"Clarissa"
3 March 2019 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeFor some reason I found myself reading "Clarissa" recently (and staying up far too late several nights running to finish each volume of what is infamously cited as the longest novel in the English language).
One reason why it is so very long is the fact that it is constructed entirely of letters between the various characters, with the actual narrative thus being subsumed in their moralising, advice, editorial comment, and incidental jests and philosophy; they talk at great length over a period of months.
Given my current woes over attempting to rename characters deemed to sound too similar, I'm amused to find that Lovelace's circle of cronies in "Clarissa" features a couple of mutual friends named Belford and Belton, which one would have thought even the creator of the novel himself would have found confusing! It also commits the fan-fiction 'sin' of retelling the same events all over again from the point of view of the various different characters so we can see exactly what everyone was thinking; the epistolatory format does make this seem more natural. But in addition the book features a lot of peevish fourth-wall-breaking Author's Notes (or in this case, footnotes), wherein the author complains that his readers persist in taking what he has written completely the wrong way, and highlights the points to which in his view they ought to be paying more attention :-p
While attempting to summarize the plot in conversation (although in the final volume, which at that point I had yet to read, basically nothing happens; Clarissa proceeds to expire at enormous length in an odour of great virtue and much moralising takes place, but practically no actual plot), I was surprised to find that there are actually quite a lot of dramatic events hidden in that mass of verbiage, presumably why I kept reading to find out what was going to happen in slow-motion next. So I wondered if anyone had ever attempted to film it, although since a lot of the interest comes from the different editorial 'voices' giving their own spin on events, it was hard to imagine how this could credibly be conveyed (unless by a vast amount of voiceover).
I was surprised to find that the BBC had in fact done an adaptation in 1991, starring of all people Sean Bean as Lovelace: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101066/
A presumably pirated version has been uploaded to YouTube under the guise of "fair usage", where I watched it. As can be seen from the video cover on the IMDb, even in his young days Sean Bean was no picture postcard to look at (although his acting in this is very good), and the girl who plays Clarissa is ironically much less attractive than her supposedly plain sister Arabella (or perhaps it's just her sullen expression and the Kate Moss-style makeup -- she looks much more vivid and intelligent in the 'masquerade party' scene), which for a drama about two people whose good looks are constantly being commented upon is less than ideal :-p
The adaptation is based only in outline on the book for the most part; it has the same principal events, but often achieved by different means, either for the sake of compression or to make the characters more appealing. I did wonder how on earth anyone could possibly sell the incredibly irritating Clarissa as a sympathetic heroine to modern audiences; the character has been substantially rewritten to be a lot less religious and obedient (in the book, she spends most of the novel desperately trying to arrange a reconciliation with her family and considering herself wicked for having defied them) and presented as a figurehead for female independence. The protagonist of the novel would never talk back to her parents or exchange zingy one-liners; indeed screen Clarissa has a lot more in common with Anna Howe, whose undutiful and unladylike behaviour book-Clarissa condemns :-p She even manages to declare that death is an independence, which is why she welcomes it -- certainly not the moral we are intended to draw from book-Clarissa's saintly and unexplained end!
The obnxious Solmes is for some reason made into a weak and mincing young dandy instead of a miserly man old enough to be Clarissa's father; Clarissa's objections thus become more obviously personal (I suspect the idea is to promote the appeal of Lovelace as a symbol of virility) rather than based on condemnation of avarice.
The problem of the narrative voice consisting entirely of letters is effectively got around by having Lovelace conversing face to face with Belford in their various haunts: in the tavern, out shooting, watching a fencing-bout or simply walking down the street. We get rather less of Clarissa's voice, although there's a certain amount of reading-out of her letters to Anna; this is compensated for by having her as the viewpoint character for all the action, so that we witness events as she sees them. It also has the benefit of making her a more sympathetic character, since we are spared all the moralising ;-p
For some unknown reason the adaptation appears to give Clarissa's siblings an incestuous relationship, which seems to serve no function other than presumably to signal that these are Very Bad People; I really couldn't see the point of that.
