young man. She had asked her aunt to help her and tell her when she is doing, or about to do something saw as improper. I admired that. I think nowadays young women would revolt against proper if it meant something they did not wish to do.

    Read More

  • Samuel Richardson's Novel Pamela

    4439 Words  | 9 Pages

    In his novel, Pamela, Samuel Richardson suggests something that would have been considered ludicrous at the time in which his novel was published – he proposes that men should choose their wives not for their money or social standing, but for their virtue. He then makes yet another shocking suggestion by implying that the only way in which members of the upper class can learn to be virtuous is via the lower class. That is, he suggests that the lower class must teach the upper class how to be virtuous. Richardson makes these suggestions, which would have been considered wild in the eighteenth century, by creating a story that is arguably even more ridiculous than the intimations Richardson is making. Richardson’s tale of a young servant doggedly resisting the sexual advances of her master, only to eventually compel him to marry her would have seemed as unlikely to eighteenth-century readers as a story about Martians landing on Earth would seem to contemporary readers. However for readers to deeply consider Richardson’s suggestions regarding society, they must find the story in which the suggestions are imbedded to be somewhat believable (Endnote 1). Recognizing the implausibility of his story and the fact that despite the implausibility, readers must find his story at least somewhat probable to even begin to consider its implications, Richardson employs a variety of different tactics in an effort to achieve some semblance of verisimilitude. He strives for this verisimilitude through inserting letters to the editor at the beginning of the novel, which stress the supposed veracity of the incidents portrayed, having the plot unfold in an epistolary form, and attempting to make the action ...

    Read More

More about Clarissa or The History of a Young Lady

Open Document