Miss Howe’s Got Mail

Clarissa read-along: Letters 2 to 6

Dear friends,

Two weeks into our Clarissa read-along and we’ve made it through her raft of letters to Miss Howe, dishing all the gossip. This feels like the story’s prologue and with all the exposition now behind us, the story is well and truly set up. Blood’s been spilled and lovers spurned. Families are feuding, aunties and uncles are weighing in, parents taking to their sick beds. Clarissa already seems a put-upon little thing, at pains to make everyone else happy, her own needs coming last.

I can’t help feeling there’s a Cinderella quality to Clarissa when she describes taking on her sister’s household duties, the victim of her siblings’ petty jealousies. Not simply at the mercy of her parents, but scrutinising aunts and uncles who are “advised” on “every article” of her life, it feels inevitable that Clarissa will break or rebel. One of the problems I had with Samuel Richardson’s Pamela was the title character’s preachy piety and (dare I say it) her smugness. Clarissa is already looking about with a moral eye - she’s scathing about her brother, sister and (a little less so) about Lovelace. I’m keen to know what everyone thinks about her so far.

Lovelace remains on the periphery of course, the focus of all the Harlowe family energy. But Richardson has given us some fascinating insights to his character and not all of them bad. As Amy mentioned in our Instagram chat group,* the idea of Lovelace as a good employer, popular with servants, suggests Richardson might be setting him up as a redeemable villain. It’s also a brilliant plot device, with the potential for Clarissa to receive his letters without arousing her family’s suspicion.

Over the next few weeks Clarissa will be spending some time at Miss Howe’s. We’ll have to wait until the 20th February to discover what happens there. Will Lovelace attempt a visit? And what will the fallout be if he does?! The epistolary format is interesting in that we only experience the characters when they’re apart and reflecting. I wonder what the effect will be, of these gaps in the story.

Looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts about the plot so far, the style of the novel and the characters we’ve met. Feel free to comment and reply to each other with any thoughts that you have and I’ll be back with another chat post on Friday 24th February.

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Featured image is a title-page to 'The Sisters', from 'Cooke's Pocket Edition of Select Novels', with a vignette of a duel between two young men in a glade, Mr Jaison and Fortebrand; after Richard Corbould, 1798. An etching and engraving © The Trustees of the British Museum