De Imitatione Clarissae: On the Imitation of Clarissa

From an Arminian, soteriological perspective, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa are about men tempted by the universal, prevenient grace that conveys the appetite for good. The theories of David Hume and Adam Smith shed little light on Richardson, because they don’t explain normativity (the experience of “good” being good), and the sentimental philosophers who do explain normativity—Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson—have recourse to the Holy Spirit to implant their moral sense. The universality of Arminian prevenient grace—grace that prefigures actual conversion, granted by the Holy Spirit—makes possible in Clarissa Lovelace’s unique struggle for evil against his temptation toward good. A novel that represents the world through Arminian theology then becomes an explicit meditation when Lovelace hands Clarissa a copy of Jeremy Taylor’s Living and Dying, a book of meditations, some composed by the author, others made up of disparate Bible verses. Clarissa starts writing her own meditations in that style. Taylor’s text, moreover, is part of the imitation tradition, which extols the virtue of being like Christ literally, right down to being betrayed by one’s friends. In the end Clarissa dies a martyr, imitating Christ so completely that her death, too, is a triumph.