Sample of Close Reading/Writing Exercise
The section I am analyzing is from Letter 16, Clarissa to Anna Howe, Friday, March 3, p. 76 ff. in our text. I am concentrating on Clarissa’s characterization of Solmes.
Part I. Informal Writing. The writer is the only one who sees this part of the writing.
It produces material for the formal piece of writing, but it does not give a hint about organization. It's user friendly but not ready for a reader. Sometimes while you are writing informally, you will suddenly take off on the real thing and most of what you write will be usable. But not always. Be patient at this stage.
Striking words are in this color below:
**odious-- used regularly of Solmes. According to the OED it means Deserving of hatred; exciting hatred or repugnance; hateful; disagreeable; offensive; repulsive and has meant that from 1387 to 2000.
**asquat-- The OED defines it as in a sitting posture, squatting and cites this line in Clarissa as its first example.
**bent and broad shouldered creature: Solmes does not have the posture or "carriage" of a gentleman. His being proposed to her as a husband does not mean he is a match for her in social rank. He is almost primitive, with none of the polish of education and culture.
**rise and stalk toward a chair: As she experiences him, he is like an animal or like someone hunting an animal, possibly both.
**very confident: can have a positive meaning but clearly doesn't here. See below.
**bold, staring man! : Clarissa is here making clear what she means by "confident."
**very confident: The OED gives the bad sense as Over-bold, unduly self-reliant; forward, presumptuous, impudent.
**squatting . . . with his ugly weight: OED: To seat (oneself) upon the hams or haunches; to take one's seat in a crouching attitude or posture. Unless one is hunting, squatting calls attention to an awkward physicality. It doesn't belong in a polite social setting. And since Clarissa adds "with his ugly weight," his squatting makes him all the more physically appalling.
**pressed upon my hoop" He doesn't have the grace to stay far enough away from her to avoid running into her hoop.
**offended: To say the least.
**involuntarily: a key term in this passage, I think, as the following words suggest.
**could not help it
**knew not what I did
**wretch: Her calling him a "wretch" is an understatement. It in no way encapsulates what her description of the scene has revealed, the desperation, which her plea, shortly after this scene, to her mother also expresses, "Oh my dear mamma, save me, save me, if you can, from this heavy evil!---I had rather be buried alive, indeed I had, than have that man!" (101).The reason these words interest me: The whole list suggests an involuntary, physical and psychological revulsion. Clarissa does not want Solmes to touch her. And that touching is what is at stake, a marital, necessarily sexual touching. She can't bear to sit next to him or have him touch even her hoop. She deserves to have the space of her hoop as her own space. He should stay in his space and respect her by leaving her at least the space defined by her dress.
This passage is not about Solmes. It is about Clarissa's psychology and her terror at being married to Solmes, being managed by brother and sister into misery for life.
Part II. Formal writing: writing ready for a reader, for our class, writing ready to be folded in to the larger paper.
My analysis
“Odious,” almost a fixed epithet for Solmes, means “exciting hatred or repugnance” (OED), in this case a complex sexual repugnance. In describing this tense encounter, Clarissa calls attention to a gross physicality that hardly seems to belong in a drawing room. Solmes is beneath her. He does not have the posture of a gentleman—he’s “bent and broad shouldered”; he sits “asquat”; he has "splay feet"; he “press[es] upon [her] hoop,” not even allowing her the social distance that mere politeness requires. And he is presumptuous, as her words “confident,” “bold,” and “staring” indicate. Further, Solmes is “beneath” her in a more significant way. Cumulatively, the terms Clarissa uses—“asquat,” “stalk,” “squatting,” “ugly weight”-- suggest that Solmes is animal-like and that marriage to him would be unnatural. Just the thought evokes near sexual panic on her part. On her part is important. This description is not so much about Solmes as about Clarissa’s psychology, her physical and psychological revulsion at the image of his ugly weight pressing on her. She expresses a comparable sense of extremity a few pages later, in her plea to her mother: "Oh my dear mamma, save me, save me, if you can, from this heavy evil!---I had rather be buried alive, indeed I had, than have that man!" “Heavy evil” is a set phrase but in figurative form it replicates the literal “ugly weight” of which she is terrified. In conveying her psychological terror of contact with Solmes, Richardson has brought into the drawing room and into the imaginative experience of readers a potentially violent sexuality.
1. I would use this close analysis to consider Richardson's remarkable capacity to imagine young women's sexual awakening, a sexual awakening that belongs not just to transgressive figures but to quite decorous young women.
2. Please note that this piece of close reading is a sample, not a model. I do recommend that you begin by identifying the terms or phrases that particularly gain your attention and then explain to yourself why your attention was engaged and what you have to say about the details. I nearly always look up central terms in the OED, but you do not have to do that. And the form of your analysis should fit the point you want to make.