Writing in Character: Ethics, Plot, and Emphasis in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa

Abstract:The opposition between story and instruction set out in the preface to Samuel Richardson's Clarissa establishes a relationship between the novel's moral import and its form, genre, and style. It is a dichotomy that appears to privilege an ethical schema that is ideal, theoretic, and reflective alongside a prose style that is impersonal, emphatic, and also reflective. In this article, I show that the moral economy of the novel is, in fact, quick to display the limitations of departicularized and abstract moral thinking, and that Richardson invites his reader's suspicion of modes of reading and writing that would circumvent the linearity and particularity of story. I conclude by demonstrating that Richardson uses the italic character–particularly in the third edition of the novel–not to stress the maxim-like neutrality of moral truths, but to illuminate the expressive multivalence associated with this typography.