THE CHARACTERIZATION OF WOMEN
IN THE ROVELS 0F
CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN

Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
ELLEN: LOUISE JARVIS HOEKSTRA
1975

 

 

 

 

 

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The Characterization of Women in the Novels of
Charles Brockden Brown

presented by

Ellen Louise Jarvis Hoekstra

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ABSTRACT

THE CHARACTERIZATION OF WOMEN IN THE NOVELS
OF CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN

By

Ellen Louise Jarvis Hoekstra

One of the most intriguing aspects of Charles
Brockden Brown's novels is his striking characterization
of women. A reader may well remember Clara Wieland or
Jane Talbot long after having forgotten the plot and set-
ting of the novels they appeared in. In contrast to
Brown's full and memorable portraiture, women characters
in the works of other early American fiction writers,
including Irving, COOper, and Poe, are pallid, sentimental
shadows of real persons. Popular contemporaries of Brown,
such as William Hill Brown, Hannah Foster, and Susanna
Haswell Rowson, delineated their heroines with so much
less skill that these often seem caricatures to modern read-
ers. Obviously, the problem arises of accounting for
Brown's unusual superiority in this regard to other early
American writers.

As no one single type of character analysis provides
a broad enough spectrum, an eclectic approach seemed most

fruitful. This analysis was organized by relating the

Ellen Louise Jarvis Hoekstra

elements influencing Brown's characterization to his three
motives for writing: his psychological need for self-
therapy; his didactic desire to test and teach the ideas
of associationist psychology, Godwinism, and feminism; and
his economic need to earn money by writing entertainingly.
After an introductory chapter, each of these elements is
related to his characterization of women in a separate
chapter. A fourth chapter asks not "why" but "how" and
analyzes Brown's use of character function, novelistic
form, narrative mode, and style to create his women char-
acters.

During his brief career as a writer, Brown's psycho-
logical needs became less pressing, and he became less
interested in eXploring and promoting liberal ideas through
his characterization of women. At the same time, he became
more concerned with his lack of financial success with his
novels. Hence, his last two novels lack the psychologi-
cal tensions and intellectual controversy of his earlier
work. The influence of the sentimental-gothic heroine,
used so profitably by such diversely talented writers as
Rowson and Richardson, is more obvious in the last two
novels. However, Brown had become more of a literary

craftsman by this point. As a result, Jane Talbot, little

 

read today because of its lack of intellectual interest,
contains Brown's most mimetic characterization of a woman.

In terms of literary accomplishment, Brown surpassed other

Ellen Louise Jarvis Hoekstra

American novelists of his own time with his ability to
characterize women fully and strikingly; when he portrayed

Jane Talbot, he surpassed himself.

THE CHARACTERIZATION OF WOMEN IN THE NOVELS

OF CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN

BY

Ellen Louise Jarvis Hoekstra

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of English

1975

© Copyright by
ELLEN LOUISE JARVIS HOEKSTRA

1975

DEDICATION

I dedicate this dissertation to my parents and my
husband. My parents have aided my education throughout my
life, both by their encouragement and their actions.

Also, I owe thanks to my husband because of the time and
energy he gave me even while working on his own disser-
tation. Having just completed a doctorate himself, he

had personal knowledge of the doubts and hesitancies which
I was experiencing, and he was in a special position to
offer me not only information but also a great deal of

emotional support.

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A number of people have given me special help with
the research and writing of this dissertation. First, while
I was doing research at the Kent State University Biblio-
graphical and Textual Center, Dr. Sydney J. Krause, General
Editor of the KSU-CEAA Brown edition, facilitated my work
in every conceivable way. In addition, his family's kind—
ness made my stay there more pleasant. Since that time,
Dr. Krause has read many of my chapters and offered help—
ful criticism. Also at Kent State University, Mr. Dean H.
Keller, Curator of Special Collections at the Library, was
extremely patient and helpful.

Many faculty members at Michigan State University
also gave me special assistance. Dr. Bernard J. Paris's
courses began my thinking about characterization, and he has
subsequently supplied me with useful references on char-
acter analysis. Dr. Howard Anderson aided my thinking
about sentimental and gothic novels and suggested the
approach which I used in my fourth chapter. Last but not
least, all of my committee members were helpful, especially
when I had decisions to make. Dr. James H. Pickering lent
me his own notes from research on Brown and asked me some

useful questions. Finally, my chairman, Dr. Russel B. Nye,

iii

encouraged me to want to do very well by his great kind-
ness and unassuming helpfulness. Like all of his students,

I owe Dr. Nye more than I can acknowledge.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I 0 INTRODUCTION 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 1

II. THE ARTISTIC PERSONALITY AND
BROWN'S CHARACTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

III. WOMEN CHARACTERS AND THE LABORATORY

OF IDEAS O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 3 2
Associationist Psychology . . . . . . . . . 36
Godwinism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Feminism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
IV. SENTIMENTAL AND GOTHIC FIRST COUSINS . . . . . 118

V. BROWN'S NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE AND THE

CREATION OF CHARACTER . . . . . . . . . . . 165
VI. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
THE BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In the past decade, the writings of Charles
Brockden Brown (1771-1810) have become increasingly more
intriguing to students of American literature. Several
factors have contributed to this rise in interest. For one,
readers may be attempting to find some bridge between the
sermons of Increase Mather and the fiction of Hawthorne,
Melville, and Poe. For another, scholars often find more
adventure in working with a writer who is not all but hidden
behind a mountain of secondary research; this is the excite-
ment of the less-travelled trail. Finally, they are
attracted by Brown's striking superiority to American
writers of his own age, such as William Hill Brown, Hannah
Foster, and Susanna Haswell Rowson.

In one important respect, Brown's writing, particu-
larly in his published novels, is noteworthy even when
compared to that of the first-rate writers of the early
republic, such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore C00per,
and Edgar Allan Poe. Brown's characterization, particu-
larly of women, is much deeper than theirs, and he presents

a fuller investigation of the role of women in our society.

I

 

 

His interest in women as persons is obvious from his let-

ters, from his fiction, and from Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798

 

and 1815), a forum on the role and position of women in
society. It is fitting that Brown's novelistic presenta-
tion of women should be studied in some detail, consider-
ing that he wrote the first full-length American work on
women's roles.

Washington Irving presents a considerably more old-
fashioned and restricted view of women in his writing.
While all of his characterization is lightly drawn, that of
women characters is even more so. Generally, he portrays
women merely in terms of their relationships with men, as

some of the titles in The Sketchbook (1820) suggest: "The

 

Widow and Her Son," "The Broken Heart," and "The Wife."

Throughout The Sketchbook, Irving reveals a sentimental and

 

conservative view of women. He sanctifies motherhood and
shows wives' roles as being moral examples to their hus-
bands. In "The Broken Heart," the authorial comments and
the action label women as more emotionally susceptible than
men. He even seems to relish virgin deaths--of women--in
"Rural Funerals." Clinging to his memories of the Knicker—
bocker aristocracy, Irving tends to romanticize women in his
writing to such an extent that they become idealized shadows
of real women.

Somewhat later in the century, the kinds of writing

done by Edgar Allan Poe demanded and received little

 

1n.

authorial concern for the characterization of male or
female characters. His tales of adventure, crime detec—
tion, and grotesquerie rest more on plot and setting than
on characterization. Also, his lack of concern for con-
temporary life contributed to sketchy characterization.
Thus, while Poe's tales have been long remembered, it is
not for the deep and satisfying portrayals of Morella,
Berenice, or Lady Rowena.

James Fenimore Cooper's writing romanticizes the
frontier past of America. Accordingly, he hearkens back
to the romantic ideal of women happy in the roles of sub-

missive wives and daughters. In The Deerslayer (1841),

 

COOper's idealisation of Betty Hutter almost intimates some
link between half-wittedness and the submissive virtue he
considered apprOpriate to women. Again and again, Cooper
has Deerslayer speak of women's weaknesses and of marked
inherent psychological differences between the sexes.
C00per's only concession to the realities of frontier liv-
ing is to give Hetty and Judith some "masculine" survival
skills, such as canoeing; otherwise they would have weighted
down the action. In general, C00per transfers a sentimental
view of women to a romanticized Wild West. Their two-
dimensionality is sufficient to fulfill the roles necessary
in Cooper's wilderness romances.

By contrast, Charles Brocken Brown chose a fic-

tional mode which enabled him to pursue his interest in

characterization, especially in the characterization of
women. Because of our decade's re—involvement with an
examination of sexual roles in society, Brown's portrayal
of women has already resulted in seven dissertations within
four years. Three of these, all completed in 1971, deal
with Brown as one of a number of writers, so they provide
mostly summary and analysis on a general level.1 The other
four deal only with Brown. Judith Ann Cunningham studies
Brown's writings as a contribution to the growth of women's
rights in America.2 Mary Ann Dobbin McCay deals with women
characters in Brown's novels; her thesis is that Brown
became increasingly unable to handle the polarity between
innocence and sexual knowledge in women characters, due to
his own unconscious sexual questions.3 On a different
tack, Patricia Jewell McAlexander explores sexual morality
in Brown's fiction, delving into male and female roles.
McAlexander considers Brown to have gone through various
stages in his position on sexual morality before he con-
cludes that, for human morality and happiness, there could
and must be a balance between passion and reason, repre-
sented in his writing by the image of the passionate mar-
riage.4 Most recently, David Otis Tomlinson has examined
women in Brown's writing as a study in the develOpment of
his thought. Tomlinson sees Brown's Quaker background as
most influential in his portraiture of women prior to 1800,

after which his increasing contact with the world causes

Brown to delineate heroines who are neither as independent
nor as strikingly intellectual as their predecessors . 5
Tomlinson does not sufficiently acknowledge the maturation
of Jane Talbot, who is not only far from being a typical
domestic heroine, but who is also Brown's most realistic
portrayal of a woman. Granted, her tastes are not as
intellectual as those of Clara Wieland or Constantia Dudley.
The greater richness of Brown's characterization of
women may be due in part to the tensions created by the
struggle in him among his three different aims in writing:
self-therapy, the desire to teach, and the wish to enter-

6 The first

tain so that his novels would be read and sold.
aim resulted from his own psychological problems and caused
his deep interest in character as well as his psychological
insight. The second, didacticism, was a product of his age
and manifested itself in the attempts to explore and teach
the ideas of associationist psychology, Godwinism, and
feminism. His interest in eXploration and his good taste
saved him, however, from the heavy-handed authorial intru-
sion of his own moral commentary, which was common in the
writing of many of Brown's contemporaries. His enthusiasm
for liberal ideas receded, as it does in many peOple, with
age and his increasing involvement in the family's mercan-
tile interests. Finally, his desire to entertain, as well

as being the birthright of every story-teller, resulted from

his desire to make a living from his writing. This naturally

led him to follow fictional patterns of proven popularity,
especially the sentimental and gothic novels. The influ-
ences of these forms on his characterization of women can—
not be overlooked.

In each of the next three chapters, the impact of
one of these major motives will be explored. The motive
will be correlated with Brown's characterization of women.
Finally, his techniques of characterization will be exam-
ined in the fifth chapter. The uses of character function,
fictional form, point of view, and style will be analyzed
in terms of their impact on the characterization of the

memorable women in the novels of Charles Brockden Brown.

NOTES--CHAPTER I

lConstance Hedin Carlson, "Heroines in Certain
American Novels," Diss. Brown University 1971.

Barbara Joan Cicardo, "The Mystery of the American
Eve: Alienation of the Feminine as a Tragic Theme in Amer—
ican Letters," Diss. St. Louis University 1971.

Judith Howard Montgomery, "Pygmalion's Image: The
Metamorphosis of the American Heroine," Diss. Syracuse
University 1971.

Before this decade, one other dissertation dealt
with Brown's heroines:

Raymond A. Miller, Jr., "Representative Tragic
Heroines in the Work of Brown, Hawthorne, Howells, James
and Dreiser," Diss. University of Wisconsin 1957.

2Judith Ann Cunningham, "Charles Brockden Brown's
Pursuit of a Realistic Feminism: A Study of His Writing
as a Contribution to the Growth of Women's Rights in
America," Diss. Ball State University 1971.

3Mary Ann Dobbin McCay, "Women in the Novels of
Charles Brockden Brown: A Study," Diss. Tufts University
1973, pp. 3 and 27.

4Patricia Jewell McAlexander, "Sexual Morality in
the Fiction of Charles Brockden Brown," Diss. University of
Wisconsin 1973.

5David Otis Tomlinson, "Women in the Writings of
Charles Brockden Brown: A Study in the DevelOpment of an
Author's Thought," Diss. University of North Carolina 1974.

6Support for the existence of each of these three
aims will follow in the following three chapters.
McAlexander finds, instead, these three basic motives:
to be wise; to test ideas; and to provide for his own
amusement (pp. 82-83). This analysis overlooks both the
seriousness of his personal problems and his strong desire
to make himself financially independent through his writing.

CHAPTER II

THE ARTISTIC PERSONALITY AND

BROWN'S CHARACTERS

Charles Brockden Brown's personality significantly
influenced his characterization and even, more than any
external reason, led to his desire to write. Like most
authors, Brown wrote from a certain psychological set and
from certain biographical experiences. No attempt will be
made to psychoanalyze the author to discover which aspect of
his psyche caused such details as, let us say, Constantia's
refusal of her first two suitors. Such particularity will
be avoided both because of its obvious difficulty consider-
ing the limited amount of biographical data and because of
its dubious validity. The assignation of highly specific
motives is a tricky business even with living authors;
obviously, this task would be well nigh impossible with an
author who has been dead for over a hundred and fifty years.

Evidence drawn from the fictional works will be
supported as much as possible by biographical data derived
from Brown's letters, his friends' reports, and his non-
fiction, as part of an effort to avoid committing the inten-
tional fallacy. Brown did make explicit comments about the

therapeutic nature of authorship for him, and his creative

period did coincide with a period of turmoil within his own
life; his creative productivity ceased once he had secured
his beloved Elizabeth for emotional support. Furthermore,
he did make some statements about his attitudes towards
characterization as well as about his motivation for creat-
ing certain kinds of characters. His preference for these
kinds of characters seems to be a partial cause of his
creation of such strong female characters. Therefore, it
seems perfectly valid to explore the influence of the
artist's life and personality on his characterization.
While it is important not to over-estimate these effects,
an understanding of them does shed some new light upon
Brown's characterization and hence upon his novels.

Brown's major biographers and many of his critics
amply document the unhappiness of Brown's early years.
Harry Warfel, for example, remarks upon Brown's "morbid
depression and melancholy."1 One critic, George Snell, goes
so far as to consider Brown's "peculiar sort of morbidity
in temperament" as one of two immediate circumstances which
helped bring about the creation of his novels.2

References to his self—doubt and his distrust of
his friends' sincerity recur frequently in Brown's letters.
As early as 1788, in a letter to William Wood Wilkins, Brown
compares his mind to a desert and calls it an increasingly
desolate and gloomy scene of horrors and insanity.3 Four

years later he toyed with suicide. In a letter to Joseph

10

Bringhurst, he claims to have hovered right on the brink.
He then asks Bringhurst if he, Brown, is not a mass of
absurdities and contradictions.4 Many readers of these early
letters would be inclined to agree, for the documents show
enormous vacillations in spirit and self-esteem, as well as
a great deal of posturing. At one point, Brown says of
himself:

I seize anything, however weak and dubious, by which

I can hOpe to raise myself from that profound abyss

of ignominy and debasement, into which I am sunk by

my own reflections.
One cause of Brown's frequent unhappiness was, of course, his
poor health. In a letter to his wife, written in the summer
of 1809, a few months before his death, he says he has not
possessed "that lightness and vivacity of mind which the
divine flow of health, even in calamity, produces in some
men" for longer than a half hour at a time since he had
reached adulthood.6

As well as Brown's genuine psychological problems

and unhappiness, an element of posturing must be considered
when reading his earlier self-analysis. Many young men of
his period indulged in romantic declarations of loneliness
and despair, and dramatically hinted at suicide. In his
younger days, Brown very likely exaggerated his melancholy.
The difficulty for his critics lies in ascertaining how much
of his self-portrait is real and how much is theatrics.

