Oh, don't feel bad about not wanting to read Clarissa. It's defeated many a hard core academe.
Author Samuel Richardson's original theme was that all these romance novels where the heroine reforms a hardcore womanizer are inherently false (yup, they had novels like that back then, too.) Womanizers are misogynist assholes who should be avoided at all costs. Not that all men are bad, but some men are, and a girl needs to learn to tell good from bad or she ends up like poor Clarissa. A rather smart point, really. I don't remember much about the film since I last saw it 15 years ago, but it sounds like they lost Richardson's idea.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-15 03:02 pm (UTC)Author Samuel Richardson's original theme was that all these romance novels where the heroine reforms a hardcore womanizer are inherently false (yup, they had novels like that back then, too.) Womanizers are misogynist assholes who should be avoided at all costs. Not that all men are bad, but some men are, and a girl needs to learn to tell good from bad or she ends up like poor Clarissa. A rather smart point, really. I don't remember much about the film since I last saw it 15 years ago, but it sounds like they lost Richardson's idea.