Day: September 25, 2019

[Amandelin Valentine: Clarissa Annotated Bib]

[posted on AV’s behalf–DM]

Chaber, Lois A. “Christian Form and Anti-Feminism in Clarissa.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 3-4 (2003): 507 – 537.

In her strikingly reflective article, Chaber considers the complexity and ambiguity of Richardson’s representation of gender. She reviews the contemporary dogma of divine providence, bringing in Richardson’s own religious beliefs and correspondence to critique his gendered portrayal of Christian belief and worthiness. Particularly noting that, in this dogma, ‘suffering’ is understood as passively accepting the divine will of God and ‘acting’ is understood as working for one’s own aims rather than trusting to God, Chaber reveals Clarissa’s original sin as her defiance of her parents’ will and her temporary resolution to escape with Lovelace. Also employing an analysis of Richardson’s form as “an inversion of the classic tragic pyramid,” Chaber argues that Clarissa is ultimately redeemed when, faced with the imposed choice to either marry or prosecute Lovelace, she “does what she should have done earlier—nothing” (527, 532). Thus, while Richardson’s depiction of gender and credentials as a feminist or proto-feminist remain debated, Chaber argues that he puts forward a conflicted view of female agency that ultimately rewards Clarissa’s willingness to suffer and her devotion to the Christian path of ‘passivity’ with the highest of earthly esteem and heavenly reward.

Johnston, Elizabeth. “The Female Jailor and Female Rivalry in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa.” Gender Forum, Köln Iss. 58 (2016): n.p.

Following a brief illumination of the history of Clarissa’s reception as a feminist, proto-feminist, or anti-feminist text, Johnston argues that it is not Clarissa herself, but rather the cast of villainous women around her, who best articulate the text’s negative view of women. While Clarissa is promoted as the feminine ideal, the women around her come up short—sometimes to disastrous effects, as Johnston demonstrates. She suggests that the novel indicts almost all of its women; from Clarissa’s own mother and sister, whose weakness and jealousy, respectively, alienate Clarissa from the family, to Mrs. Sinclaire and her sex workers, who resent and torture Clarissa, ultimately spurring Lovelace on to her rape. Though it is Lovelace who ultimately performs the act of rape and instigates Clarissa’s imprisonment, Johnston points out that he is allowed to be redeemed and humanized through the interiority and remorse of his letters; the Sinclaire house prostitutes have no such opportunity and, instead, confess their culpability and die unrepentant. Women—specifically fallen women—more specifically groups of women—are shown to be, as Johnston claims, “the root cause of all evil.” Women may be excellent, as Clarissa’s extreme virtue demonstrates, but they are more likely to be bad—and when they are bad, they are far, far worse than the men.

Annie’s Annotated Bibliography

Mckeon, Michael. “Watt’s Rise of the Novel within the Tradition of the Rise of the Novel.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 12, no. 2, 253–276. Project Muse.  http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/eighteenth_century_fiction/v0 12/12.2-3.mckeon.html.

McKeon situates Ian Watt’s Rise of the Novel within other prominent theorists who have tried to capture, linguistically, what a “novel” is and how it began. He points out both similarities and differences between the theories of Georg Lukács, José Ortega y Gasset, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Watt. One similarity I glean from his comparisons is that all theorists speak about a kind of break from work that pre-supposes a collective understanding—for instance, a break from some kind of agreed-upon “types” as we’ve discussed in class—and a shift instead to something that “purports to be an authentic account of the actual experiences of individuals” (Watt qtd. by McKeon 270).  

Because I was particularly interested in Watt’s arguments about how Clarissa differs from other works of its time, I have been looking into other sources about the history of the novel form. This source is helping to familiarize me with early theories of the novel and how more recent studies labeled “narrative theory” or “narratology” differ from the style and focus of those early theories.

Seidel, Michael. “The Man Who Came to Dinner: Ian Watt and the Theory of Formal Realism.” Eighteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 12 no. 2, 193–212. Project Muse. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/eighteenth_ century _fiction/v0 12/12.2-3.seidel.html.

Seidel points out that many criticisms have been made against Ian Watt’s Rise of the Novel, and that many of them are true: Watt doesn’t show a clear understanding of the deep variance of the novel form, fails “to acknowledge the existence of realist fiction much earlier and in other places than England,” and his use of the term “novel” is problematic, among other criticisms (120-21). But, ultimately, this article argues we should still value Rise of the Novel’s contribution to literary criticism, and that the major thing it gets right is that realism (and Seidel defines realism essentially the same as Watt does) dominated English narratives of the early 18th century, and that this domination didn’t exist previously. Seidel differentiates between impulses of realism and realism that dominates a narrative.