Certainly little of Brown's posturing was intended

lightly. His sense of humor was ponderous, at best.

11

According to his letters to Bringhurst, his friendship with
William Wood Wilkins soured because Brown abhorred Wilkins'
lack of seriousness toward life. When Brown does attempt
to jest with his friends, the effect is elephantine and
obvious. The letters in which he portrays himself as a
tutor in Europe are obvious frauds. Also, since most of
Elihu Hubbard Smith's responses to Brown are available,
Smith's letters and journals act as a check on, at least,
which of Brown's statements were believed by this balanced,
serious young doctor.

Furthermore, Brown did have a life-long commitment
to sincerity. As early as 1788, he told Wilkins he values
sincerity over politeness, and sincerity is a frequent theme
in Brown's fiction.7 Because of his concern for honesty,
Brown did not consciously wish to delude his friends. When
he discovered he had misled a friend by trying out new ideas
and new self-images on him, he seems to have been quick to
rectify the false impression. For example, in one letter to
Joseph Bringhurst, Brown reassures him that his prior intel-
lectual justification of suicide did ngt_mean he intended to
try it.8

The final check on the credibility of Brown's com-
ments about himself is the test of time. Brown may have
dressed his melancholy in fashionable guises as a young man,
but the underlying despair remained, though its intensity

swelled and waned depending on circumstances. Those

12

complaints which recur throughout his life are most likely
genuine reflections of his character. Thus his complaint
to his wife in 1809 that most of his adult life has been
spent in physical discomfort tends to collaborate earlier
comments about constant sickness and about the possibility
of his early death.
It is no wonder that Brown was attracted to the
Franklinesque physician, Elihu Hubbard Smith. Unlike Brown,
Smith had clearly defined goals which he was capable of pur—
suing relentlessly. The lives of the two men "became inter-
twined much as a Virginia creeper drapes itself upon a
strong oak."9 As well as giving tangible aid at times,
Smith occasionally acted much like a psychiatrist to Brown,
following the precepts of Dr. Benjamin Rush, under whom
Smith had studied. He tried to get Brown to unburden his
mind by vocalizing his anxieties, and he encouraged him to
form resolutions, based on self-analysis, and then to act
upon them.
Smith's letter of May 7, 1796, shows how Brown's
extensive personal problems distressed his friends. Here,
Smith accuses Brown of giving Dunlap and himself only vague
and foreboding hints about his problems. Smith chides him:
We must know our own errors, or how can we correct
them? We must be informed of their whole extent,
of their uttermost virulence, or how can we apply
the remedy?

At this time Brown's letters, possibly written under the

narcotic influence of Rousseau, were melancholic without

l3

explaining the concrete causes of this depression. This
greatly disturbed the ever-empirical Smith. Later that
month, Smith tries to interpret the cause of his friend's
strangely misleading letters:
The transition is natural, to a mind of sensibility
almost unavoidable. You began to fancy that these
fictions were real; that you had indeed suffered,
enjoyed, known, and seen all that you had so long
pretended to have experienced; every subsequent event
became tinctured with this conviction and accompanied
with this diseased apprehension.
Brown apparently accepted his friend's criticism as just
and felt incapable of the kind of reformation urged upon
him. In a later letter to Smith, Brown castigates himself:
How can I remove the burden of your scorn but by trans-
forming myself into a new being. I looked not forward
to such a change. I shall die as I have lived, a vic-
tim to perverse and incurable habits.l
Brown's early emotional problems led to the first of his
three major aims in writing: self-therapy.
Several commentators have already remarked on this.
R. W. B. Lewis sees Brown as using narrative to annihilate

13 Alexander Cowie

"hard clusters of evil inclination."
remarks that Brown's books were written partially as self-
therapy. Cowie qualifies this statement by calling the

self-therapy "unconscious."l4

Brown was less publicly con—
scious of this aim than of his didacticism but he left more

than hints that he was indeed privately conscious of the

 

therapeutic value of writing. This is far more evident

within Brown's confidential letters than in his published

14

articles, as might be expected, considering the private
nature of the disclosure. Several times, Brown mentions
how much he would value a sympathetic confidant. In a let-
ter to William Wood Wilkins of 1788, Brown deplores his
lack of someone with whom he could deposit his melancholy
secrets.15 In another letter to Wilkins, probably written
later, he asks whether Wilkins has ever noticed the unac-
countably consoling value of pouring out sorrows to a

friend.16

As already stated, Elihu Hubbard Smith encouraged
Brown to unburden himself for therapeutic purposes. In a
1792 letter to Joseph Bringhurst, Brown states that a sheet
of paper could serve the same purpose. Here Brown notes
that when he is weary with himself and the world, he finds
writing consoling. He says writing forces him to think and
the resultant ideas wash away his cares.l7 In a later let-
ter to his brother-in-law, Dr. William Linn, Brown clearly
correlates the need for writing with personal unhappiness.18
Many of Brown's characters find relief in writing. While
this is partially a convention of the epistolary (or pseudo-
epistolary) novel, we also see this statement from the male
law student in "The Scribbler," who is often felt to be a
persona for the young Brown:

It [writing] is a mental recreation more salutary to

the jaded Spirits than a ramble in the fields or a

contemplation of the starry heavens. I like it better

than walking and conversing with my only friend but
there is time enough for both to be done.19

15

Brown did not, however, conceive of writing as a

final solution to his problems. Instead, it was simply a
purgative which drained off accumulated anxieties and sor-
row. What he did see as a final answer was the undivided
love and attention of a wife. Biographical data point to
his rather simplistic belief that all of his personal prob-
lems would be solved if he could only talk a suitable female
into matrimony. His love was thwarted at least one time,
when his courtship with the coy Miss Susan Potts of Phila-
delphia was broken off by his mother because Miss Potts was
not a Quaker. Brown hints at other frustrated courtships
and states his View of marriage quite explicitly:

My conception of the delights and benefits connected

with love and with marriage are exquisite. They have

swayed most of my thoughts and many of my actions,

since I arrived at an age of reflection and maturity.

They have given birth to the sentiment of love, with

regard to several women. Mutual circumstances have

frustrated the natural operations of that sentiment

in several instances.20
About the time of this letter, he met Elizabeth Linn, who
finally relented to Brown's barrage of sentiment. He may
already have had this conclusion in mind when he told
Anthony Bleeker that he would hate "to be left farthest

21 Despite

behind in the race towards the matrimonial goal."
Miss Linn's often tepid response to her suitor, she brought
him eminent happiness once married. To William Dunlap, he

confided: "My companion is all that a husband can wish for,
and in short as to my personal situation, I have nothing to

"22

wish but that it may last. . . Some years before in a

 

16

letter to Joseph Bringhurst, Brown had classed both his
attachment to women and his attachment to literature as
simply passions, pursued only because of a blind instinc-

tive propensity.23

The attainment of the former passion
may have weakened his zeal for the latter, as Brown wrote
no more major fiction after his marriage in 1804, and seems
to have done little fiction writing after meeting his future
Wife late in 1800. Ironically, two years after his wedding
date, he warned John Hall that Hall would never have a
monmmt of sober application until after he married.24 Yet
Brown's most productive years, as judged by future genera-
tions, were sealed by his marriage.

It would be an over—simplification to say that
Brown's marriage stopped up his creativity. It would be
more accurate to note a definite correlation between his
Period of youthful emotional distress and his artistry.
Such youthful instability would not have appealed to the
Parents of eligible young women, and it might have stood in
the way of earlier attempts to attain satisfactory relation-
Ships with women. Also, perhaps of nearly equal importance,
Brown had discovered that fiction-writing was not profit-
able even for a bachelor, let alone a husband and a father.
Whatever the exact chain of cause and effect, it seems safe
to say that Brown's marriage at least symbolized his end as

an artist, and the attainment of matrimony meant the conclu-

sion of some of those insecurities which fed his creativity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17

Previous commentators on Brown have paid due atten-
tion to the unhappiness of his life, to his use of litera-
ture as a purgative, and to the cession of fiction-writing
in his later years, when he was married. Less explored is
the exact relationship between his early emotional state
and certain patterns in his creative work. Warfel makes a
start by stating that:

Like Poe's many years later, Brown's thoughts gravi-
tated naturally to morbid topics now generally classed
in the realm of abnormal psychology. It is not sur-
prising, therefore, that his best writing should have
been done in terror fiction in which effectiveness
depended upon the generation of emotions similar to
those which nearly drove him to the brink of suicide?5
That realism which Brown drew was indeed "on the dim border-
line between fact and fancy," as Brown was eXploring himself
and the world through conscious fictional excursions into
the human mind and heart.26 It is not irrelevant that he
envied Bringhurst's ability to dream vividly, wishing his
Own soul could, as well, mingle at will with the beings of
the world of Allegory. Instead, he wrote, he must be con—
tent with insipid realities or at best with those shadowy
and fleeting images which his conscious imagination was
Capable of creating.27 It would not be an exaggeration to
say that Brown lived vicariously through the lives of those
Shadowy and fleeting images, his characters, thus evading
for long periods the torment of his own self-doubts. Cer—

tainly, Smith's criticism, mentioned earlier, suggests that

Ikown appeared to fancy some of the fictions he invented

 

18

more true. Also, within Brown's description of his story
cf Julius and Julietta, he explicitly told Bringhurst that
in his creation of characters, he enjoyed a new existence,
in thinking and acting as though he actually w§£g_those
<flmracters.28 After the discovery of this personal confes-
sion, it seems obvious that Brown's original description
of the rhapsodist is a self-portrait: "He loves to converse
vdth beings of his own creation, and every personage and
every scene, is described with a pencil dipt in the colours
of'imagination."29 Brown's preference for "the colours of
imagination" over the mundane world of late-eighteenth
cmntury Philadelphia is obvious from his biography and enun-
cfiated in his generalization about rhapsodists:
Tired and disgusted with the world's uniformity, they
turn their eyes from the insipid scene without, and
seek a gayer prospect, and a visionary happiness in a
world of their own creation. The poet, therefore is
not a distinct person from the rhapsodist. . . . 0
Though his writing definitely served as an escape mechanism
fin'Brown, it was more than just simple escapism, as might
hm judged from the relative complexity and density of the
novels and his characterization. As Warner Berthoff so
aptly explains:
Narrative for Brown was . . . capable of a more posi-
tive and creative kind of statement; it was an instru-
ment for discovering ideas, for exploring and testing

them out; it was, we may say, an alternative to formal
Systematic speculative thought.31

 

Berthoff's comments are reminiscent of Brown's statement:

32

"Mere reasoning is cold and unattractive." Berthoff

"no.

 

....

 

 

 

l9

persuasively argues that Brown embodies philosophical dis-
cnmsions in his characters, to see both what would happen
mathe doctrine and what would happen to the characters.33
Bytflds device, Brown was able to avoid the plague of moral—
izing, rampant in so many of tuna contemporaries, such as
Vfilliam Hill Brown. Thus he achieved:

Instead of preaching, the living human feeling; instead

of the dead hand of abstract definition, the tension of

conflicting wills; instead of a summary formula, a dra-

matic climax.
As Berthoff suggests, Brown probably worked in such a man-
ner because he saw human motivation as exquisitely complex.35
Bunnrmay have arrived at this view of human motivation
because of his personal inability to understand himself,
vfith his sudden flights of fancy and fits of despondency.
h1"Walstein's School of History," in which Brown discusses
Ids own writing, he informs us that:1

Actions and motives cannot be truly described. We can

only make approaches to the truth. The more atten-

tively we observe mankind, and study ourselves, the

greater will the uncertainty a pear, and the farther

we find ourselves from truth.3%
Perhaps because of the grain of eighteenth century optimism
inBrown, he did not totally despair of understanding human
motivation, despite the difficulties he saw in this opera-
tion. Instead, he felt this uncertainty had some boundaries.
Indeed he went so far as to say that some motives were open
t0 explication:

Our guesses as to the motives of some actions are

more probable than the guesses that relate to other
aetions. Though no one can state the motives from

20

which any action has flowed, he may enumerate motives

from which it is quite certain that the action did

395 flow.37
Hence,‘we see Brown in his novels probing deeply into the
innermost souls of his characters, laying bare both the
pmofessed and the real motives behind their actions.38 His
vniter's desk became a laboratory in which he put his char-
acters, male and female, through a qualitative analysis.

Brown was well aware of his own interest in human

cfimracter. Though he has been classified by many of his
critics as largely a novelist of ideas, his own self-
conception was of a man mostly interested in human beings.
In a 1793 letter to Joseph Bringhurst, Brown muses over the
lands of knowledge worthy of pursuit for their own sakes.
While admitting that everything which relates to man is
important to an understanding of human nature, Brown divides
hmmn.history into two spheres: domestic (or solitary) and
P01itical. The former is his primary concern; his interest
in political events is limited to their effect on human
cfimracter. He says his attention wanders away from the
consideration of general events flowing from general causes
to the personal character of individuals. Life and manners,

39 So might one

he reiterates, is his favorite science.
guess from his novels which, with the exception of the
depictions of plague epidemics, are amazingly ahistorical

and apolitical considering their intellectual currency. In

Br'OWn's novels, his sphere of interest and his highest

21

mfilities happened to coincide. As Warfel suggests, Brown
correctly judged that his genius lay in the direction of
ndnute analysis of human feelings and motivation.40 From
Ids earliest years as a writer, Brown conceived of human
(maracter as offering endless. cases for study:
There is no sphere, however limited, in which human
nature may not successfully be studied, and in which
sufficient opportunities are not afforded for the exer-
cise of the deepest penetration, and as a philosopher
is able [to] derive amusement [and] instruction from
contemplating a post or a stone, so he whose descrip-
tive powers are vigorous can always make the delinea-
tion of them a source of pleasure and improvement.41
In part, Brown's attitude was a result of his ability to
deal with personal minutae better than with sweeping social
change, in the manner of a Tolstoi. As Brown puts it:
In the most vulgar objects, a scrutinizing spirit can
discover new properties and relations. In a scene that
to ordinary observers, is monotonous and uniform, he
finds an exhaustless source of reflection and inquiry.
In a situation where no addition to his knowledge or
happiness is expected, he is frequently supplied with
the materials of memorable improvement.

Brown saw more than just a scrutinizing spirit
necessary for an adequate portrayal of such a complex entity
as a human action. One who merely watches carefully and
enumerates carefully the appearances which occur deserves
cle the title of historian, in Brown's opinion. To attain
the appellation of "romancer," which Brown considers the
higher title, one must go a step further and adorn these
appearances with cause and effect, trading "resemblances
1i’etween the past, distant and future, with the present."43

Such a man is "a dealer not in certainties, but probabilities,

22

44

and is therefore a romancer." Brown might well be speak-

ing of himself with his incessant desire to know, when he
continues by asserting that:

Curiosity is not content with noting and recording the
actions of men. It likewise seeks to know the motives
by which the agent is impelled to the performance of
these actions; but motives are modifications of thought
which cannot be subjected to the senses. They cannot
be certainly known. They are merely topics of con-
jecture. Conjecture is the weighing of probabilities;
the classification of probable events, according to

the measure of probability possessed by each . . .

the wise and the ignorant, the sagacious and the stupid,
when busy in assigning motives to actions, are not
historians but romancers.

