“With My Hair in Crystal”: Mourning Clarissa

Abstract

This essay explores the fetishism of mourning and mourning jewellery as fetish in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. Following some historical background on mourning jewellery fashioned with human hair and a definition of fetishism as it relates to mourning jewellery, I discuss Clarissa herself as fetish. I also examine Clarissa's bequests of mourning jewellery by exploring how these fetishized bequests offer psychic compensation to the wearers, allow access to the virtues associated with Clarissa, and assure remembrance of the dead. Finally, I argue for the centrality of mourning to the realization of Richardson's moral, didactic, and aesthetic intent.

Possessed by property: Inheritance in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa (1747–1748)

“…For Clarissa, gifting her personal property as heirlooms is not about preserving the family´s legacy, but instead creates an obligation to preserve her personal history; she stresses how important it is that she be able to ‘tell my own story’ (Richardson, 2004, 53). Clarissa’s will is the place where she uses her gifts, such as gifting her letters to Anna Howe, to control whom she will permit to keep her memory alive, taking charge of her self‐representation as Kathleen M. Oliver has argued (Oliver, 2010, 35–60). In this way, Clarissa’s gifts of her personal property to those outside her family are part of a desire to preserve her memory and show affection for her friends.…”