Well, I have 311 pages of Clarissa left to go. Twenty-five to thirty pages a week doesn’t seem like much but when you consider the book is a hardcover-sized paperback and the print small, it is almost as if I am reading 1 1/2/ to two pages for every one page. But I am finally progressing through it at a steady rate and with any luck I will be done by the end of the year.

I am, at the moment, fascinated by the prospect of Clarissa’s death. She is ill but with no disease. She claims over and over that she is not willing herself to die, that she is not contriving to die. But yet, she is slowly fading. Though the fade is rather like the death scenes in Shakespeare in which our hero has been mortally wounded but still has time and strength to say all there is to say including philosophizing about life and death.

Clarissa claims she does not want to die but says she knows she is going to and at this point hopes to manage it in a month or less. She is working at writing her will and has requested Mr. Bedford, Lovelace’s friend and confidant who has been won over to her cause, be her executor.

So how can someone who is not ill, who is not willing herself to die but has resigned herself to die because she views it as the end of all her troubles, actually die? Can someone who doesn’t will herself to live find herself at death’s door? Is our will so powerful that to remove it from the side of will to live, knocks us onto the side of death?

I have heard stories, and I am sure you have too, of people who are seriously ill and dying whose will to live is so strong that they manage to hold on until they can see a certain event take place or bid farewell to their loved ones, and even, on rare occasions, struggle back from the brink and live happily for many more years.

But if someone lacks the will to live, does that automatically doom them to death? Is the strength of our will the only thing that keeps us alive? Putting my library reference skills to work, it appears to be possible, not to will yourself to die, but to die from grief, stress or a broken heart. Broken Heart Syndrome also called stress cardiomyopathy, mimics heart disease and can actually cause heart failure in people in perfectly fine health. From the linked article:

sudden emotional stress can…result in severe but reversible heart muscle weakness that mimics a classic heart attack. Patients with this condition…have suffered from a days-long surge in adrenalin (epinephrine) and other stress hormones that temporarily “stun” the heart.

While the condition is reversible if treated, in Clarissa’s time no one would know anything about the hows whats and whys.

Clarissa has certainly suffered repeated sudden emotional (and physical) traumas and so I am going to diagnose her with Broken Heart Syndrome. Now I have found medical proof, I am willing to concede that her dying is not a fictional and romantic contrivance the likes of which really annoys me.

When characters die, can we really feel grief? Yes, according to Oscar Wilde. I doubt that I will be so grieved at Clarissa’s death that I will be in danger of Broken Heart Syndrome, however. More likely I will be relieved that the book is almost finished. Though I just looked and it appears I am more likely to be dismayed as there are over 100 pages to read following the death of Clarissa.