 

 

Because of this, the writer who is not both historian and
romancer is seen by Brown as essentially defective.

It is important to notice that Brown sees curiosity
as the key personal characteristic dividing the historians
from the romancers. Curiosity is not an epithet from which
he shrank though he seems to have realized others sometimes

46

CHsapproved of it. As James Leland Grove has pointed out,

such curiosity disagreeably suggests that the artist himself
is uninvolved with life and alienated from human feelings

because of this artistic obsession for analyzing and observ-

ing the life around him.47 Grove states that many writers

imve embodied this aspect of their artistry in a first-
Immson narrator who performs a peeping—tom function and who

is generally alienated from and disliked by the people

48

around him. This is a valid generalization about several

0f Brown's narrators, though Grove stretches his point too

49

far When he includes Clara Wieland. Clara is emotionally

_~___r #fi”.-_—

 

 

 

 

 

23

involved with most of the other major characters and they
feel deeply about her in return. Though, like all of
Iuown's heroines, she is unusually analytical, she doesn't
{my into the affairs of others except when forced to by the
undeniably unusual circumstances in which she finds herself.
rather, it is Carwin who is the peeping-tom. He himself
admits that curiosity was the impelling motive for his
unfortunate actions . 50
This refutation of Grove's analysis of Clara is
important to pave the way for the observation that Brown's
Host meddlesome characters are all males. Along with Carwin,
one thinks of Ormond, disguising himself as a chimney sweep
and listening behind the cloth wall; Edgar Huntly, forcing
Clithero to wring out an unwilling confession; and Arthur
Nbrvyn, endlessly breaking into private houses and secret
rooms. The excessive curiosity of these characters plays
iinmjor role in the unfolding of plot, of course, but Brown
does not make all of his prime snoops the principal narrators
Cf the novels, as Coyle states. The only single generali-
zation which can be made about all members of this class of
cnmracters is that all are male. Conceivably Brown is mak-
ing a comment about male/female characteristics, though
there is no external evidence to support this. It seems
somewhat more likely that Brown as a male novelist, who by
Ins own admission lived through his characters, is project-

ing a side of himself through the rampant curiosity of these

24

Hole characters. This conjecture is not made on the basis
cm the coincidence alone but rather on the combination of
this coincidence with Brown's own comments about curiosity.
To begin with, Grove is surely mistaken when he
states that Brown censures curiosity through his "nosey"
<flmracters; this generalization does not always hold true.
(hove bases this judgment on two main sources: Brown's
snatement in the preface to Sky-Walk that nothing human is
beneath rational curiosity; and Brown's portrayal in the
"Rhapsodist" of the ideal artist as one who shows a fervent
mmmdtment to truth and the welfare of mankind.51 In the
first place, it is certainly Grove and not Brown who is pass-
ing negative judgment on the rationality of Clara Wieland's
and Arthur Mervyn's curiosity. As has been demonstrated,
Carwin, not Clara, is the character in Wieland whose curi-
Cmity has disastrous consequences. Interpretations of
Arthur Mervyn's behavior have been too various for us to
assume that Brown clearly intended to condemn his young
luno's curiosity. For example, Warfel sees Arthur as

52

"blameless." Berthoff judiciously warns us of the dangers

0f reading too much conscious irony into Arthur Mervyn.53

 

Rather, Brown's own writings show us that he saw no
inConsistency between active curiosity and such a fervent
Commitment to truth and human welfare. Indeed, he seems to
juStify extreme curiosity, provided that it is motivated by

Virtuous intentions. In "The Man at Home," the narrator

25

twice uses other human beings quite Openly to advance his
matunderstanding and knowledge. At one point, he Visits
an old friend who has gone mad "to con over the most
instructive lesson that ever was afforded me, on the evil of
unbridled passion."54 He also tells his audience that he
often prolongs conversations with his landlady only to note
the scantiness of her vocabulary. He justifies this by
saying:
Yet, in acting thus, I intended no evil. I extracted
no food for contempt from her errors. They suggested
various contemplations on the principles of human
intercourse, and on the causes that produce such wide
differences between human beings who, in their primi-
tive conformation, and perhaps in their ultimate des-
tiny, are the same.
Brown's personal justification of such laboratory use of
human beings is asserted in this comment to a friend:
The imputation of inquisitiveness, impertinance [sic]
of a restless propensity to pry into the affairs of
others affects me not . . . the disease must be known
before the remedy can be discovered.5
Since Brown did defend curiosity, it seems likely
that the curiosity visible in so many of his major male
characters is a projection of one aspect of himself. Con-
Versely, many of his female characters, notably Clara
Vfieland and Constantia, are forced to live in a fishbowl
world, often having the privacy of their thoughts and
aCtions violated daily. Since several male characters,
Clithero and Welbeck in particular, are also subject to

such scrutiny, it would not be accurate to state that Brown

enjOyed vicariously prying into the lives of only his female

26

(neations. Suffice it to say that the female characters
are sometimes the victims but never the perpetrators of
tnmmidled curiosity, and that the meddlesome males are, at
least in part, a projection of Brown's own interests and
desires.

As well as peeping-toms, Brown also had a predilec-
tion for mysterious villains of great intellect. Since, as
tms been asserted, he lived vicariously through his char-
acters (and probably, especially through the male charac-
ters), it is interesting to see this pupil of Bage and
Ikflcroft defend the creation of lofty villains rather than
Virtuous but ordinary mortals. As the narrator of "The Man
at Home" puts it:

In the selection of the subjects of useful history,
the chief point is not the virtue of a character.
The prime regard is to be paid to the genius and force
of mind that is displayed. Great energy employed in
the promotion of vicious purposes, constitutes a very
useful spectacle. Give me a Sale of lofty crimes
rather than of honest folly.5
Ten years later Brown reiterates the usefulness of such
characters more explicitly in terms of audience when he
says;
The world is governed, not by the simpleton, but by
the man of soaring passions and intellectual energy.
By the display of such only can we hope to enchain
the attention and ravish the souls of those who study
and reflect.58
In terms of this discussion, what is more important

is that such powerful characters captured the author's fancy.

Unsure of himself, living in a world of fantasy, it is no

 

 

27

wonder that Brown was attracted to the Ormonds and the

Welbecks. No wonder, with such villains, such aggressively

prying heroes, that Brown's heroines had to be strong them-

selves. Charlotte Temple not only would not have survived

Clara Wieland's trial at Mettingen, but it is doubious that

:flae could have pitched Jane Talbot's battle against the

chetermined Mrs. Fielder. Eliza Wharton would not have

xueeded Constantia's stature because her opponent, Colonel

thanfOrd, was her undoing without Ormond's powers. Hence,
Brnawn's personal problems not only resulted in his becoming
a.tnriter rather than a lawyer, but they also helped shape

true very nature of his writing down to the kinds of char-

ac ters he drew .

 

 

28

NOTES --CHAPTER I I

1Harry R. Warfel, Charles Brockden Brown: American
Gothic Novelist (Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida
Press, 1949), p. 8.

 

2George Snell, "Charles Brockden Brown: Apocalyp-
ticalist," University of Kansas City Review, 4 (Winter 1944),
133.

3Letter to William Wood Wilkins (1788), Daniel
Edward Kennedy, Charles Brockden Brown: His Life and Works
hanpublished EMS in Kent State University Bibliographical
arui Textual Center), p. 408. Permission for reading this
nmiterial and referring to it was kindly granted by Sydney J.
Krnause, General Editor of the KSU—CEAA Brown edition.
Ifliese materials will henceforth be referred to by the acro-
nynn "DEK." According to Kennedy, this letter was originally
plainted in Paul Allen's biography of Charles Brockden Brown.

4Letter to Joseph Bringhurst (May 5, 1792), DEK,

 

Po 504.

5Letter to William Wood Wilkins (n.d.), William
Ihxnlap, The Life of Charles Brockden Brown . . . (Phila-
delphia: James P. Parke, 1815), I, p. 53.

6Dunlap, II, p. 86.

7Letter to WWW (1788), DEK, p. 407.

8Letter to Bringhurst (n.d.-—probab1y after May 5,
1792), DEK, pp. 574-576.

9Warfel, Charles Brockden Brown, p. 40.

10Letter to Charles Brockden Brown from Elihu Hubbard
Sukith Diary (May 7, 1796), from Warfel, Charles Brockden
§££§gy p» 57. The acronym EHS will be used for Smith's
“enmeand CBB for Brown's henceforth, except when such
abbreviation might cause confusion.

11Letter to CBB from EHS, Diary (May 27, 1796),
from Warfel, Charles Brockden Brown, pp. 63-64.

12Letter to EHS, from Historical Society of Pennsyl—
vania collection (Jan. 1, 1798), Warfel, Charles Brockden
Brown, p. 88.

29

13R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence,
TragedyL_and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1955), p. 96.

14Alexander Cowie, Introduction to KSU-CEAA Wieland,
unpubl. TS, at KSU Bibliographical and Textual Center,
p. A-13. Permission of author.

15Letter to William Wood Wilkins (1788), DEK, p. 408.

16Letter to William Wood Wilkins (n.d. but Nov. 5,
.1792 or after, according to DEK), DEK, p. 585.

17Letter to Bringhurst (Dec. 22, 1792), DEK, p. 617.

18
p. 1619.

Letter to William Linn (Dec. 8, 1804), DEK,

19Dunlap, II, p. 271.

2Oounlap, II, p. 50.

2J'Letter to Anthony Bleeker, Esq. (Oct. 31, 1801),
Ihlnlap, II, p. 104.

22Letter to Dunlap (1805), Dunlap, II, p. 113.

23Letter to Bringhurst (1792), DEK, p. 600. DEK
tltinks this letter was written in August, based on internal

evidence .
24

p. 1710.
25

Letter to John E. Hall (Nov. 21, 1806), DEK,

Warfel, Charles Brockden Brown, p. 5.

26David Lee Clark, Charles Brockden Brown, Pioneer
YELige of America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
1952), p. 191.

27

 

Letter to Bringhurst (May 30, 1792), DEK, p. 553A.

28Letter to Bringhurst (May 29, 1792), DEK, p. 552.
29CBB, "The Rhapsodist, No. 2," Columbian Magazine;
0r, Monthly Miscellany, 3 (September 1789), 537.

3OCBB, "The Rhapsodist, No. 2," p. 539.

31Warner B. Berthoff, "A Lesson on Concealment,
Brockden Brown's Method in Fiction," Philological Quarterly,

37 (1958), 46.

 

 

3O

32CBB, "Walstein's School of History," Monthly

Magazine, 1 (September-December 1799), 408.

33Berthoff, "Lesson," p. 47.

34Berthoff, "Lesson," p. 56.

35Berthoff, "Lesson," p. 54.

36CBB, "Walstein's School," Monthly Magazine, 1
(August 1799), 336.

37

 

CBB, "Walstein's School," (August), p. 337.

38James John Coyle, "The Problem of Evil in the
buajor Novels of Charles Brockden Brown," Diss. University
of Michigan 1961, p. 12.

39Letter to Bringhurst (July 29, 1793), DEK, p. 649.

 

4OWarfel, Charles Brockden Brown, p. 162.

41Clark, p. 98. Bracketed additions are presumably
Clark' 5.

42

CBB, "The Man at Home, No. 3," Weekly Magazine, 1
(Feb. 17, 1788), 65.
43CBB, "The Difference Between History and Romance,"

MEElthly Magazine, 2 (April 1800), 251.

44CBB,"History and Romance," p. 251.

 

 

45CBB, "History and Romance," p. 252.

46Letter to W.C. (Aug. 29, 1793), copied in CBB's
goalrnal, located at Pennsylvania Historical Society. Photo-
copy consulted at KSU Bibliographical and Textual Center.
W~C2. has been hypothetically considered William Coleman by
Scflnolars working on the KSU—CEAA edition of Brown's novels.

47James Leland Grove, "Visions and Revisions: A
Study of the Obtuse Narrator in American Fiction from
Brockden Brown to Faulkner," Diss. Harvard 1968, pp. 5-9.

48Grove, p. 5.

49Grove, p. 12.

31

50CBB, Wieland or the Transformation, in Charles

Brockden Brown's Novels, I (New York: Burt Franklin, 1970,
rpt. of 1887 edition), p. 224. All references to specific
Brown novels will henceforth be noted by title and page
number only. All are taken from this reprint.

 

 

51Grove, pp. 112-115.

52Warfel, Charles Brockden Brown, p. 145.

 

53Warner B. Berthoff, Introduction, CBB, Arthur
bkervyn or Memoirs of the Year 1793 (New York: Holt, Rinehart
arui Winston, 1962), p. xviii.

54CBB, "The Man at Home, No. 12," Weekly Maggzine, 1
(April 21, 1788), 355.

55CBB, "The Man at Home, No. 2," Weekly Magazine, 1
(Feb. 10, 1788), 34.

56

 

 

 

Letter to W.C. (Aug. 29, 1793).

57CBB, "The Man at Home, No. 9," Weekly Magazine, 1
(March 31, 1788), 257.

58CBB, "Advertisement to Sky-Walk," Weekly Magazine,
1 (March 17, 1788), 202.

 

 

CHAPTER III

WOMEN CHARACTERS AND THE LABORATORY OF IDEAS

Charles Brockden Brown's primary conscious aim
in writing was didactic. He believed that the main func-
tion and value of fiction was to help "ascertain the pre-

cepts of justice and exhibit these precepts reduced to

practice. . . ."1 Like many other authors of his time,

Brown felt compelled to justify his novels in prefaces
asserting either the veracity of the incidents disclosed or
the value of the accompanying sentiments. In his "adver—
tisement" to Wieland, he states that "His purpose is neither

selfish nor temporary, but aims at the illustration of

some important branches of the moral constitution of man."2

Brown goes even further than most novelists of his period;
he not only proclaims the moral value of fiction, but he
also claims its superiority to non-fiction.

Mere reasoning is cold and unattractive. Injury
rather than benefit proceeds from convictions that
are transient and faint; their tendency is not to
reform and enlighten, but merely to produce disquiet
and remorse. They are not strong enough to resist
temptation and to change the conduct, but merely to
pester the offender with dissatisfaction and regret.

The detail of actions is productive of different
effects. The affections are engaged, the reason is
won by incessant attacks; the benefits which our sys-
tem has evinced to be possible, are invested with a

32

33

seeming existence, and the evils which error was
proved to generate, exchange the fleeting, misty, and
dubious form of inference, for a sensible and present
existence.

Though he did not do so publicly, Brown once went so far

as to declare Sir Charles Grandison superior to the Bible.4

 

He seems to have maintained his belief in the didactic value
of novel reading through his later years. In 1804, he
assailed its Opponents as:
profoundly ignorant of human nature; the brightest
of whose properties is to be influenced more by example
than precept; and of human taste; the purest of whose
gratifications is to View human characters and events
depicted by a vigorous and enlightened fancy. . . .
He continues this rebuke by noting the moral usefulness of
powerful pictures of the connections "between vice and

misery and felicity and virtue,‘ and he concludes by sug-
gesting that even the most trivial novels are not totally
worthless because the kinds of peOple attracted to them
might otherwise be employed in yet more trivial fashions.6
The didacticism of Brown's novels is much less
static than that of most other American fictionists of the
period. His major characters, male and female, never merely
symbolize given doctrines. Rather, as Berthoff suggests:
"Brown's imagination turned to creating characters who try
to live by these doctrines. What would become of them, of
the characters and of the doctrines?"7 While such experi-

mentation often led to rough plot construction, it also

resulted in a dramatic tension caused by the characters'

34

attempts to live by certain ideals. One is much more in
doubt about (and probably, therefore, more interested in)
Brown's characters than in the characters of a typical
English problem novel. Clara Wieland, for example, seems
to make a choice whereas Anna St. Ives, in Holcroft's novel,
merely embodies a choice.

