Letters to Clarissa: The Fantasy of a Female Network
This chapter considers how long-distance female networks emerge out of gothic claustrophobia to flourish in the fantasy space of epistolary suspension. As it reads Clarissa for its powerful commitment to speculation, alternatives emerge to the dominant story of female virtue as lethal singularity. That Richardson refused these alternatives becomes the key to a reading of Evelina in the shadow of Clarissa. Here epistolarity goes underground as an agoraphobic heroine seeks shelter from uninhabitable female standards.
Keywords: fantasy, epistolarity, singularity, gothic, claustrophobia, agoraphobia, Clarissa, Evelina
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