Other changes work well; having Belford much more active in the villainy at the beginning ("I want all the juicy details!") makes his conversion to sympathy for Clarissa a good deal more effective, whereas in the novel, where he is simply a passive recipient of Lovelace's correspondence who only ever replies to upbraid his morals, it's hard to believe that he was ever as bad as Lovelace says he was. And having him take over Colonel Morden's role at the end both streamlines the plot and adds an extra angle to the final duel, where he is killing his own friend; there is a painful tension in that confrontation where Belford is clearly out for blood and Lovelace is still trying to end the fight without hurting him.
(Though it would have been more credible if Lovelace hadn't effortlessly defeated him in every previous fencing bout between them; in the end I had to rewind the death scene multiple times in an attempt to work out how Belford had supposedly managed to stab a man who is pressed against his back, and so far as I can make out the relevant move simply isn't shown. They're face to face, and then Belford has backed into him with his sword stuck through his own armpit :-p)
The spite of the women is well shown; again, these are scenes that are basically fabricated from whole cloth in order to 'show' what Lovelace merely 'tells' us about the characters in the book. The whole action is very much compressed -- I think Clarissa says something at one point about wanting to take back the 'last eight days' -- but this makes Clarissa's passivity at remaining so long with Lovelace easier to present to modern-day viewers. I felt the only bit that really suffered from it was the incident where Clarissa escapes and in this version is imprisoned for debt that same day: we lose the whole irony of the fact that this is done in an attempt to curry favour with Lovelace while he is away, and that he is in fact furious with the perpetrators when he eventually finds out.
Overall, it certainly doesn't have the feel of the original book (and one can see why); it's eighteenth-century costume porn, complete with lots of carriage sweeps, heaving bosoms and bodices being ripped apart. It's a brave attempt at adapting the unadaptable by, for example, revealing Lovelace's schemes to the viewer in action rather than by having him explain and commend himself upon them after the fact. The ending is... odd. An attempt to show family remorse, I assume, although it's certainly not based on anything in the book (which simply has a 'and this is what happened to all the characters' epilogue), but as a conclusion it just sort of trails away.
One reason why it is so very long is the fact that it is constructed entirely of letters between the various characters, with the actual narrative thus being subsumed in their moralising, advice, editorial comment, and incidental jests and philosophy; they talk at great length over a period of months.
Given my current woes over attempting to rename characters deemed to sound too similar, I'm amused to find that Lovelace's circle of cronies in "Clarissa" features a couple of mutual friends named Belford and Belton, which one would have thought even the creator of the novel himself would have found confusing! It also commits the fan-fiction 'sin' of retelling the same events all over again from the point of view of the various different characters so we can see exactly what everyone was thinking; the epistolatory format does make this seem more natural. But in addition the book features a lot of peevish fourth-wall-breaking Author's Notes (or in this case, footnotes), wherein the author complains that his readers persist in taking what he has written completely the wrong way, and highlights the points to which in his view they ought to be paying more attention :-p
While attempting to summarize the plot in conversation (although in the final volume, which at that point I had yet to read, basically nothing happens; Clarissa proceeds to expire at enormous length in an odour of great virtue and much moralising takes place, but practically no actual plot), I was surprised to find that there are actually quite a lot of dramatic events hidden in that mass of verbiage, presumably why I kept reading to find out what was going to happen in slow-motion next. So I wondered if anyone had ever attempted to film it, although since a lot of the interest comes from the different editorial 'voices' giving their own spin on events, it was hard to imagine how this could credibly be conveyed (unless by a vast amount of voiceover).