Three major inter-connected streams of thought are
pertinent to Brown's character laboratory: associationist
psychology, Godwinian social liberalism, and feminism.

Brown's associationist psychology does not derive
directly from any one major proponent of the idea. All of
its founders meant something different by "associationism."
Brown's use of it is sufficiently non-technical to prohibit
an easy attribution of it to any one source. Also, the
major specific associationist influence on him is not
absolutely certain. He had numerous opportunities to become
acquainted with the idea, and he may have learned much of
what he knew about it third- or even fourth-hand.

Brown's social liberalism will be termed "Godwinism"
for the sake of simplicity. Godwin, of course, originated
very little. He ig useful as a reference since his Enquiry

Concerning Political Justice (1793) perhaps best consoli-

 

dated and popularized a number of current social and politi-
cal ideas. Brown was thoroughly familiar with Godwin and
with this work in particular as will be seen presently.

Brown may well have first become familiar with many of his

35

liberal ideas through Bage, Holcroft, or any of the French
liberal and revolutionary thinkers with whom he was also
familiar. However, calling that nexus of empiricism,
associationism, and utilitarianism "Godwinism" provides a
theoretical handbook for reference.

In this chapter Brown's feminism will be compared
to that delineated by Mary Wollstonecraft in her Thoughts
on the Education of Daughters (1787), and, much more impor—

tantly, in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).

 

A reference is less important here than it is with social
liberalism as Brown wrote his own theoretical feminist

work, Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798 and 1815). Possibly Brown

 

was familiar with other works on female emancipation, but
probably he was most specifically influenced by Wollstone-
craft's, as will be shown later. Brown shared her Godwinian
basis in empiricism, associationism, and utilitarianism,

which makes a comparison of Alcuin and the Vindication most

 

useful.

Each of these three currents of thought——association—
ist psychology, Godwinism, and feminism--will be discussed
separately. First, Brown's familiarity with each will be
explored and verified. Then the basic principles of each
will be summarized. This will be followed by an examina-
tion of female characters who test out these ideas through

their human consequences.

36

Associationist Psychology

 

Brown's personal reasons for an interest in psy—
chology have already been discussed. To reiterate, Brown,
uncomfortably aware of his own internal turmoil, often
lived vicariously through his characters. The morbid turn
of his own mind led him to create characters whose cases
might be described today in abnormal psychology textbooks.
In his analysis of abnormal states, Brown was able to com-
bine all the motivating factors of his writing: self-
therapy for himself; and, for the audience, the entertain-
ment of the bizarre combined with didactic content.

Brown was certainly not alone in his interest in
abnormal psychology. There are many madmen in American
1iterature--one specific manifestation of that dark side
of the soul for which the American novel has been noted.
Furthermore, there was an especially high degree of interest
in insanity in the period 1790 through 1870 due to a number
of factors: a growing concern in the United States and
Europe over an apparent increase in insanity; an interest
in reforms of the treatment of the insane (one sign of the
perfectibilistic element in late-eighteenth century optimism);
and a concern--scientific, philoSOphic, and theological--
over the nature of mental illness.8

American intellectual circles during Brown's time
were comparatively tightly knit. Dwelling as he did in

Philadelphia and New York, he would have been apt to have

37

heard of the latest developments in the new science of

psychology. Brown, with publications in belles lettres,

 

politics, and geography, was no exception to the tendency
of educated men in this era to keep abreast of intellectual
developments in all fields of knowledge. Brown had special
sources for information about new psychological theories
since a number of his friends were physicians, including
Samuel Latham Mitchill, Edward Miller, and Elihu Hubbard
Smith. His friendship with Smith is especially noteworthy,
both because of Smith's influence on Brown and because of
Smith's own interest and background in psychology.

Smith's enthusiasm for psychology can be traced
directly to his studies under Dr. Benjamin Rush. Though

Rush did not publish his Medical Inquiries and Observations

 

upon the Diseases of the Mind until 1812, he was teaching
9

 

the same theories of abnormal psychology in the 1790's.
Rush was the first American physician to make a serious
study of mental illness, although his original contribu-
tions were few. He pioneered a reform movement for better
treatment of the insane and attempted to free mental ill-
ness from a moral stigma by emphasizing its medical aspects

and its curability.lo

Generally his views were materialistic;
he saw insanity as basically a somatic disease, a pathological
disorder of the brain having psychological consequences.ll He

believed that there were certain predisposing factors to

insanity, including imaginative occupations and the political

38

and economic environment, but he saw these as simply initi-

ating the physiological process which resulted in the dis-

ease.12 Also, more than his contemporaries, Rush emphasized

the importance of psychological methods in the treatment

of all diseases.13
Rush's influence on Smith can be seen in Smith's

use of salivation in the treatment of mania. Smith's belief

that physical causes can precipitate mental disorders is

obvious in his warning to his sister to cover her children's

heads with caps.l4 His belief in the inter-connection of the

mind and body is evident in a medical questionnaire he sent

to a patient, asking how and in what form the reflections

of the patient's mind affect his body, both in its general

condition and in regard to the particular disease.15 His

reading also reflects his interest in mental disorders,

as does his attempt to play psychiatrist with Brown. Smith

knew and applauded Locke's refutation of the theory of

innate ideas.16

Locke's argument helped pave the way for
associationism.

"The Rhapsodist" presents evidence of Brown's famili-
arity with and interest in psychology. For example, he was
sufficiently aware of the rise and fall of the Brunonian
System to call it:

a system . . . which has only ingenuity to recommend
it; and which, at a former period, when caprice hap-

pened to operate with less than usual vigor, was treated
with contempt and ridicule. . . .17

39

He also demonstrates his awareness that Herman Boerhaave's
teachings were antiquated.18 Also, of course, in Wieland,
he shows his familiarity with that minor spokesman of asso-

ciationism, Erasmus Darwin, in a footnote referring to

Darwin's Mania Mutabilis.

 

Brown's own psychological stance is rather mixed.
This is not extraordinary when one considers that many major
figures in psychiatry in America at this time were not them-
selves theoretically consistent. Rush, for example, often
mixed elements of idealism into his usual materialism.

Brown's psychological position could be generally
described as a modified sensationism and a psycho-physical
associationism. He shows interest in and acceptance of the
interconnectedness of mind and body, apparently believing
psychological states can produce neurological changes in
the brain. Also, there is evidence in Wieland that he
accepts the idea of congenital predisposition to insanity.
Before examining how Brown's female characters emobdy cer-
tain of these psychological ideas or react to them in male
characters, it is necessary to describe the constructs them-
selves.

Sensationism is the philosophical and psychologi-
cal doctrine that all ideas come from and can be reduced to
sensations. While Brown often emphasizes the relation of
the senses to the understanding or intellect, he also seems

to accept a non—sensational "reasoning" or "reflection"

40

which characters like Constantia Dudley and Clara Wieland
employ to analyse such sensations. Associationism grew

out of sensationism as a result of a need to explain how

the mind makes sense of the sensory data received. In gen—
eral, "association of ideas" suggests the tendency of a
sense perception or an idea to recall others linked to it,
either because of similarity or because both are experienced
simultaneously or contiguously.

Brown's associationism has often been noted and is
frequently considered an outgrowth of Locke's association-
ism. This connection is interesting because the chapter
dealing with the association of ideas in Locke's An Essay

Concerning Human Understanding (II. xxxiii) was not added

 

until the fourth edition (1700), which suggests that it was
somewhat of an afterthought. Furthermore, the concept of
associationism originated with Aristotle and was revived
before Locke by Hobbes. Also, Locke, unlike Hobbes and
Hume, largely emphasized the negative aspects of associa-
tionism. Finally, Locke was interested in associationism
only as a stepping-stone to his theory of knowledge and not
as a psychological system.19
This frequent attribution of Brown's associationism
to Locke rather than, say, Hartley, is probably the result
of factors beyond Locke's coinage of the phrase "associa-

tion of ideas." It results from certain basic similarities

between Locke and Brown. Like Locke, Brown emphasizes the

41

negative aspects of associationism; both were quite con—
vinced of the value of reasoning, a process to which

Hartley pays less attention. Brown and Locke both value
highly the accurate evaluations of sensory perceptions as

these are recorded on the tabula rasa of the mind. Both

 

consider a long train of reflection proper behavior and
censure haste in forming judgments.20 Furthermore, both
see madness not as a loss of reason but as perverted reason,
the product of faulty association of ideas, the result of
"chance" correspondence. Locke in no way suggests that
reason can solve all human problems. Indeed, throughout
the Essay, he stresses man's limited nature, comparing the
understanding to a "dark room."21 Therefore, when Brown
portrays a character who tries to use reason in a situa-
tion but fails to understand it, Brown is not denying the
value of reason and refuting "optimistic psychology," as
Larzer Ziff suggests, but merely pointing out their limita-

tions.22

Like Locke, Brown practically equates rational
action to moral behavior, and he at no time concedes this
view of morality. Ideally, the mind, which was thought to
be composed of the understanding and the affections,
receives sensory impressions which the understanding inter—
prets and transmits to the will, from which actions ensue.
Brown and Locke accept the frailty of this process but

still see reason as one of the few weapons against total

chaos.

42

Hartley took the principle of the association of
ideas and systematized it into a psychology proper. The
two fundamentals of his associationism are his long-
discredited attempt to trace a specific correspondence
between mental and neural activity and his elaboration of
all experience according to the principles of association.
Brown may well have received his belief in physiological
neural responses to psychological experiences from Hartley;
Locke deliberately eschews it.23 The importance of educa-
tion in forming right associations is mentioned by Locke
but constitutes a major portion of Hartley'spwork.24 There-
fore Brown's emphasis on education may have arisen from
either influence.

As mentioned, Brown was also familiar with Erasmus
Darwin, specifically his treatise Zoonomia (1794). Darwin,
as well as Hartley, may have been the source of the psycho-
physical element in Brown's associationism. Though this
lengthy work is chiefly concerned with biological questions,
the first part of it is a psycho-physical theory of eXperi-
ence which is thoroughly associationistic.25 From writers
such as Hartley and Darwin, Rush had formed his ideas on
his subject, so it is possible that Brown learned of these
ideas third- or fourth-hand rather than from their origina—
tors.

It is unclear whether Brown sees insanity, or just

a predisposition to it, as hereditary. During the eighteenth

43

century, physicians generally believed that only a predis-
position to insanity was hereditary. Some precipitant was
considered necessary to activate latent mental abnormali-
ties. By the middle of the nineteenth century, congenital
predisposition was believed to be a major cause of insanity.

The idea of an "irresistible impulse" was the out-
growth of an expanding liberalism in the public's attitude
towards the behavior of the insane. The concept of the
"irresistible impulse" implied that if insanity warped the
sense of moral obligations, a person's reason might not be
able to reject a criminal action before the will became
conmfitted to it.26 Brown uses this idea only in a very
general sense. Occasionally a character who is sane but
whose momentary passions block rational action will succumb
to it. Afterwards the character usually considers the
aCtion as foolish. This is one of the mechanisms Brown
uses to show his esteem for rational behavior.

Neither the predisposition to insanity nor the
irresistible impulse are of major significance to Brown's
Characterization; neither concept is as recurrent as asso-
ciationism is in Brown's fiction. These two minor elements
‘flill be only briefly noted during the discussion of the
Ilovels.

The novel which has been most discussed in terms of
IPSycholOgical content is Wieland. Clara Wieland, one of

BroWn'S most impressive heroines, is at the center of this

44

novel, and it is through her behavior that associationism
and the resultant emphasis on empirical reason are evalu-
ated. As Arthur Gustaf Kimball says:
The narrative is her; it is her impression of events
that is offered to the reader; and, of the many "trans-
formations" in the book, the one ultimately most sig-
nificant is that of Clara's world.2
The emphasis in the novel is not on the events themselves
but on Clara's reactions to them. Brown achieves this by
limiting the focus of the novel entirely to Clara's con-
sciousness. Though Brown is often justly accused of care-
less craftsmanship, he is careful in this respect. For
example, Clara may wonder what happened while she was
unconscious, but she never knows.

It is appropriate for associationism to be tested
through Clara's reactions rather than through either of the
Other two major characters, as both Theodore Wieland and
Pleyel are absolutists. Theodore is a religious absolutist,
and Pleyel, an empirical absolutist. Wieland immediately
assumes the voice of Catherine he hears is supernatural.
Quite early in the novel, after Clara tries to dissuade
him from jumping to this conclusion, he smiles significantly
and agrees that the understanding does have other avenues
‘than the eyes.28 Also, Clara tells us that he had always
Iregarded their father's death as flowing from some direct

and supernatural decree.29 Pleyel, on the other hand:

- . . was by no means equally credulous. He scrupled
not to deny faith to any testimony but that of his

45

senses, and allowed the facts which had lately been
supported by this testimony not to mould his belief,
but merely to give birth to doubts.
Pleyel says of the mysterious events that he is "unable to
explain their origin and mutual dependence" but that he
does not therefore "believe them to have a supernatural
. . "3
origin.

Clara's attitude toward the unexplained voices is
at once more ambivalent and more Open. After hearing the
voice in the closet, for example, she carefully thinks over
all aspects of the event and decides that while her senses
assured her of the truth of it, its "abruptness and improba-
bility made me, in my turn, somewhat incredulous."32 Simi—
larly, she is not quick to conclude whether the cause of
her father's death is supernatural or mechanistic:

Was this the penalty of disobedience?——this the stroke
of a vindictive and invisible hand? Is it a fresh
proof that the Divine Ruler interferes in human affairs,
mediates an end, selects and commissions his agents,
and enforces, by unequivocal sanctions, submission to
his will? Or was it merely the irregular eXpansion of
the fluid that imparts warmth to our heart and our

blood, caused by the fatigue of the preceding day, or
flowing, by established laws, from the condition of

his thoughts.33
'This tension in Clara's mind is a microcosm of the central
tension within the novel.
Critics of 3191229 have agreed that Clara initially
«accepts an essentially associationist view of the human mind.
'This is borne out by textual evidence. When Clara worries

fabOUt the effect of the voices on her brother, she:

 

 

 

46

. . . could not bear that his senses should be the vic-
tims of such delusion. It argues a diseased condition
of his frame, which might show itself hereafter in more
dangerous symptoms. The will is the tool of the under-
standing, which must fashion its conclusions on the
notices of sense. If the senses be depraved, it is
impossible to calculate the evils that may flow from
the consequent deductions of the understanding.
In accordance to the basic tenets of associationist psy-
chology, sensory impressions were to be relied upon; hence,
a distortion of the senses could, as Locke said, cause men
to take their fancies for realities and, reasoning cor-
rectly from these, "be as frantic as any in Bedlam."35
Clara's typical reaction, when faced with an apparently
incredible situation, is to wonder which of her senses is
prey to some fatal delusion, as she does after hearing the
cry from the closet.36 After any such event, she always
meditates over the chain of occurrences at great length,
questioning her sensory reactions, and trying to reason out
the situation.

