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Clarissa’s Conjectural History: The Novel and the Novice

This essay focuses on Clarissa Harlowe’s stasis, especially as her story is set against the plot of development (followed by her friend Anna Howe) and the plot of conversion (followed by her executor John Belford). Clarissa not only lacks experience at the beginning of Samuel Richardson’s novel but also continues to do so until her early death, refusing to derive meaning from events or milestones that are the conventional building blocks of a life story. Rather than understand herself through her approach to marriage or motherhood, for example, Clarissa remains focused on her death, not only after her traumatic rape but even from her very first letter of the novel. This is because Clarissa evaluates herself against what Anna calls the “should-be,” a way of thinking connected to the eighteenth-century philosophical project of conjectural history. Rather than explicate historical progress, conjectural histories (including Clarissa’s) consider how a careful consideration of the origins of a particular practice or idea helps us to understand its logical path rather than its historical course. Clarissa believes that her personal “should-be” requires her early demise, a conclusion that is disturbing for the reader but that is also consistent with her repudiation of socially-imposed ways of determining her value.