Why read Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady?

Book cover of Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady

Book description

Pressured by her unscrupulous family to marry a wealthy man she detests, the young Clarissa Harlowe is tricked into fleeing with the witty and debonair Robert Lovelace and places herself under his protection. Lovelace, however, proves himself to be an untrustworthy rake whose vague promises of marriage are accompanied by…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Tom Keymer

Author

The towering achievement of eighteenth-century fiction, but long, very long—and not because of the plot so much as the form. “There is no Story,” wrote Hester Thrale, an early admirer of Clarissa (1747-8): “A man gets a Girl from her Parents—violates her Free Will, & She dies of a broken heart.” Around this brutal, elemental tale of toxic courtship and finally rape, however, the novel uses competing, divergent points of view to problematize access to the action, its causes and effects, its rights and wrongs, its large implications for sexual politics and social class. With its multiple…

From Tom's list on The best novels written before 1800.