Clarissa Harlowe, the tragic heroine of Clarissa, is a beautiful and virtuous young lady of a family that has become very wealthy only in recent years, and is now eager to become part of the aristocracy by acquiring estates and titles through advantageous pairings. She is forced by her relatives to marry a rich but heartless man against her will and, more importantly, against her own sense of virtue. Desperate to remain free, she lets a young gentleman of her acquaintance, Lovelace, to scare her into escaping with him. However, she refuses to marry him, longing — unusually for a girl in her time — to live by herself in peace. Lovelace, in the meantime, has been trying to arrange a fake marriage all along, and considers it a sport to add Clarissa to his long list of conquests. However, as he is more and more impressed by Clarissa, he finds it difficult to keep convincing himself that truly virtuous women do not exist.
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