Clarissa: musings on sex and death

I have 220 pages to go.

Clarissa has finally escaped from Lovelace and has begun the long, protracted process of gradually wasting away. She hasn't died yet, but she is very ill and eats and drinks little. At this point, Lovelace genuinely wants to marry her because she has passed his trial—she never gave into him (which is why he raped her). All of Clarissa's supporters, including her best friend, think she should marry him, since it would be the only way to preserve her reputation in society. She disagrees on the grounds that it would be legitimizing all that he's done to her up to this point, she does not believe that they would make each other happy, and she believes she's going to die soon. For a 21st-century reader, it seems mind-boggling that the societal "solution" to rape is either marriage or legal prosecution (which Clarissa also refuses, for various reasons). Richardson understands the disjunction and presents a third, tragic path: death. It's ironic. Lovelace's elliptical description of the rape ends with the declaration that "Clarissa lives", but instead, the sexual violation means that narratively, Clarissa must die. It is her death sentence.