Clara's belief in the values of reasoning from
empirical evidence is visible not only in her behavior but
also in her attraction to Pleyel, the extreme empiricist,
and in her admiration for her uncle, whose testimony "is
ipeculiarly worthy of credit, because no man's temper is more
Skeptical, and his belief is unalterably attached to natural
(Zauses,"37 When she returns to her normal emotional state

after seeing the dead Catherine, she remarks that the scenes

She has witnessed "became the theme of deliberation and

47

deduction, and called forth the effusions of more rational
sorrow."38

Clara's associationism tends to be materialistic;
that is, she seems to believe that patterns in the mind
have physical effects. When Wieland falls into fits of
insanity, he is described by Clara as having changed
physically: "His brain seemed to swell beyond its conti-
nent."39 After her first few meetings with Carwin, she
studies his facial features and the shape of his head almost
like a physiognomist or phrenologist.

Though commentators agree that Clara initially
thinks along associationist lines and values empirical
reasoning, they divide on the issue of whether or not she
loses faith in such modes of decision making. At one end
0f the continuum, Larzer Ziff maintains that through her
BrOwncompletely abandons what Ziff terms "enlightened
Psychology" and moves towards "the confused acceptance of
Supernatural causation."4o Somewhere in the middle, Harvey
Milton Craft suggests that Clara accepts and rejects each
of the two dichotymous means of knowledge offered her by
Other characters and ends up uncertain and confused.41 What
Seems more likely than either is that Clara learns that this
1“Ode of thought indeed has its limitations, as Locke and
liartley point out, but that careful reasoning from the

em‘pirical evidence received by our senses is still the best

<3f the few feeble tools human beings possess. Associationist

 

48

psychology is not so Optimistic that reason is seen as
infallible, and it is a mistake to think that any but its
callowest followers saw it as a cure-all for human frailty.

Three main crises test Clara: the mysterious voices,
Pleyel's desertion, and her brother's madness and resul-
tant violent behavior. She faces these problems with the
disadvantage of a family background of insanity. On the
other hand, she has the advantages of both independence and
rational education in her fight to retain sanity and equa-
nimity throughout all three battles.

In each crisis, Clara avoids making a hasty judg-
rment and tries to ascertain reasonable causes for the events.
For example, when confronted with the mysterious voices,
she avoids leaping to conclusions, unlike her brother and
Pleyel, and tries to reconcile their seemingly supernatural
nature to her adversion to the supernatural. Carwin's
games exacerbate the Wieland family's instability. As a
result of his actions and despite her rational education,
Clara briefly speculates whether a mysterious benevolent
agent is interfering in her world. When empirical fact
contradicts her speculation, though, she always sides with
‘the evidence. After discovering that the Baroness von
Stolberg had not died as the voice had told her, she:

- - . did not fail to remark that, since this lady was
Still alive, the voice in the temple which asserted
her death must either have been intended to deceive,
or have been itself deceived. The latter supposition

was inconsistent with the notion of a spiritual, and
the former with that of a benevolent, being.

49

Clara's portentuous dreams also do not destroy the continu-
ance of her belief in reason. After the dream in which her
brother beckons to her over a pit, she is puzzled to find
herself wondering if it is her brother who is hiding in

her closet. She reflects that "Ideas exist in our minds

that can be accounted for by no established laws."45

Her
unconsciousness of the extent of her fears concerning
Wieland does not mean the dream is therefore caused by a
supernatural agency. Rather, the dream is an extension of
her conscious and articulated fears of his stability.

After her brother hears the voices, for example, Clara wor-
ries because Theodore is "of an ardent and melancholy

. . 44
character . . . in some respects an enthu31ast."

The con—
cept that ideas arise because of association does not neces-
sarily require that one must be conscious of their sources.
Pleyel's insistence that Clara is Carwin's lover
and his consequent desertion of her constitute quite a dif-
ferent type of problem. Here she must deal with an irra-
tional lover who prides himself on being the embodiment of
empirical reason. Brown reveals Pleyel's true lack of
reasonableness early in the novel. When his German baroness
does not write, Pleyel immediately jumps to a false conclu-
sion:
He was seized with the torments Of jealousy, and sus-
pected nothing less than the infidelity of her to whom

he had devoted his heart. The silence must have been
concerted.

50

Obviously his true self clashes with his self—image. After
hearing the evidence against Clara, Pleyel does not assume,
as Wieland does, that past knowledge of Clara ought to
override his senses. He covers his feelings of betrayal in
a performance combining the melodramatic characteristics of
a wronged sentimental hero with the intellectual preten-
sions of achampion of intellectual liberty. Only "irresist-
ible impulse" causes him to even tell Clara the evidence
against her.46 Clara is, of course, deeply wounded, as well
as frustrated by his immovability. She sensibly gives up
the attempt to prove her virtue when her efforts appear
useless. While recovering from the death of Catherine and
the Wieland children, she is capable of changing her love
for Pleyel into friendship. Concomitantly her desire to
prove her chastity moderates to the extent that she wishes
to remove his suspicions merely because she wishes to enjoy
his good judgment and because he would be pleased to be

able to trust her integrity.47

Within the next two years,
under the encouragement of her uncle, explanations are made
and continued correspondence leads to their marriage, after
the death of his first wife.

Clara's most difficult struggle is to accept that
her brother's insanity and its results stem from natural
causes. As has been shown, Clara seems from a fairly early

point to realize that Wieland is somewhat unstable. For

one thing, she is aware of similarities between him and his

51

father, and she seems to accept the concept of an heredi-
tary predisposition to insanity. Brown reinforces this
both by having Clara mention tun: hereditary dread of water,
and by having the physician-figure Cambridge mention that
Clara and Theodore's maternal grandfather was insane, as
well as their father.48
Clara is not willing to accept the extent and the
possible irrevocability of Wieland's insanity. Once she
accepts the fact that he really did murder his wife and
children, she allows herself to consider the possibility
that, rather than being totally mad, Wieland was motivated
by an external supernatural force. Her uncle helps dis-
suade her from this point of view by explaining insanity in
natural terms. Once she completely understands Carwin's
role, she is able to view Theodore's madness as a natural
rather than a supernatural tragedy.
Clara's next fear, prompted doubtless by her uncle's
discussion of the hereditary predisposition, is of her own
ability to remain sane:
Was I not likewise transformed from rational and human
into a creature of nameless and fearful attributes?
Was I not transported to the brink of the same abyss?
Ere a new day should come, my hands might be imbued
in blood, and my remaining life be consigned to a
dungeon and chains.4

This fear is not alleviated until some time after she is

stripped of her remaining delusion: that she can cure

Wieland by visiting him and reasoning with him. She tells

her uncle that "Surely the sympathy of his sister, proofs

52

that her tenderness is as lively as ever, must be a course

50 She discovers the true extent

of satisfaction to him."
of insanity when Wieland attempts to take her life and, in
a moment of lucidity, commits suicide. Clara's new knowl-
edge that one cannot reason with madmen is not an attack
on the value of reasoning, however. Indeed, the chief
exponent of reason, her uncle, had argued this position
with her. Clara proves that her belief in associationism
has continued throughout her three crises when she describes
how the fire has jolted her back to equanimity:
I was, in some degree, roused from the stupor which had
seized my faculties. The monotonous and gloomy scene
of my thoughts was broken. My habitation was levelled
with the ground, and I was obliged to seek a new one.
A new train of images, disconnected with the fate of
my family, forced itself on my attention; and a belief
insensibly sprung up that tranquillity, if not happi-
ness, was still within my reach.51
At the end of her successful handling of her three crises,

she decides to write these "memoirs,' both because a cor-
respondent requested them and also because her tale "will
exemplify the force of early impressions, and show the
immeasurable evils that flow from an erroneous or imperfect
discipline."52 Hence, the empirical reason emphasized by
associationist psychology is seen as fallible yet superior
to other human tools of knowledge.

Next to Wieland, Ormond is the novel in which the
female characters most significantly test associationism

and the value of empirical reasoning. Though Constantia,

as the main character, is the most important in this respect,

53

these concepts are also examined through the characteriza-
tion of Sophia Westwyn, Helena Cleves, and Martinette
Monrose. Unfortunately, Ormond carries a rather heavy load
of ideas, as will be seen in the discussion of its Godwinian
elements. No one of these, including associationism, is
therefore thoroughly explored or dramatized. The char-
acters in Ormond are made to represent far more than their
actions develop. Brown tries to make up for this overload
by using dialogue to carry some of the weight. This leads
to an over-emphasis on debate and a lack of dramatization.
The focus in Ormond was intended to be on Constantia,
as the dedication suggests, though Ormond upstages her for
many readers. The novel is supposedly a record of her his-
tory and her reactions to two trials: the hardships of
poverty and pestilence brought about by her father's finan-
cial ruin; and the attempts of Ormond to seduce and finally
to rape her. Unlike Clara Wieland's deliberations,
Constantia's inner-conflicts are never fully exposed, par-
tially because Constantia does not narrate her own history.
Because the workings of Constantia's mind are
veiled, one cannot observe her consciously noting the appli-
cation of associationist principles. Sophia mentions, how—
ever, that Mr. Dudley has conducted his daughter to the
school of Hartley and "taught her, as a metaphysician and
anatomist, the structure and power of the senses."53 Her

education in the value of basing decisions on logical

54

premises drawn from sensory perceptions stands her in good
stead during her early crisis. Though only sixteen when
Craig betrays her father, already:

She had learned to square her conduct, in a consider-
able degree, not by the hasty impulses of inclination,
but by the dictates of truth. She yielded nothing to
caprice or passion.

Unfortunately she does not recognize such irrational
impulses either in herself or in Ormond. It is not that
she relies too much upon logic but that her reasoning is
based on faulty association in this case. SOphia's des-
cription shows the correctness of Constantia's reasoning:

Every thing is progressive in the human mind. When
there is leisure to reflect, ideas will succeed each
other in a long train, before the ultimate point be
gained. The attention must shift from one side to
the other of a given question many times before it
settles. Constantia did not form her resolutions in
haste; but when once formed, they were exempt from
fluctuation. She reflected before she acted and
therefore acted with consistency and vigor. 5

Ormond, too, notes Constantia's ability to reason. In her
contest with Ormond, though, her exclusion of the knowledge
of her passion causes her to estimate incorrectly. As
SOphia says:

In no case, perhaps, is the decision of a human being
impartial, or totally uninfluenced by sinister and
selfish motives. . . . Sinister considerations flow in
upon us through imperceptible channels and modify our
thoughts in numberless ways, without our being truly
conscious of their presence. Constantia was young,
and her heart was open at a thousand pores to the love
of excellence. The image of Ormond occupied the chief
place in her fancy, and was endowed with attractive
and venerable qualities. A bias was hence created
that swayed her thoughts, though she knew not that they
were swayed.56

55

Her father recognizes what is happening to her and proposes
the European trip to "efface from her mind any impressions

*which his [Ormond's] dangerous artifices might have made

upon it."57

Constantia's unrealized bias causes her to under-
estimate and misunderstand Ormond's warning to her. On
his warning visit, he is incredulous at her incomprehension,
and, pointing at his forehead, asks her, "Catch you not a
View of the monsters that are starting into birth hege?"58
Sophia's exhortations sufficiently convince Constantia of
her own wrong reasoning, so she agrees that travel may
"enlighten her judgment and qualify her for a more rational
decision."59 However, Constantia still does not suffi-
ciently understand the nature of Ormond's threats. She is
so far from such an understanding that, when he visits her
eat a late hour in a deserted place, she primly informs him
‘that his recent deportment "but ill accords with" his "pro-

60

:Eessions of sincerity and plain dealing." After vainly

Eittempting to reason him into leaving, she finally tries to
<>pen the door. When she discovers it is locked, she harbors
jfor the first time a "fear that was intelligible in its dic-

61 Even then, she hOpes she must fear someone other

tates . "
‘than Ormond, as he does not seem aware that the door is
~1Ocked, and he is not trying to detain her forcibly. Only
after he tells her that he had Craig kill her father and

that he murdered Craig himself does her fear correctly

56

center on Ormond. Her exit blocked, she has little chance
left to escape rape, since she is physicallyweaker than
Ormond and incapable of trying to deceive him with false
promises, due to "all the habits of her life and all the

62

maxims of her education." Constantia considers killing

him with her penknife but worries that "ineffectual opposi-

63 She decides

tion would only precipitate her evil destiny."
to kill herself, and she tells Ormond this hoping it will
deter him. However, he believes that her "cowardice is
counterfeited, or that it will give place to wisdom and

64 He tells Constantia he will take "the prize"

courage."
whether she is alive or dead, leaving her no option but to
kill him. Ironically only at this point does she react any
way but rationally. Later she tells Sophia that her deed
was the product of "a momentary frenzy" and that the knife-
stroke was "desperate and at random."65 She has difficulty
ridding herself of the memory of his reproachful gaze and
of the accusations of her conscience. Her feelings of guilt
suggest that she feels partially responsible for the entire
incident. She had reasoned correctly from incomplete evi-
dence and therefore seriously misjudged Ormond. Ormond is,
of course, mainly at fault. As Sydney Krause has said:
Constantia . . . does find herself drawn to the man,
and would consider marriage were he less prone to the
sort of callously rationalistic argument he puts forth
to overcome her fear of his passion.

SOphia, the narrator, comprehends the manner in which

Constantia is blinded by passion and understands Ormond

57

better than does her friend. Thanks to a "fortunate con-
currence of incidents" and her obligations to Constantia,
she attempts to understand him as fully and accurately as
possible.67 She discovers and relates much of his past
history, including his rape and murder of the Tartar girl
which prefigures (though it does not sufficiently explain)
the final scene of violence. Furthermore, Sophia, unlike
Constantia, is acquainted with "the doctrines of that school
in which Ormond is probably instructed," meaning, no doubt,
European radicalism.68 Because she is not disarmed by pas-
sion, the greater objectivity which SOphia possesses enables
her to obtain this additional information. Armed with knowl-
edge and her associationist understanding of Constantia, she
can see where her friend has gone astray, and she nearly
prevents Ormond's attack. Constantia is indeed "constant"
to Sophia's advice, which is based on the greater wisdom
that her name implies.

Helena Cleves, Ormond's mistress, exemplifies not
reasoning based on false or incomplete evidence, but an
inability to reason at all. Her responses are entirely
emotional; she understands only that which her sensibili-
ties endorse. For example, from Ormond's frank statements
of his Opinions on matrimony, a rational woman would have
predicted he would not be likely to propose marriage:

. . . but Helena's mind was uninured to the discussion
of logical points and the tracing of remote conse-

quences. His presence inspired feelings which would
not permit her to bestow an impartial attention on his

58

arguments. It is not enough to say that his reasonings
failed to convince her; the combined influence of pas-
sion and an unenlightened understanding hindered her
from fully comprehending them.
Ormond has a fairly low estimation of her ability to reason,
but he has a Pygmalion-like fantasy in which, under his
instructions, her voluptuous form and exquisite sensibili-
ties would be united with a capacious understanding. He is
thwarted in this plan because even those ideas "which he
had conceived her mind to be sufficiently strong to receive
and retain were proved to have made no other than a momen-

tary impression."7O

Her inability to associate ideas cor—
rectly leads directly to her seduction, betrayal, and
suicide.

