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Reception History of Clara Reeve

Clara Reeve’s works prompted mixed reactions after they were published. Her works were quite well received among female readers (Ledoux, 2017) ^[1].For example, Stone (1975) ^[2] stated that the Reeve’s work became of the historic texts helping the following generations of understand the Gothic socio-cultural elements of the currently known as East Germanic people, as she stated, “She is called Clara Reeve; she was, by the way, a real 18th-century novelist and an early innovator of the gothic form.”

During Clara’s lifetime, women were expected to be contented with their role as ‘keepers of the home’, as few women had public careers, and those who successfully challenged the status quo were perceived as ‘strange’ women who had ‘unnatural tendencies’ as they yearned to take on roles that solely belonged to men (Omdal, 2013) ^[3]. According to Scott (2002) ^[4], Reeve’s rewritings of Horace Walpole’s ‘ The Castle of Otranto’ and other historical texts were savagely critiqued by celebrated scholars of the day.

According to Scott (2002) ^[5], critics like Walter Scott asserted that female authors like Clara Reeve were hopelessly incapable of expressing ideas about public life in their writings because they were actually trying to reach “beyond their sphere by writing on political philosophy which was presumed to be a masculine domain”. Clara Reeve’s 1793 work ‘ Memoirs of Sir Roger de Clarendon’ also received negative reviews. The Monthly Review, for instance, cautioned that it was wrong for her to focus on the heroic valor that supposedly characterized the Middle Ages while ignoring other aspects of the age (Home, 2017) ^[6]. One critic actually described Reeve’s ‘ Memoirs of Sir Roger de Clarendon’ as tedious, with characters who have insipid manners and are, for the most part, wholly uninteresting (Scott, 2002) ^[7]. As with the critiques of other works by Clara Reeve, the critics stated that the author did not have sufficient experience in public life to create believable characters. It is for these reasons that most of Reeve’s characters, according to her critiques, were merely interested in preserving virtues in themselves and in others around them, and did not seem to be overly concerned with the thought of accomplishing other more pressing objectives. Critics also sometimes referred to Clara Reeve’s work as ‘frivolous’ or ‘trite’ to underscore the fact that women were not believed to be as intelligent as men. By pointing to her gender, male scholars could use it to explain the reasons why Reeve’s works could not be taken seriously. Moreover, Clara Reeve’s works were supported by men who yearned to create avenues for women to participate in public life to some extent.

‘The History of Charobia: Queen of Aegypt’ in The Progress of Romance was so inspirational that Walter Savage Landor consulted it extensively when writing his novel, Gebir. From this fact alone, it is evident that Reeve had a talent in writing fictional or real-life accounts of different situations, as a respected scholar actually consulted her text when writing his book. Moreover, it is evident that she was an expertise in this subject because she had lived it. The lives of English women in the 18th century were not much different from those of Arab women who lived in virtual seclusion.

According to Willms (2017) ^[8], Reeve’s work was highly commendable considering the fact that she had learned two valuable skills, including reading and writing, from her professional father. Willms argues that at the time when Reeve was engaged in wiring inspirational and educational books to encourage women to come out of the persisting ignorance bound by the stereotypical beliefs of male dominance and superiority over women, few people in her generation had acquired both skills of reading and writing. Following this aptitude, Reeve’s work has been considered a ‘ Bluestocking’, implicating her as a woman who held considerable intellectual, literary, and scholarly interest and ability.

In history, prominence of Reeve’s work is largely associated with her ability to build-up her stories from her own experience as a woman (Coykendall, 2005) ^[9]. Although some of Reeve’s work received some critics concerning her use of personal imagination in most of her argumentations, some history scholars, including Coykendall, have considered her work as very important since she strongly grounded her work on personal experiences, which revealed the nature of women segregation in the 18th century. She used her work to disclose the level of undermining and exclusivity that women faced in 18th century, an important decision that has helped enrich the historical understanding of the male chauvinism in the modern world. In affirming such important to Reeve’s work, Willms argues that her book, ‘The Old English Baron’, confirms the mentality that Reeve had in seeking to counter the male dominance in her society, as it mainly focuses on countering trivial and scandalous to Walpole’s novel, ‘ The Castle of Otranto’.

Moreover, several literal scholars have appreciated Reeve’s work in consideration of the way she brings literary value even in the twenty first century (Aravamudan, 2011; Pierce, 2009; Snodgrass, 2005; Crane & Zimansky, 1972; and Punter, 2012) ^{[10] [11] [12] [13]}. For example, as stated by Aravamudan, “Clara Reeve's The Progress of Romance (1785), with which from the beginning of this chapter, has been important for non-teleological feminists recontextualizations of the novel-romance debates and also helps decipher the period's investment in the oriental tale” (p. 71). Punter states that Reeves’s work made substantial reflection to the medieval history even before she began producing more bourgeois, reasonable, and sober literary novels, with her Memoirs of Sir Roger de Clarendon providing to be an “Antidote to the new philosophy by presenting a glorification of the manners and customs of medieval times” (p. 18). According to Price (2003) ^[14], Reeve can be placed in the same category as other literary icons of medieval novel writing, including Samuel Johnson, author of A Collection of a Moral and instructive Sentiments , famous for his authorship of the Dictionary of the English Language. Together with Richardson and Johnson, Reeve played a major role in developing a background of the differential application of facts and characters, story, narrative, haste, and reduction against sentiment, tediousness, presence, and length in literary work of abridgment.

As conclusion, numerous scholars have indicated that Reeve’s literary work as highly significant as far as history of building-up rich novelistic work linked to socioeconomic issues of the 18th century is concerned. Reeve is recognized as author who used her personal experience to become part of the female writers to develop a foundation of strong advocacy against women segregation. Reeve received several critics from male counterparts, who were raised concerns about her imaginative way of writing which did lack proper authenticity in some of the critical arguments she made. The critics were majorly directed to the implications that she uses fictional and mythical way of writing as source of rationality to her claims. However, many scholars have defended Reeve’s work by considering her works significant since it played an important role of understanding the medieval socioeconomic settings and challenges as far as male versus women balance is concerned.

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