I looked at this source because I have been curious to know if there is much debate about what classifies as the first “novel.” This source helped me get glimpses of that debate. I gather that Seidel agrees with Watt that the 18th century brought us a dominance of literary realism in general through, among other things, a plethora of narratives like Clarissa that are dominated by realism, but didn’t necessarily bring us realism.  

UPDATE: we’ll do annotated bibs tomorrow, finish reading the next class

I’m hearing that I was overoptimistic about the time needed to finish reading this book.

I’m revising our schedule slightly, so that everyone should post their selective annotated bibs tonight as standalone posts before class. Do those as your own posts, not as comments to mine. I will move the second blogging assignment I mentioned before to next week, to set up our final class on Richardso.

We’ll finish up the final portion of Clarissa the following class, so that we have time to do both assignments and discuss them.

If you’re having trouble with the annotated bib, or  WP posting generally, let me know on the blog or via email. If it gets too hard, send to me via email and I’ll post.

Thanks, and take care,

DM

Annotations (Clarissa, Week 4)

I have remained particularly fascinated by the narrative framework of Clarissa. The epistolary form allows for a complex interweaving of perspectives, which Richardson has complicated still further by the pointed addition of the editor as a figure who oversees the compilation of the novel’s correspondences. Our understandings are mediated on several levels. There are plenty of examples today of texts presented as collections of material: novels (usually “chick lit” or young adult) written entirely in the form of fictional email correspondence between characters come to mind, as well as films structured as “found footage.”

Annotations

Johnson, Glen M. “Richardson’s ‘Editor’ in Clarissa.” Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 10, 1980, pp. 99–114. JSTOR.

In this article, Johnson addresses what he deems a lack of critical attention to the editorial voice that provides the “extensive apparatus” of the Richardson’s Clarissa (99). Although the editorial voice does not purport to narrate, the presence does hold “important narrative force” in offering footnotes and cross-references; the editor is also responsible for the arrangement and selective excerpting of documents. Johnson argues that the editorial voice both adds to the novel’s sense of verisimilitude and guides reader understanding. The editor can fill in where including relevant details in letters would feel inorganic and undermine the sense of “real-life” correspondence (105). Importantly for Richardson, the apparatus also lends a sense of authority to the novel’s moral arguments.

Johnson’s article is an interesting study in the editorial presence’s mediation of our reception of the story of Clarissa. It is also useful for a background on the technique, which did not originate with Richardson; the practice of “writing elaborate notes to a literary text” had grown relatively widespread by the mid-1700s (104). The article also provides a detailed account of the number of footnotes and editorial asides. I appreciated the discussion of the ways that the editorial notes provide an intrusion within the novel’s epistolary structure. Those intrusions are, of course, attributable to Richardson’s anxiety over his characters and messages being misinterpreted.

Kvande, Marta. “Printed in a Book: Negotiating Print and Manuscript Cultures in Fantomina and Clarissa.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 46, no. 2, Winter 2013, pp. 239–257. Academic Search Complete.

In this article, Marta Kvande points to both Clarissa and Fantomina as making important statements about the intersection between manuscript and print culture. Kvande’s argument hinges importantly on a “one-to-one relationship between body, letter, and self” found in the construction of Clarissa’s character (247). In her letters, representative of the social function essential to manuscript culture, Clarissa can represent her body—both with words and, sometimes, with form—and present her authentic self. However, the purity of that self proves unsustainable. The collection of her correspondence in print, as the reader is purported to receive it, allows for the preservation of Clarissa’s pure self; however, it also “mystifies” her control (246).  

Fantomina, Kvande explains, maintains control of her own representation; because that heroine “separates self from body and letters, [she] is not bound to a single unified self” (251). Where Clarissa embodies manuscript culture, Fantomina embodies the mutability of print. She uses letters as a way to manipulate Beauplaisir’s “investment in surfaces” (249). Kvande draws connections between both heroines and their creators’ level of investment in questions of manuscript versus print culture, and expressiveness versus rhetoric; there is particular attention to the conceptions of authority inherent to each.

Kvande addresses the connection between the epistolary form and the “female expressive self” (240). While she acknowledges that “it is Lovelace who has thoroughly mastered the manipulation of letters to gain his ends,” Kvande doesn’t account for the potential parallels between Lovelace’s letters and Fantomina’s, or between Clarissa’s tendency to accept Lovelace at surface value and Beauplaisir’s manipulability. It might be productive to explore the implications of the potential reversal a bit further.