Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 8
1747
Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 8
1747
Volume eight of Richardson's towering masterpiece finds Clarissa Harlowe in her final, agonizing chapter. The young woman whose virtue has become her prison now faces death with a composure that shames everyone who destroyed her. Through letters that function as both confession and accusation, we witness the aftermath of her flight from her tyrannical family and her entanglement with the charismatic villain Lovelace, whose mind teeters between genuine remorse and renewed manipulation. Clarissa's health, shattered by trauma and imprisonment, fails visibly on the page. Her family, still refusing to acknowledge their cruelty, hovers at the margins of reconciliation, too proud and too late. This volume contains some of the novel's most devastating moments: a heroine dying surrounded not by those who should have loved her, but by those who failed her most completely. Richardson transforms the epistolary form into an instrument of psychological dissection, revealing how society's codes become instruments of oppression, and how a single woman's refusal to compromise her integrity can be both triumph and tragedy. The novel that essentially invented the psychological novel reaches its heart-wrenching crescendo.
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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 8. Lex, lex-books.com/book/clarissa-harlowe-or-the-history-of-a-young-lady-volume-8-55c27476-7616-4e51-a516-38c5f958834b.Richardson, S. (1747). Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 8. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/clarissa-harlowe-or-the-history-of-a-young-lady-volume-8-55c27476-7616-4e51-a516-38c5f958834bRichardson, Samuel. Clarissa Harlowe; or the History of a Young Lady — Volume 8. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/clarissa-harlowe-or-the-history-of-a-young-lady-volume-8-55c27476-7616-4e51-a516-38c5f958834b.