Martinette is Helen's opposite. The differences
among the early educations of Constantia, Helena, and
Martinette are obviously designed to show the effects of
early connections of ideas in the mind. Constantia's
rational education does not prevent her from erring, but it
is shown to be superior to Helena's sensuous education and
Martinette's fierce training. Martinette is aware of the
effects of her education and thinks of it in associationist
terms. When asked by Constantia how a woman's heart can be
inured to the shedding of blood, she answers: "Have women,
I beseech thee, no capacity to reason and infer? Are they

71 Like her

less open than men to the influences of habit?"
brother Ormond, Martinette is willing to justify any action

in terms of reason and habit, and this eventually makes her

59

repugnant to the more balanced Constantia. Brown obviously
recognizes that being habituated to violence does not jus-
tify violent acts. Like Locke, Brown wanted reason har—
nessed to beneficent, not malevolent, ends.

Through the three characters, Helena, Constantia,
and Martinette, Brown shows that the proper association of
ideas is the result of a judicious balance of reason and
sensibility. Constantia, through her experiences, is rein-
forced in her belief that the proper association of ideas
is necessary for correct decision-making. And, even more
importantly, through Sophia's aid she learns that our men-
tal connections are not always clear to us; reason is only
the best of a few fallible tools. She learns she must
acknowledge her emotions, for to disregard them is to risk
reasoning rightly from false premises.

The use of women characters to explore association-
ist psychology is far slighter in Brown's other novels:

Arthur Mervyn, Edgar Huntly, Clara Howard, and Jane Talbot.

 

 

 

 

The first two of these novels are psychologically interest—

ing and, especially Edgar Huntly, probe deeply into the

 

mind, but the focus in both is primarily on male char-

acters. In Clara Howard and Jane Talbot, women characters

 

 

are again central, but associationist principles are

replaced by social ethics as the main areas of concern. Var-
ious female characters in each of these four novels contrib-
ute in a minor way to an understanding of Brown's explora-

tion of associative principles.

60

In both volumes of Arthur Meryyn, the emphasis is

 

upon Arthur's education, which is furthered considerably
by the women he meets. Susan Hadwin, for example, is a
minor static character, "a soft enthusiast" whose over-
indulged sensibilities result in insanity when her lover
doesn't return from the pestilent city.72 Her sister,
Eliza, whom Arthur Mervyn loves before her inheritance
seems lost, is made of more rational material. She listens
to Arthur's pious advice to be independent and to consult
only her own understanding.73 She then shocks him by
angrily demanding equal experience to form her understand—
ing, refusing simply to be "screened from the weather" and
given enough to eat and drink.74 Hence, she forces Arthur
to consider that associative principles might apply to
women.
Ascha Fielding, though undeveloped except through
her story of her past, seems to accept the concept of asso-
ciationism. Just as Clara Wieland and Constantia Dudley
are taken to Europe to forget their troubles, Ascha travels
to America after her own trials, saying:
I believe the worst foes of man, at least of men in
grief, are solitude and idleness. The same eternally—
occurring round of objects feeds his disease, and the
effects of mere vacancy and uniformity are sometimes
mistaken for those of grief.

This older, more experienced woman is idolized by Arthur,

who has what can only be called an Oedipal attraction to her,

"76

whom he constantly calls "my lost mama come back. She

61

occupies him so completely he feels he scarcely has a
separate existence, as his "senses were occupied by her, and
my mind was full of those ideas which her discourse commu-
nicated."77 (This may be one <mf the few associationist

descriptions of being in love in literature.)

The only female character in Edgar Huntly to develop

 

any aspects of associationism is Mrs. Lorimer. First of
all, she and her brother seem to have been intended by
nature "as examples of the futility of those theories which
ascribe every thing to conformation and instinct and nothing
to external circumstance."78 Mrs. Lorimer is as beneficent
as her brother is malevolent. There is only one flaw in

the otherwise perfect Mrs. Lorimer: her "absurd opinions

of the sacredness of consanguinity" which either result

from or result in her belief that she will not be able to
live beyond her twin's death.79 Reasoning correctly from
this fundamentally unreasonable premise, Mrs. Lorimer demon-
strates that derangement can result from any faulty associa-

tion of ideas.

In Clara Howard, Clara obviously accepts associa-

 

tionist theory but does not recognize the possibility that
she can reason falsely, given all necessary information.

The understanding of others may be a "dark room," but she
believes herself an exception. One of the novel's central
faults is that her annoying self-righteousness is allowed to

prevail.

62

When she first learns of Philip Stanley's prior
commitment to Mary Wilmot, Clara gives him over to her,
without ever speaking to Mary. Mary tells Philip: "I never
will be yours! Have I not heard all your pleas,--all your
reasonings? And am I not now furnished with all the means

of a right judgment?"80 She obstinately clings to this deci-

sion, bragging that beg "reason cannot be deceived."81
Philip rarely shows any justifiable anger at her high-
handedness, which suggests that he deserves her. Once she
knows that Mary is happily married to another, she grandly
accepts him back with the warning that her "maturer age and
more cautious judgment shall be counsellors and guide to
thy inexperienced youth."82
Jane Talbot suffers from the opposite defect; she
does not trust her own judgment enough. She differs, too,
in that she recognizes her deficiency: "No will, no reason,
have I of my own."83 Jane Talbot is a somewhat better novel

than Clara Howard partially because the plot reveals Jane's

error whereas the plot of Clara Howard vindicates Clara's

 

imperious pride. Jane is shown going through agonizing
trials because she is not sure whether she owes her first
loyalty to her foster mother, Mrs. Fielder, or to her lover,
Henry Colden.

Jane seems to learn to value her own judgment a
little more in the course of the novel. While trying to

convert Colden, she learns the error of accepting religious

63

tenets on the basis of a habituated deference to the Opin-
ions of others. She recognizes that such unnatural connec-
tions of ideas are "on a level, as to the proof that sup-
ports it, with the wildest dreams of savage superstitions
or the fumes of a dervise's fanaticism."84 By scrutinizing
the foundation of her own opinions, she breaks this unnatu-
ral connection and her piety becomes "more rational and

fervent."85

One might note that like many other Enlighten-
ment thinkers, Brown wanted to have it both ways: he wanted
to see the free exercise of reason, but he also hoped this
would produce only proofs of an order—producing Deity. This
conflict within Brown is perhaps responsible for an incon-
sistency in the directions taken by his two main characters
in this novel. While Jane learns that reason can be trusted
to defend belief, Henry Colden is converted only when he

has "long since abjured the vanity of disputation" and
accepted meditation as the only road to truth.86 This
inconsistency is unresolved.

Thus, through the minor female characters and the
heroines of his minor novels, Brown demonstrates, with vary-
ing degrees of success, different aspects of associationist
thought. The heroine of Wieland and the main female char-
acters of Ormond, through actions and dialogue, test out
this psychological theory in some depth. The overall con-

clusion they present is that human existence is complex and

that reason is not an infallible guide. Self-deception is

64

common; hence, one must be alert and willing to listen to
those who offer a different view of one's actions. Reason
based upon correct premises, reached only through educa-
tion and experience, is still the best guide to moral beha—
vior, however. In Brown's last two novels, though, this
reason is trusted only if it coincides with social con—

vention.

Godwinism

 

Brown's acquaintance with Godwinism is easy to
prove. Brown's earliest writings show a predisposition to
many Godwinian tenets. For example, long before the publi-

cation of Political Justice (1793), Brown mentions the use-

 

fulness of all acquaintances.87 Also in 1788 he advocates

complete sincerity.88

Brown may have become familiar with Political Justice

 

as early as the year of its publication because one excerpt

from it was printed in one of his favorite journals, The

89

New York Magazine. Numerous Godwinian ideas, including

 

perfectibilism and utilitarianism, recur in his writing
between 1793 and 1795, but it is impossible to know whether
he derived these from Godwin, from some other source, or
from his own thinking. Brown was certainly aware of Politi-
cal Justice by 1795, as he mentions it in a letter to Bring-

hurst.90 At the time of his death, a copy of the 1793 edi-

 

tion with markings in Brown's handwriting was listed among

I 91
Brown's posse351ons.

65

Brown, by his own admission, was an admirer of
Godwin's Caleb Williams (1794). He must have been an early
reader of this, since by 1795 he had begun his Philadelphia
novel using it as a model.92 This was probably the work of
which Smith was speaking in 1796 when he mentions Godwin
and Holcroft to Brown as authors of works they had read
together with delight, since Smith does not record reading
Political Justice until several years later.93 Smith remarks
that Godwin had chased away Brown's Rousseauesque "phantoms"

of sensibility: "Godwin came & all was light."94 Obviously

 

Brown was an early and enthusiastic reader of Godwin, though
fortunately not an entirely uncritical one.
Godwinism evolved, in part, from several Lockean

concepts. Godwin, like Locke, assumes the tabula rasa and

 

believes human character to be built up out of sensations
by associations. Godwin carries associationism further

and accepts a mechanical materialism which Locke sees as
purely speculative.95 Both Locke and Godwin emphasize the
importance of forming one's conceptions of truth on empiri-
cal fact through reason. To Locke, reason is seen more as
the only feeble hope of severely limited creatures, whereas
Godwin embraces a perfectibilistic view of human possibili-
ties. Between 1793 and 1800, Godwin obviously did shift
positions, moving from esteeming only reason to valuing

emotions more; there is no evidence Brown was familiar with

this later Godwinism, though.96 Both Locke and Godwin, in

66

accordance with their ontological views, naturally empha-
size the importance Of government and education as forma-
tive agencies. Therefore it is entirely consistent for
Brown's work to reflect simultaneously the influence of
both thinkers.

Unlike Locke, Godwin is known primarily for his
ethical writings rather than his ontological originality.
Deriving much of his thought from empiricism and mechanistic
associationism, Godwin bases his ethics on utilitarianism.
He is consistently concerned with the choice of "that mode
of action on the part of the individual, which constitutes
the best possible application of his capacity to the general

benefit."97

Godwin is not a Benthamite, however, since like
Brown he insists that a deed cannot be virtuous if the moti-
vation is not virtuous. Utilitarianism leads to numerous
specific positions, such as the need for knowledge for vir-
tuous behavior, a belief that promises are evil, and the
necessity of sincerity.98 Sincerity is requisite, according
to Godwin, to enable other men to act from the truth.
Godwin goes so far as to believe that:
Sound reasoning and truth, when adequately communi-
cated, must be victorious over error: Sound reasoning
and truth are capable of being so communicated: Truth
is omnipotent: The vices and moral weakness of man
are not invincible: Man is perfectible, or in other
words, susceptible of perpetual improvement.

With such a formidable chain of events waiting upon honesty,

it is no wonder he considers insincerity criminal.

67

Godwin accepts the moral equality of all people;
that is, that the "treatment to which men are entitled, is
to be measured by their merits and their virtues."loo
Hence, hereditary luxury is unfair, as well as personally
corrupting. Furthermore, luxury and pageantry in one part
of society and extreme poverty in the rest lead to criminal
behavior by the poor, who naturally resent this inequity.101

Moral behavior is, then, doing the greatest general
good as the result of benevolent intention. One has a duty
to help others; therefore, it is impossible to do anyone a
favor. One must determine whom to help strictly on the
basis of worth and not because of gratitude or kinship.102
Moreover, one ought not bind oneself to specific future
actions by promises; one's first obligation is to perform
the wisest action rather than to honor promises.103

As only the wise can accurately determine how to
confer the greatest good, the most virtuous must be well—
educated peOple of great capabilities.104 The simple may
have good intentions, but they will make wrong choices.

Godwin designed a scale of human happiness. At the
bottom was the laboring peasant, who is "happier than a
stone," followed by the men of rank, fortune, and dissipa-
tion.105 One rung up from these was the man of taste and
liberal accomplishments. But higher than any others was the

man with the resources and capabilities for benevolence:

The man who has once performed an act of exalted gener-
osity, knows that there is no sensation of corporal or

68

intellectual taste to be compared with this. . . . He

ascends to the highest of human pleasures, the plea-

sures of disinterestedness. He enjoys all the good

that mankind possess, and all the ggod that he per—

ceives to be in reserve for them.1
Hence, informed benevolence tends not only towards universal
happiness but towards personal pleasure as well. This con-
cept connects Godwin's faith in mankind's ability for per—
petual improvement to his belief in associationism; pleasure
will be associated with virtue. Thus Godwin's perfecti-
bility is not so naively optimistic as it might seem at
first glance. On the basis of these ethical principles,
which stem from empiricism, associationism, and utilitarian—
ism, Godwin devised a detailed political theory. However,
because Brown's Godwinism is ethical rather than political,
there is no need here to summarize Godwin's politics.
Godwin's views on feminism and marriage will be mentioned
in the course of the discussion of feminism, since these same
ideas were generally developed more fully by Mary Wollstone-
craft.

The discussion of how Brown's female characters

test Godwinism is an extension, in some respects,<xfthe
examination of his use of characterization to test both
associationism and the value of reasoning from empirical
evidence. Associationism and empirical reasoning are, as

has been pointed out, the foundation blocks of Godwinian

ethics, although, especially in his earlier writing, Godwin

69

often carried them to more Optimistic extremes than his
predecessors.

In general, Brown's acceptance of Godwinism is
greater in his earlier published novels and lesser in the

later ones. It is difficult to classify Arthur Mervyn, his

 

most Godwinian novel, the writing of which was spread out
over the period when he was writing Wieland and Ormond,
both more skeptical of Godwinism. One could say that there
is a definite shift between the three novels written and
published first and the three which follow them; that is,

from Wieland, Ormond, and Arthur Mervyn to Edgar Huntly,

 

 

 

Clara Howard, and Jane Talbot. Those elements of Godwinian

 

 

thought remaining in the last three seem to be the personal
elements, virtues such as truthfulness, honesty, and benefi-
cence (within limits). Constructs related to political and
social reform, such as feminism and anti-authoritarianism,
are either removed, negated, or toned down. Brown came to
accept reason as relative to the assumptions of the existent
society. He saw normative behavior as efficacious, and
therefore he approved of it.107
The major aspects of Godwinism are present in the
characterization of Clara Wieland. First, utilitarianism
is shown to result in some portion of her thoughts and
behavior. More importantly, her development examines several
aspects of the prOposition that knowledge leads to right

action.

70

This rather static utilitarianism is evident in
the nature of her benevolence. When she feels her life is
endangered, she wonders if she has offended any of her
acquaintances. After some thought, she realizes that:

My purse, scanty as it was, was ever Open, and my

hands ever active, to relieve distress. Many were

the wretches whom my personal exeriagns had extri-

cated from want and disease. . . .
Her benevolence does not seem to have been uninformed.
Indeed, she speculates on how the "influence of progressive
knowledge" can dissolve "the alliance which commonly sub-
sists between ignorance and the practice of agriculture."109
Thus her benevolence is aimed at benefiting large numbers
rather than just a few pet wards.

According to Godwin, as suggested, right action
could be achieved only by reasoning rightly from full knowl—
edge. Hence sincerity is valued and truth is believed suf-
ficient to repel vice. These tenets are evaluated through
Clara's characterization.

Originally Clara had refrained from directly
expressing her love to Pleyel, feeling this would be
imprOper before he had avowed his own affection. She
refrains despite her knowledge of his jealousy of Carwin
and of the results produced by his prior jealousy of Theresa.
When he is late for a play rehearsal, she momentarily
decides to drOp her pose, but she reconsiders, deciding
"that a: confession like that would be the most remediless

and unpardonable outrage upon the dignity of my sex."110

71

Her continued reticence helps form his jealous assumption
that she is Carwin's mistress, after he has heard the incrim-
inating voices. Her frankness is too late, and he does not
believe her protestations of innocence. In retrOSpect, she
realizes she has erred:
My scruples were preposterous and criminal. They are
bred in all hearts by a perverse and vicious education
and they would still have maintained their place in my
heart, had not my portion been set in misery. My
errors have taught me thus much wisdom:--that those
sentiments which we ought not to disclose it is crimi-
nal to harbour.
Hence Clara's experience, backed up by the characterization
of Carwin, explores and verifies the maxim that insincerity,
a lack of total Openness, can lead to great difficulties.

