Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 4
1747
Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 4
1747
Volume 4 finds Clarissa Harlowe alone in London, her reputation in ruins, her family estranged, and her freedom purchased at the price of her good name. Richardson's masterpiece of psychological terror unfolds through her letters to her confidante Miss Howe: we watch a woman of extraordinary intellect and integrity slowly realize that the charming man who promised her everything has trapped her in a web of calculated seduction. Lovelace remains dangerously magnetic, his manipulations growing more sinister as Clarissa refuses to yield to his demands for a marriage she now despises. This is not a romance gone wrong. It is a precision study of how a virtuous woman is slowly destroyed by the combined forces of a predatory lover, a tyrannical family, and a society that values a woman's reputation more than her soul. Richardson writes with unbearable clarity into the mechanics of coercion, the anguish of compromised autonomy, and the terrible clarity that comes too late. Volume 4 is where the tragedy achieves its full, devastating weight.
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“For love must be a very foolish thing to look back upon, when it has brought persons born to affluence into indigence, and laid a generous mind under obligation and dependence.””
— Samuel Richardson
“to be courted as princesses for a few weeks, in order to be treated as slaves for the rest of our lives.””
— Samuel Richardson
“I was exceedingly affected, says he, upon the occasion. But was ashamed to be surprised by her into such a fit of unmanly weakness-so ashamed that I was resolved to subdue it at the instant, and guard against the like for the future. Yet, at that moment, I more than half regretted that I could not permit her to enjoy a triumph which she so well deserved to glory in-her youth, her beauty, her artless innocence, and her manner, equally beyond comparison or description. But her indifference, Belford!-That she could resolve to sacrifice me to the malice of my enemies; and carry on the design in so clandestine a manner-yet love her, as I do, to frenzy!-revere her, as I do, to adoration!-These were the recollections with which I fortified my recreant heart against her-Yet, after all, if she persevere, she must conquer!-Coward, as she has made me, that never was a coward before!””
— Samuel Richardson
“I had rather all the world should be angry with me than my mamma!””
— Samuel Richardson
“Affected by my mother's goodness to me, and by that part of her argument which related to her own peace, and to the suspicions they had of her secretly inclining to prefer the man so hated by them,””
— Samuel Richardson
“She paused, with a look of expectation, as if she waited for my consenting answer. I was still silent; looking down; the tears in my eyes.””
— Samuel Richardson
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Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 4. Lex, lex-books.com/book/clarissa-harlowe-or-the-history-of-a-young-lady-volume-4-1569113c-8680-47fb-83bf-8bbe26099e11.Richardson, S. (1747). Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 4. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/clarissa-harlowe-or-the-history-of-a-young-lady-volume-4-1569113c-8680-47fb-83bf-8bbe26099e11Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 4. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/clarissa-harlowe-or-the-history-of-a-young-lady-volume-4-1569113c-8680-47fb-83bf-8bbe26099e11.
