Study Questions SQ - #1 Clarissa

Paying careful attention to the language of the novel will be an important part of your thinking toward the course paper. Since the novel is quite long, the study questions, especially the first ones, will help you by identifying some language patterns that are worth your attention.
-----NB: A number of these questions will be applicable throughout your reading, not just in the first section.
-----NB: It's fine to read at first without the aid of the SQ. JUST READ. Then the SQ can help you reflect on your reading.

1. Members of the Harlow family often carry out their relationships as if they were dealing with affairs of state. What do you make of this high level of formality?

imperiousness;
caballing;
absolute;
imperious air;
opposition to his [father's] will;
Your papa will be obeyed; i
incitements to refractoriness;
So I was left alone with my papa to throw myself at his feet;
I will be obeyed;
I have never yet opposed your will;
I will be obeyed!;
I will have no child, but an obedient one;
comply,
comply,
I will be obeyed;
dispute his will,
compliance,
clemency,
to prevent a headstrong child, as a good prince would wish to do disaffected subjects, from running into rebellion, he would not have his will disputed,
controvert his will

2. Despite (because of?) the formality of their interactions, the Harlow family often seems on the edge of violence in dealing with one another. Notice and think about the novel's use of the terms that follow. Add to the list.

disturbances,
violence,
defense,
adversary,
fierce and uncontrollable temper,
Discomposed,
tumults,
haughty and violent,
prepossession which he treated as if it were criminal,
fierce and masculine spirits, suppose me into their will,
away he flung,
away she flung,
driving me upon extremities,
violent spirits to contend with,
treated as a slave not a daughter

3. As some of the previous terms indicate, obedience to parents is a crucial issue, one that Clarissa does not resist when she thinks she is being asked for an appropriate obedience. How does she seem to measure appropriateness? What makes her resist? How do she and Anna Howe differ on this question? What general question does the novel seem to be raising? Particular quotations follow, but you should add others as well.
---What trumps obedience to parents?
---Consider your own level of obedience or compliance or cooperation -- at home, at school, among friends, among strangers--to or with laws, rules, customs.

Your heart, not your knees, must bend; You are young and unbroken; limbs so supple, will so stubborn!

4. In their letters, the characters often call attention to their use of detail, using such terms as "minuteness" or "particularity." What do you make of this element of style and of their calling attention to it?

particulars,
thus particular,
minute descriptions,
particulars,
minutely,
as particular as possible,
minute,
particulars

--What do you think of their calling attention to the letters they are writing, sending, and receiving?

5. Legal terms appear frequently. What legal issues does the novel highlight? How many courts seem to be involved? And how do legal issues overlap with other issues?

your present trial,
justice,
crime,
justification,
criminal,
accuser,
charged,
interdicts,
[femme] sole,
adversary,
lawyer consulted,
trial upon trial,
The law will protect us, child,
dejected criminal,
increased confinement,
prisoner,
acquit myself to myself

6. What other sense does the word trial have? "trial of my obedience"? Other senses?

7. One major legal issue concerns Clarissa's grandfather's will. Follow conversations about the will.

8. Closely related to the will is a vocabulary of family and estate. Notice such terms as

"considerable families";
"a man of birth and fortune";
"raising a family"

What does Clarissa mean when she says, "That his grandfather and uncles were his stewards; and no man ever had better; that daughters were but encumbrances and drawbacks upon a family" (77)? What is the relation between family and estate?

9. Solmes is an important figure. Notice very carefully the language used by Clarissa and by her family to describe him. Keep track of that language and make a general statement.

10. How would you characterize Anna Howe? Notice the language she uses.

11. And what kind of language does Lovelace use? What genre does he seem to come out of?

12. Sometimes the novel features epigrams, reflections, or what people in the 18th. century sometimes called "sentiments," e.g.,

"How do needless watchfulness and undue restraint produce artifice and contrivance";
"The person who will bear much shall have much to bear all the world through."

Look for other examples and keep a list.
----- Notice how these general statements work in context. Then lift the statements out of context and try them out in your own experience. How do they work in your experience or in the experience that you observe in the world. Do people that you know make such statements? Your list could work as a commonplace book.

13. Although there is no narrator, you may come to feel that the narrative is highly controlled. Who or what seems to be controlling it?

14. If you were making this SQ list, what questions would you add?