If insincerity breeds complications, truth does not,
on the other hand, instantly overcome error. When Carwin
leaves Clara's closet and tells her his far-fetched tale,
she no longer can believe "that certain evils could never
befall a being in possession of a sound mind; that true
virtue supplies us with energy which vice can never resist."112
As well as learning that the deranged mind will not be
moved by reason, she must learn that the supposedly sane
mind, distorted by passion, will not be moved by the righ-
teousness of innocence. Before attempting to vindicate
herself with Pleyel, she asks herself: "Would not truth and
the consciousness or innocence, render me triumphant? Should

I not cast from me with irrestible force, such atrocious

imputations?"113 Apparently not, according to the results of

72

her attempt. Only when Clara's uncle brings about a meet-
ing between Carwin and Pleyel does Pleyel believe her inno-
cence, and several years are needed to heal the breach
caused by his unreasoning jealousy and her insincerity.
Clara learns from this proving another Godwinian tenet,
that experience is educational.

Ormond's Godwinism is even more mixed. As Jane
Townend Flanders has noted, Ormond demonstrates the con—
servative theme that misused reason can threaten morality,
but the novel does concur with many specific principles of

114

Godwinian thought. The book is structured similarly to

Caleb Williams, being based upon the conflict between a

 

younger person who is poor but intelligent and virtuous

and one who is wealthy and experienced but, in some way,
corrupt. It is incorrect to call Ormond a monster of
Godwinism, however, since Brown condemns many of his char-
acteristics including his selfishness, his dissimulation,
his abuse of reason, and his low opinion of women.115 More
fairly, Constantia, armed with Godwinian virtues, is in
conflict with Ormond, who represents a perversion of
Godwinian principles.

Constantia, as a result of the comparatively
rational education she receives, tests out the consequences
of using her reason as a guide to behavior. Sophia says:

She had learned to square her conduct, in a considerable
degree, not by the hasty impulses of inclination, but by

the dictate? of truth. She yielded nothing to caprice
or passion. 16 '

73

As mentioned, this behavior fails for her when she neglects
to recognize her own faulty associations in dealing with
Ormond. Her desire to live "by the dictates of truth"
results in several characteristics derived from Godwinian
ethics including her benevolence, her attitude toward
error in others, and her disregard of wealth or family
ties in decision making.
Evidence of her benevolence is given throughout the

novel. Like Clara Wieland:

There was nothing, consistent with her slender means,

that she did not willingly perform for the service of

others. She had not been sparing of consolation and

personal aid in many cases of personal distress that

had occurred in her neighborhood.117
Brown does not seem to "test" the value of beneficence in
this novel, and it is simply accepted as a given. Indeed,
he presents a black-and-white object lesson on the value of
benevolence. Constantia goes to nurse the dying Mary Whiston
who was deserted by her brother. Constantia becomes only
mildly ill with the disease, but the unfaithful brother
dies in agony because no one dares come near enough to give
him water. An entire farm family, responsible for his
neglect, perishes, presumably from the fumes given Off by
his rotting corpse.

A related characteristic is Constantia's refusal to

desire punishment for those who wrong her. This premise is

examined through her responses to Thomas Craig. When she

first finds him, she considers having him tried for

74

embezzling her father's money, "but her heart rejected the

thought of being the author of injury to any man."118

When
she sees him in Ormond's house, she considers warning Ormond
of Craig's past treachery but changes her mind because Craig
"may now be honest, or tending to honesty, and my interfer-
ence may cast him backward, or impede his honesty."119
Craig, however, seems to be incurably criminal, for he not
only lacks gratitude for her leniency but thinks Constantia
"Just the dreamer she ever was! Justice! Compassion!
Stupid fool! One would think she'd learned something of

the world by this time!"120

He rewards her compassion by
sending her off with a bad bank note. Her mildness is con-
stant, and after her father's death, she feels no vengeance
toward the murdered, for the "evil already endured" did not
incite her to extend that evil to others.121 Consistently,
when Ormond demands gratitude for killing Craig, she tells
him her only feeling is remorse. By making the man whom
she refused to bring to justice the instrument of her
father's death, Brown makes Constantia's attitude toward
Craig's crimes seem erroneous and foolhardy. Yet at the
same time, there is grandeur in her aloofness from revenge
and her compassion toward the criminal.

Constantia makes her decisions without regard to
kinship, a characteristic which is obvious when she decides
to speak to Ormond about marrying Helena. She considers

herself an appropriate person to point out the way of duty

to him:

75

The father or brother of Helena might assume the office

without indecorum. Nay, a mother or sister might not

be debarred from it. Why then should she, who was

actuated by equal zeal, and was engaged by ties stronger

than consanguinity in the promotion of her friend's hap-

piness?
She nurses Mary Whiston, whom she hardly knows, with the
same care she would have given her father. This path of
behavior appears condoned by the course of events.

Constantia is also unmoved by considerations of
monetary gain. She bears up under her family's financial
losses with fortitude and cheerfulness. Through his tale of
these trials, Brown shows the social problems of poverty.
Constantia's unwillingness to exchange freedom for financial
security is dramatized when Balfour proposes: "Homely
liberty was better than splendid servitude."123 Unlike
Clara, she has no hopes of improving the unsatisfactory
suitor as Constantia "was too wise to place an unbounded
reliance on the influence of truth."124
Unlike Constantia, Helena Cleves, because of her

education, "must not only be supplied by others, but sus-

125 She

tained in the enjoyment of a luxurious existence."
is not reduced to a subsistence level, as Constantia is,
but merely compelled to live as a poor dependent with a
relative; yet, she "could not bear the diminution of her

customary indulgences."126

This weakness helps propel her
into Ormond's arms. Therefore, through the contrast between
these two female characters, Brown shows how being ensnared

by luxurious habits influences judgment and diminishes freedom.

76

One anti-Godwinian sentiment expressed in this novel
is that there is a need for religion. This idea remains
fairly static, though, and is given only minor emphasis.
Sophia tells us that part of Constantia's peril in facing
Ormond's arguments is being "a stranger to the felicity

"127 This is not made

and excellence flowing from religion.
to seem an essential ingredient in Constantia's vulnerabil-
ity to Ormond, however.

SOphia, in her approval of Constantia's Godwinian
virtues, creates a kind of echo effect. She herself QQEE
very little but come to America to rescue Constantia, using
her greater experience to understand the situation. The
theme of experience's effects on human nature is reinforced
by another static and undeveloped character, Martinette, as
has been noted. Though Martinette plays no major dramatic
role in the novel, she acts as a female counterpart to her
brother. Both justify means by ends. Both tend to rational—
ize their own departures from professed principles, such as
sincerity. For example, Martinette hides her atheism from
the devout Lady D'Arcy but claims that her "imposture was
merelycfifa negative kind" because she "deceived her rather
by forbearance to contradict, and by acting as she acted,
"128

than by Open assent and zealous concurrence.

Arthur Mervyn is Brown's most straightforwardly

 

Godwinian novel. The prime prepetrator of Godwinian doc-

trine is Mervyn himself, who is so earnestly beneficent,

77

sincere, and Optimistic that Brown has unjustly been accused
of satire.129
The female characters in this novel are primarily
intended to be recipients of Arthur's beneficence and exam—
ples of Godwinian virtues or vices. Of the first of the two
most important women in the novel, Eliza Hadwin's Godwinism
relates mainly to her demand for sexual equality and con-
sequently will be discussed later. Ascha Fielding remains
largely static. For the most part, Brown retells her past
adventures rather than following the present ones. She is
a most appropriate mate for an aggressive young Godwinian
hero, in part because she has the experience he lacks.
Dr. Stevens says "Her sympathies are enforced by reason,

"130 She reveals

and her charities regulated by knowledge.
her entire past to Arthur, recognizing the folly of keeping
him in ignorance. The story of her marriage shows her
willingness to accept an erring husband and to forgive him
for his error. She has had money and independence but has
not used them for luxuries or social gratifications, because
"she had been long ago tired and disgusted with the dull and
fulsome uniformity and parade of the play-house ballroom."131
Her correctly Godwinian views were gained by experience.
Arthur says he has:
. . . heard her reason with admirable eloquence against
the vain distinctions of property and nation and rank.
They were once of moment in her eyes; but the suffer-
ings, humiliationigzand reflections of years have cured

her of the folly.

Godwinism is not so much explored as extolled in Ascha.

78

Through the actions of the title character, Edgar
Huntly critically examines unchecked benevolence and the
premise that human error is always rectifiable. Brown uses
a minor character, Mrs. Lorimer, to demonstrate the danger
of a single element of irrationality. Mrs. Lorimer seems
in many ways an example of Godwinian virtue. She is governed
completely by ”the precepts of duty" and uses her indepen—
dence from a dissolute husband "to live thenceforward con-
formably to her notions of right," employing her income
benevolently.133 Clithero admires her for "the inviolable
consistency of her actions and opinions, the ceaseless flow
of her candour, her cheerfulness, and her benevolence."134
She considers rank a vain distinction and educates Clithero,
encouraging him in his love for her niece, Clarice. Her
only irrationality is her near-fatal belief that the stroke
which kills her brother will not only have the same effect
on her but will "set her portion . . . in everlasting

"135 This knowledge, in combination with his heavy

misery.
burden of gratitude, drives Clithero insane. Mrs. Lorimer's
education may have caused her to be the opposite of her twin,
Wiatte, but education seems to have been insufficient to
teach Clithero the Godwinian precept that gratitude should

not be allowed to affect one's judgment.

In Clara Howard, the heroine of the same name exmplifies

 

several Godwinian virtues, including her overwhelming benevo-

lence and her unwillingness to make decisions on the basis

79

of class or affluence. She seems to function in part as a
mentor for the supposedly erring Philip Stanley.

Philip is in awe of nobility and rank, the result
of the effect of European books on his inexperienced mind.
He "could never forget" that his "condition was that of a
peasant," and despite his intellectual knowledge that this
is false, he "was the slave of those sentiments of self-
contempt and humiliation which pertain to that condition
elsewhere, though chimerical and visionary on the western

136 These sentiments make him ambi-

side of the Atlantic."
tious of dignity and fortune. Clara, on the other hand,
judges others "not by the specious but delusive considera-
tions of fortune or birth, but by the intrinsic qualities
of heart and head."137 She offers to divide her inheritance
with Philip in the event that her parents do not do this in
their wills, so that lack of money need not be a factor in
his marriage to Mary. Through his acquaintance with Clara,
Philip learns that "wealth is only the means of every kind
of happiness; it is not happiness itself."138 She teaches
him that using affluence properly is more difficult than
bearing up gracefully under poverty, which he now realizes
he has not done.

The theme of erroneous education leading to improper
attitudes towards money also is explored through Mary Wilmot.
Mary has been "trained up in the most luxurious manner . . .

the mistress of her father's purse."139 She naturally

80

acquires "the prejudices and expectations of an heiress"
and is "not wise enough to endure poverty and straitened
accommodations, and a toilsome calling, with serenity."140
She considers working for money degrading, and she is
embarrassed to have her former friends see her in such con-
ditions.
Through the characters of Mary and Clara, Brown
assesses the concept of self-sacrificing benevolence. Mary
tells Clara that she exults having it in her power "to vie
with you in generosity."141 The lesson of selfless generos-
ity is one Philip learns slowly, doubtless a result of the
inanity of Clara's insistence that the two of them give up
their happiness so he can wed Mary, whom he does not love.
Philip stands to lose any way one looks at the situation,
given Clara's ultimatum:
If you cannot ardently and sincerely seek her presence,
and find, in the happiness which she will derive from
a union with you, sufficient motives to make you zeal-
ously solicit that union, you are unworthy, not merely
of my love, but of my esteem.l

Philip steels himself to "the pursuit of the promotion of

143

her happineSs." Clara vacillates in her impractical plan

only when it appears he is dying, but she quickly reconsid-
ers, telling him she cannot "riot in bliss, and deck myself
in bridal ornaments, while she [Mary Wilmot] lives pining
in dreary solitude. . . ."144 Ironically, she believes
Mary's sacrifice of Philip the result of "a generous but

erroneous self-denial."145

81

In only one letter does Philip rebel abainst Mary's
wrong-headedness. He complains that she is benevolent only
to Mary and not to Sedley. As for himself:

I am so far sunk into depravity, that all my desires

are the instigations of guilt, and all my pleasures

those of iniquity. Duty tells you to withstand and

to thwart, not to gratify, my wishes.146
Unfortunately, by the end of the letter, he seems to have
given up energy to live for his own happiness, and he resigns
himself to live for Mary's pleasure. The novel ends "hap-

pily,’ with Mary engaged to the wealthy Sedley, and Clara
to the hapless Philip. Nowhere in this novel does Brown
suggest that unchecked, unreasoned benevolence can lead to

more pain than pleasure, as he does in Edgar Huntly. In

 

Godwinian fashion, beneficence is contagious, but the benefi-

cence in Clara Howard is based upon the socially accepted

 

convention of the binding nature of promises rather than
upon utilitarian principles. Godwin would not have approved.

The final message of Jane Talbot seems to be that

 

generally one should conform to socially sanctioned behavior.
Through his characterization of Jane, Brown concedes a little
to Godwinism: certain Godwinian personal virtues, such as
sincerity and a sense of duty are maintained; and social
conformity should be supported by reason, if possible.

Jane's sincerity and Openness are obvious in her
attempt to disclose her history and character thoroughly
to Henry Colden, since his future happiness will be affected

by them. To her acquaintance with Henry she attributes her

82

growth in candor. She is open with her foster-mother as
well; she learns the merit of frankness with her after the
ill-advised loans to Frank, Jane's profligate brother. Yet,
on the other hand, Jane is put into Miss Jessup's power by
her "open, impetuous temper . . . confident of innocence,
and fearless of ungenerous or malignant constructions."147
Perhaps Brown is advising openness with close associates
but more guardedness with the rest of the world.

Jane is extremely concerned with performing her duty.
The tension which develOps arises from the question of to
whom she owes her first duty. Several incidents in the
novel suggest that reason should function generally to jus—
tify obedience to social norms. As has been shown, the
novel approves reason only when it justifies conventional
Christianity; when it contradicts it, as in Henry's case,
reason should be exchanged for meditation. To Brown, there
is definitely a "right" reason which upholds Christianity.
The question of religion does reinforce the Godwinian maxim
approving discourse on all subjects, as Jane, who was
"imagined to incur such formidable perils" from discussing
religion with Henry, actually learns a more "permanent and
rational" piety from their talks.148

The question of reason versus convention is also
brought out in the question of whether Jane should act on

‘the authority of her relatives or use her own judgment.

Tulis question is raised quite early by her relationship

83

with her father and her brother. Her father, because of
overindulgence, creates a debased character in his son
which leads Frank to rob him. Jane is helpless to stOp

the swindling because her father's pride "was easily
offended at being thought to want the counsel of a girl."149
She herself is moved by her own soft feelings toward Frank
and the "inexplicable charm in the mere tie of kindred."150
She gives over half her money ‘UD her brother but later
recognizes the full extent of her error. When Frank
returns from Europe and again tries to assume an almost
paternal authority, based on brothership and eldership, she
resists, telling him he has forfeited the right to be her
"real brother--one who had the tenderness becoming that
relation."151 In this case, Brown approves her assertion

of her own reason over the ties of kinship.

