Wieland

An incidental shortcoming of novel’s first-person epistolary format is that Clara has no motive to give a personal description of herself; the acquaintance to whom she is writing presumably knows what she looks like. Consequently, the readers never receive a description. Perhaps because of the genre, which lends itself to idealization, the reader’s impulse would be to assume that Clara is very pretty, but there is no evidence to that effect. In fact, one might conclude that the opposite is the case. For example, although Henry describes Clara as having all the virtues of the perfect woman, he is apparently not attracted to her. He catalogs her virtues so that he can recommend them to the possibly much prettier woman he is actually in love with. He marries Clara only after his first love died, and Clara consoles herself with the probable delusion that it was really herself that Henry loved all along.

Although her name, Clara, means “clear”, the character is severely lacking in clarity. She tries to present herself as a rational person, and she continually fails to use reason to understand the people and events around her. She also struggles to reconcile mutually exclusive interpretations of the events around her.