I was surprised to find that the BBC had in fact done an adaptation in 1991, starring of all people Sean Bean as Lovelace: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101066/
A presumably pirated version has been uploaded to YouTube under the guise of "fair usage", where I watched it. As can be seen from the video cover on the IMDb, even in his young days Sean Bean was no picture postcard to look at (although his acting in this is very good), and the girl who plays Clarissa is ironically much less attractive than her supposedly plain sister Arabella (or perhaps it's just her sullen expression and the Kate Moss-style makeup -- she looks much more vivid and intelligent in the 'masquerade party' scene), which for a drama about two people whose good looks are constantly being commented upon is less than ideal :-p
The adaptation is based only in outline on the book for the most part; it has the same principal events, but often achieved by different means, either for the sake of compression or to make the characters more appealing. I did wonder how on earth anyone could possibly sell the incredibly irritating Clarissa as a sympathetic heroine to modern audiences; the character has been substantially rewritten to be a lot less religious and obedient (in the book, she spends most of the novel desperately trying to arrange a reconciliation with her family and considering herself wicked for having defied them) and presented as a figurehead for female independence. The protagonist of the novel would never talk back to her parents or exchange zingy one-liners; indeed screen Clarissa has a lot more in common with Anna Howe, whose undutiful and unladylike behaviour book-Clarissa condemns :-p She even manages to declare that death is an independence, which is why she welcomes it -- certainly not the moral we are intended to draw from book-Clarissa's saintly and unexplained end!
The obnxious Solmes is for some reason made into a weak and mincing young dandy instead of a miserly man old enough to be Clarissa's father; Clarissa's objections thus become more obviously personal (I suspect the idea is to promote the appeal of Lovelace as a symbol of virility) rather than based on condemnation of avarice.
The problem of the narrative voice consisting entirely of letters is effectively got around by having Lovelace conversing face to face with Belford in their various haunts: in the tavern, out shooting, watching a fencing-bout or simply walking down the street. We get rather less of Clarissa's voice, although there's a certain amount of reading-out of her letters to Anna; this is compensated for by having her as the viewpoint character for all the action, so that we witness events as she sees them. It also has the benefit of making her a more sympathetic character, since we are spared all the moralising ;-p
For some unknown reason the adaptation appears to give Clarissa's siblings an incestuous relationship, which seems to serve no function other than presumably to signal that these are Very Bad People; I really couldn't see the point of that.
Other changes work well; having Belford much more active in the villainy at the beginning ("I want all the juicy details!") makes his conversion to sympathy for Clarissa a good deal more effective, whereas in the novel, where he is simply a passive recipient of Lovelace's correspondence who only ever replies to upbraid his morals, it's hard to believe that he was ever as bad as Lovelace says he was. And having him take over Colonel Morden's role at the end both streamlines the plot and adds an extra angle to the final duel, where he is killing his own friend; there is a painful tension in that confrontation where Belford is clearly out for blood and Lovelace is still trying to end the fight without hurting him.
(Though it would have been more credible if Lovelace hadn't effortlessly defeated him in every previous fencing bout between them; in the end I had to rewind the death scene multiple times in an attempt to work out how Belford had supposedly managed to stab a man who is pressed against his back, and so far as I can make out the relevant move simply isn't shown. They're face to face, and then Belford has backed into him with his sword stuck through his own armpit :-p)
The spite of the women is well shown; again, these are scenes that are basically fabricated from whole cloth in order to 'show' what Lovelace merely 'tells' us about the characters in the book. The whole action is very much compressed -- I think Clarissa says something at one point about wanting to take back the 'last eight days' -- but this makes Clarissa's passivity at remaining so long with Lovelace easier to present to modern-day viewers. I felt the only bit that really suffered from it was the incident where Clarissa escapes and in this version is imprisoned for debt that same day: we lose the whole irony of the fact that this is done in an attempt to curry favour with Lovelace while he is away, and that he is in fact furious with the perpetrators when he eventually finds out.
Overall, it certainly doesn't have the feel of the original book (and one can see why); it's eighteenth-century costume porn, complete with lots of carriage sweeps, heaving bosoms and bodices being ripped apart. It's a brave attempt at adapting the unadaptable by, for example, revealing Lovelace's schemes to the viewer in action rather than by having him explain and commend himself upon them after the fact. The ending is... odd. An attempt to show family remorse, I assume, although it's certainly not based on anything in the book (which simply has a 'and this is what happened to all the characters' epilogue), but as a conclusion it just sort of trails away.
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Date: 2019-03-04 09:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-05 01:07 am (UTC)