Clarissa's Ciphers: Meaning and Disruption in Richardson's Clarissa

by Terry Castle

As Samuel Richardson's 'exemplar to her sex,’ Clarissa in the eponymous novel published in 1748 is the paradigmatic female victim. In Clarissa’s Ciphers , Terry Castle delineates the ways in which, in a world where only voice carries authority, Clarissa is repeatedly silenced, both metaphorically and literally. A victim of rape, she is first a victim of hermeneutic abuse. Drawing on feminist criticism and hermeneutic theory, Castle examines the question of authority in the novel. By tracing the patterns of abuse and exploitation that occur when meanings are arbitrarily and violently imposed, she explores the sexual politics of reading.

Genres: Literary Criticism, 18th Century

204 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1982

About the author

Terry Castle was once described by Susan Sontag as "the most expressive, most enlightening literary critic at large today." She is the author of seven books of criticism, including The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture (1993) and Boss Ladies, Watch Out! Essays on Women and Sex (2002). Her antholoy, The Literature of Lesbianism, won the Lambda Literary Editor's Choice Award in 2003. She lives in San Franciso and is Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University.

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short, repetitive and not nearly as original as it thinks it is. Yes, Clarissa, like any epistolary novel, is eminently susceptible to postmodern readings organised around unstable hermeneutics, questions of authorship and exegesis - but this book falls short on analysing what these theoretical interventions do to the text. There's a distinct lack of close readings and no over-riding argument - reads more like a series of short essays than a coherent monograph, and may only illuminate Clarissa for undergraduates.

[Clarissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The source of this analysis is more on the author's philosophical interests, and not so much on the actual text of 'Clarissa'. The feeling I had while reading this book is that Terry castle loves hermeneutics, and she used these philosophical tools to interpret 'Clarissa'. So 'Clarissa's Cyphers' is firstly about hermeneutics, and secondly about the novel 'Clarissa'. I don't mind that, this book is an interesting exercise. Some of Terry Castle's ideas I found extremely interesting, and some other ideas for me didn't make any sense at all.
Just to note that Terry Castle focused so much on 20th century philosophy in her study, but she completely ignored the philosophers who did indeed influence Richardson, namely Hobbes and Montaigne. As a result her analysis is from time to time anachronistic.