The Self-Begetting 'Clarissa'

 

Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady adheres to what Steven Kellman called 'the fiction of self-begetting':

Kellman, Steven. "The Fiction of Self-Begetting." Modern Language Notes 91 (1976).

_____. The Self-Begetting Novel. London: Macmillan, 1980.

 

That is, part of the movement of the novel's plot is towards an explanation of the genesis of the novel itself, 'how the text came to exist' — or how the events in the novel beget the novel itself as a narrative account of those events. Note that of course Richardson adheres to the fictional convention of presenting his novel as an "edited" collection of actual letters between a number of correspondents. In the last volume  Lovelace's confidant Belford comments on his moves towards such an editorial compilation of letters, as Clarissa's future executor, and makes one more move towards becoming the first reader of the novel as well as the editor. Of course much of the action in Clarissa is about reading letters not addressed to you—the characters are constantly borrowing, lending, copying or forging letters by others, written to themselves or to others—and thus the experience of reading Clarissa begins in the action of Clarissa, and indeed is part of the action of Clarissa itself. Here is Belford (Letter XXX) commenting in a letter to Lovelace on the peculiar thrills of reading epistolary narrative, as compared to subsequent or memoir narratives relying on hindsight:

She acknowledges that if the same decency and justice are observed in all your letters, as in the extracts I have obliged her with (as I have assured her they are), she shall think herself freed from the necessity of writing her own story: and this is an advantage to thee which thou oughtest to thank me for.

But what thinkest thou is the second request she had to make to me? No other than that I would be her executor! Her motives will appear before thee in proper time; and then, I dare to answer, will be satisfactory.

You cannot imagine how proud I am of this trust. I am afraid I shall too soon come into the execution of it. As she is always writing, what a melancholy pleasure will the perusal and disposition of her papers afford me! Such a sweetness of tempr, so much patience and resignation, as she seems to be mistress of; yet writing of and in the midst of present distresses! How much more lively and affecting, for that reason, must her style be, her mind tortured by the pangs of uncertainty (the events then hidden in the womb of fate) than the dry narrative, unanimated style of a person relating difficulties and dangers surmounted; the relater perfectly at ease; and if himself unmoved by his own story, not likely greatly to affect the reader.

Clearly the implied author Richardson's comments show through these reflections of his "compiler" and editor Belford, and give us a rationale for the narrative style he chose for Clarissa and his other novels. Arguably, therefore, the novel presents its self-begetting both at the level of the fictional characters and at the level of the author's own artistic choices.

—oOo—