Clarissa Character Analysis

Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady (1748), reveals through letters the tragic fate of the beautiful, virtuous young woman Clarissa, from the youngest child of a fairly well-off family of five to a fading, broken woman surrounded by and embodied by death. Her steep decline expresses the fact that she was forcibly dragged down into the grim status of a Fallen Woman, a woman who is no longer sexually pure or innocent, by a supposed suitor after being kidnapped and held against her will by that same man. This transition into a Fallen existence causes Clarissa to lose parts of her psych and desire to live, as most of her core status orbits the pureness of her virtue which is no longer untouched. The upsetting of her main character trait induces …show more content…
Rather than actually experience the internal splintering caused by abjectness, Lovelace instead pretends to suffer through it directly before her and Clarissa is unimpressed. His repeated kneeling and begging does not appease her anymore and given the first chance she gets she flees his side back to her chambers in the form of an ultimate rejection and casting-out. Lovelace, smarting from the spurn, calls himself a "…reptile kneeler, the despicable slave…" mocking Clarissa's rejection of him in such a faux-broken position and highlighting the fact that he knows she would cut him out of her life entirely like a rotting limb if given half an opportunity (512). Lovelace repeatedly performs like this in front of Clarissa, making himself appear pitiful and thus nonthreatening and forgivable, which she allows to succeed repeatedly until his behavior can no longer be excused by flowery language and elaborate