The situation seems reversed when Jane is forced to
decide between Henry and Inn: foster-mother. Henry com-
plains: "Your mother's wishes, though allowed to be irra-
tional and groundless, are to be gratified by the disappoint-
ment of mine, which appear to be just and reasonable. . . ."152
The irresolute Jane wants reason to be on Mrs. Fielder's
Side, as the pull of duty is stronger than her love for
Henry. She begs her foster—mother to disclose what she
krnaws against him, because, as Jane claims, "without dis-

cl-<>sure I cannot--as a rational creature--I cannot-—change

mY' resolution."153 Jane's comment clarifies her desire to

84

have good counsel back up what she perceives as her duty
to Mrs. Fielder: "I want, I had almost said, I want to

share your antipathies. I want only to be justified in

"154 She also urges Henry to behave towards

155

obeying you.
his father with "a submissive and suitable deportment."
Though Mrs. Fielder, on her deathbed, confesses she has
wronged Jane and Henry, Jane is not bitter but is consoled
by the memory that she has been dutiful. The device of
having Henry Colden returned to Jane, improved as a husband
by his conversion, seems to justify the tenet that, except
in extraordinary cases, behavior should conform to social

156 Through the character of Jane, reason is

authority.
made secondary to convention.

Brown's main female characters test tenets of Godwin-
ism, and the minor ones represent specific aspects of it.
Gradually, the experiencescfifthese major characters, ranging
from Clara Wieland and Constantia Dudley, to Clara Howard
and Jane Talbot, suggest first that reason unsupported by
experience is insufficient, and later that reason unsup-
ported by social convention is dubious. Brown seems to have
come to the conclusion that most human beings are incapable
of handling moral responsibility in isolation. Though

Godwinian elements remain, Brown's last novels beat a

retreat from even the partial Godwinism of the earliest.

85

Feminism

Brown's interest in feminism could have been
initiated by any of a number of sources. One of the earli-
est was probably his Quaker background. The Quakers'
belief that all possess the Inner Light and their relative
lack of a formal church hierarchy have made them traditional
supporters of sexual equality. The numerous immigrants from
England and France, radicals seeking asylum in America,
brought ideas of female emancipation. Through them, Brown
was probably familiar with Helvetius and Codercet, who
viewed both sexes as equally dependent upon experience and
knowledge.157 Brown was also, as has been noted, familiar

with the basic ideas of Locke and thoroughly conversant

with Godwin's Political Justice; the ontology of Locke and

 

the ethics of Godwin prepared the way for Mary Wollstone-

craft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).

 

Brown's knowledge of this specific work seems highly
probable. Many of his commentators have assumed it had had

a direct influence on Alcuin: A Dialogue, Brown's full-length

 

work on women's rights, and on Brown's characterization of
women.158 Certainly Brown was familiar with Wollstonecraft,
both from his knowledge of Godwin and from other sources.
Brown's father owned a copy of Wollstonecraft's French

Revolution, and the Monthly Magazine published an article
159

 

 

on her character. Brown may well have read her intro-

duction to the Vindication when this was reprinted in 1793

 

86

in his favorite New York Magazine.160 It is, therefore,

 

highly likely that Brown was familiar with Wollstonecraft
and her feminist writings. His interest in feminism need
not be supported by extraneous documents, as it is well-
substantiated by several of his essays as well as by Alcuin,
which will be examined after a summary of Wollstonecraft's
feminism.

Two works postulate Wollstonecraft's feminist
views: her early Thoughts on the Education of Daughters

(1787); and, more importantly, the well-known A Vindication

 

of the Rights of Women (1792). Wollstonecraft's ideas stem

 

in part from Locke and Godwin. From Locke, the human mind
is seen as a white sheet of paper on which our experiences
work through associationism to create ideas. Like Locke,

she strongly emphasizes the use of reason and sees all human
beings as equal and free. She also sees marriage as a com-
pact.

Of her ideas, those which might be considered
Godwinian include the belief that cohabitation is evil, a
fairly radical idea which does not find its way into her
earlier writing. Like Godwin, she believes truth always
overcomes falsehood; this, of course, leads to the view of

. . . . 161
Sincerity as a primary Virtue.

Her voice is as strong
as his in denunciations of rank, luxury, and superstition.
As the champion of women's equality, she had a special

reason for denouncing the idleness:h1which luxury and rank

resulted.

87

In essence, Mary Wollstonecraft worked from empiri—
cism, associationism, and utilitarianism to insist that
women, too, are human beings and are entitled to all conse-
quent privileges. Women begin with the blank sheet of
paper, and their follies and passions are the natural result
of having little eXperience of worth. Women are not allowed
to sharpen their capabihities by facing adversity.162
Intead of being taught to reason, they are taught to please.
Because all true virtue is the result of reason, women can-
not be virtuous. Over and over, Wollstonecraft inveighs
against the idea of having a different standard of virtue
for men and women, though she does state that women "may

163

have different duties to perform." By being taught only

to please, women are robbed of virtue and decked with false
. . 164
graces in its place.
Because of her belief that women need both experi-
ence and reason for virtue, Wollstonecraft formulated a
number of suggestions on female education. First, she
argues that women be encouraged to strengthen their bodies
so that they can be healthy mothers and wives. At present:
. . . the limbs and faculties are cramped with worse
than Chinese bonds, and the sedentary life which they
are condemned to live, while boys frolic in the open
air, weakens the muscles and relaxes the nerves.1 5
Secondly, they should be taught to regulate their behavior
by reason rather than by unthinking adherence to a network

of specific rules. Likewise, they should choose their

religious beliefs on the basis of their own reasoning, rather

88

than that of their husbands or fathers. They should not be
taught to over-exercise and over-emphasize the sensibili-
ties in place of reason since whatever "tends to make a
person in some measure independent of the senses is a prOp

to virtue."166

Women should be employed in serious matters
rather than in an idle social round and in the sensuous
pleasure of dress and make-up. Women should be taught
not to be flattered by arbitrary insolent respect, paid to
them only because they are women because those men who are
most assiduous in this respect are often the most tyran-
nical.167 Furthermore, unearned deference like inherited
rank, corrupts. If women are given the opportunities to
strengthen body and mind through experience and prOper edu-
cation, Wollstonecraft promises an improvement in virtue,
if not total equality. According to Wollstonecraft, there
is no way of knowing whether or not "woman is essentially
inferior to man because she has always been subjugated."168
Wollstonecraft devoted some thought to two themes

which recur in Brown's novels: female chastity and marriage.
She berates society's emphasis on the reputation of chastity
rather than on actual chasteness, and considers the idea
that the first sexual error depraves a woman's character
completely absurd.169 She also considers it ridiculous for
society to require only this one virtue in women:

If the honour of a woman, as it is absurdly called, be

safe, she may neglect every social duty, nay, ruin her

family by gaming and extravagance; yet still preserve a
shameless front--for truly she is an honourable woman! 1

89

Between 1787 and 1792, Wollstonecraft moved from
advocating late marriage to recommending early marriage.

As far as can be determined, her other views on marriage
underwent no significant change. Not surprisingly, she
holds that children should select their own marriage part-
ners, though they might delay a marriage if the parents
strongly disapprove. She insists that marriage would never
be held sacred until women are capable of becoming their
husbands' companions and not merely their mistresses because
"Love, unsupported by esteem, must soon expire, or lead to
depravity. . . ."171 This view of love is colored by her
belief that reason should not merely guide but dominate the
senses. She considers love resistible and believes one can
love more than once. Consistently, she feels that a roman-
tic sensibility is debilitating to men and women. More
important than any one passion is the principle of univer-
sal benevolence; here again the Godwinian influence is
visible.

In general, women should be educated as though they
would have to take care of themselves--as well they might,
for wives could become widows and daughters helpless depen-
dents upon unconcerned relatives. Wollstonecraft does not
wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.

She summarizes her stance when she says:
Moralists have unanimously agreed, that unless virtue
be nursed by liberty, it will never attain due strength

--and what they say of man I extend to mankind, insist-
ing that in all cases morals must be fixed on immutable

90
principles; and that the being cannot be termed ratio$a%
or Virtuous who obeys any authorityInn:that<xfreason.
To be virtuous, women must be given the Opportunity to attain
that reason.

Brown's interest in speculating about women's capa-
bilities and responsibilities appears as early as 1788, in
"The Man at Home." In the seventh of these essays, he dis-
cusses the demands on the time of a housewife with children
and offers suggestions to a Miss De Moivre, concerning how
she might spend her time profitably; most of his sugges-
tions would have appealed more to a "bluestocking" than to
173

the typically educated woman of this time.

Alcuin: A Dialogue, possibly written as early as

 

the fall of 1796, was the first full-length feminist work
by an American author. The first half was published as a
pamphlet in 1798 and serialized in slightly altered form

that year in the Weekleragazine, under the title "The

 

Rights of Woman, A Dialogue." The second half was pub-
lished only posthumously, in 1815 within Dunlap's Lifg;
Brown may have been discouraged by friends or his own com—
punctions from publishing this more radical portion which
questions the current state of marriage and advocates
divorce.

The work is organized as a four-part dialogue between
Alcuin, a young schoolmaster, and Mrs. Carter, a wealthy
widow. Alcuin, who through much of the work, balks at

Mrs. Carter's suggestion that women be given equal rights

91

and responsibilities, concludes by radically suggesting

that the term "marriage" can mean any adopted mode of regu-
lating sexual intercourse.174 Mrs. Carter, a reformer

rather than a radical, objects to this and is given the

last word. This conclusion strongly implies that Mrs. Carter
is Brown's mouthpiece. Jane Townend Flanders has even sug-
gested that the main purpose of the dialogue is to refute

Alcuin's unwise attitudes.175

Throughout the dialogue, both
disputants accept associationist learning theory. Probably
Brown, like Wollstonecraft, in accordance with associative
thought, considered the current state of most women the
result of faulty education.

Part I of Alcuin is concerned with unequal educa-
tional and occupational opportunities. Alcuin argues that
women, by circumstances, cannot be expected to be wise and
learned, though he later inconsistently says that women are
in the better position to gain knowledge.176 Mrs. Carter
complains of her limited education and the exclusion of
women from the liberal professions. Alcuin tries to argue
that women (meaning middle- and upper-class women) are better
off than men. When prodded, he admits that luxury does not

contribute to virtue. This theme constantly reappears in

the Vindication. Brown also shares Wollstonecraft's con-

 

viction that: "Men and women are partakers of the same

nature. They are rational beings; and, as such, the same

principles of truth and equity must be applicable to both."177

92

Brown is, however, less concerned than she is with the
relationship between reason and virtue and more with women's
social and legal rights.

Part II concentrates on women's right to partici-
pate actively in politics, especially their right to vote.
Mrs. Carter tells Alcuin that it is a gross abuse that
women, on the basis of a physical difference alone, are
prohibited from sharing the power of choosing rulers and
making laws to which they, too, are subject. Women are
kept from the much-hailed freedom of the new and democratic
nation. She likens this inequality of women to "that preju-
dice which has so long darkenedtfluaworld, and taught men
that nobles and kings were creatures of an order superior

to themselves."178

This, too, is reminiscent of Wollstone—
craft.

The second half of the dialogue begins with Alcuin's
description of an imaginary excursion into a utopia. He
is defeated in an argument based entirely on reason with
his own imaginary "other," a citizen of this utopia. Men
and women dress alike, are educated the same, and partici-
pate in the same employments. The utopia is based upon
empiricism, associationism, and utilitarianism. Both men
and women are assumed to begin life with their minds
empty slates. Only differing circumstances account for dis-
similarities between any two individuals later in their

lives. Duties, including physical labor, are divided

equally among all members of the community, as:

93

The greater the number of those who are employed in

administering to pleasure, the greater will be the

product. Since both sexes partake of this capacity,

what possible reasons can there be for limiting or

precluding the efforts of either?179

The last portion of the dialogue is devoted to a

discussion of marriage. In total, Mrs. Carter's attitude
is that the institution itself is sacred but that many of
the current laws and customs attributed to it ". . . by
making it a compact of slavery, by imposing impracticable
conditions and extorting impious promises have, in most
countries, converted it into something flagitious and hate-

ful."180

Her two specific charges are that it enslaves
wives to their husbands and that it leaves women destitute
of prOperty. The changes she advocates are easier access
to divorce, revised property laws, and the cessation of
cohabitation between husband and wife. Mrs. Carter believes
that the exercise of reason and the enjoyment of liberty
are necessary to an enlightened choice, that marital har-
mony which rises above the common understanding of love,
which she sees as "an empty and capricious passion . . . a
sensual attachment which, when unaccompanied with higher
regards, is truly contemptible."181
At the end of this final section, though Alcuin has
consistently objected to Mrs. Carter's demand for reforms,
he suddenly becomes an advocate of what she terms:
. . . that detestable philosophy which scoffs at the
matrimonial institution itself, which denies all its

pretensions to sanctity, which consi ns us to the
guidance of a sensual impulse. . 82

94

Brown, never a radical, gives Mrs. Carter the last words
to describe his idea of the perfect marriage, which is
similar to Wollstonecraft's:
Marriage is a union founded on free and mutual con-
sent. It cannot exist without personal fidelity.
As soon as the union ceases to be spontaneous, it
ceases to be just. This is the sum.
And, this is the marriage for which Carles Brockden Brown's
idealistic heroines longed.

The examination of the value of empirical reasoning
and Godwinian virtues based on reason is all the more
radical in Wieland because these are tested through the
characterization of a woman, Clara Wieland. The feminism
of this novel is simply the extension of Enlightenment
values to a woman.

Clara is given much the same privileges as her
brother, Theodore. They were educated together at home and
presumably given similar instruction. Their father's
property was divided equally between them rather than going
entirely to the only son; this may be modelled after Woll-
stonecraft's injunction for parents not to leave their
daughters uneducated and dependent upon brothers or other
relatives. Clara refuses to live with her brother and
Catherine, being "desirous of administering to a fund and

184 Despite these simi-

regulating a household" of her own.
larities in their backgrounds and situations, Wieland is
more vulnerable, presumably because he happened to be more

influenced by the hereditary insanity. The strength given

95

to Clara by her "unfeminine" rational education and her
relative independence saves her from the same fate.

The question of frankness and sincerity takes
feminist coloration in Wieland because it is the "outrage
upon the dignity" of her sex which prevents Clara from
stating her feelings to Pleyel.185 Wollstonecraft inveighs
against the falsity and miserable consequences of women

hiding their affection; this form of insincerity is pecu-

liar to women. In his unfinished novel, Stephen Calvert,

 

Brown more explicitly expostulates on the falSity of con-
sidering this a biological difference:

We are taught that a woman will assiduously counter-

feit indifference till the man has vowed his affec-

tion; that the secret of her heart, instead of spon-

taneously flowing to her lips, can only be extorted

. . . that these are feminine attributes . . . inter-

woven with the female constitution.
As mentioned, Clara learns the error of her scruples. She
is aided in her disclosure by the change in the relation-
ship between herself and Pleyel, as she realizes "That
knowledge which I should never have imparted to a lover, I
felt little scruple to communicate to a friend."187

Another question raised by Wieland is whether women

are not more irrational than men; specifically, whether
they are not more easily frightened. Carwin tells Clara
that his curiosity to discover whether she is exceptional
partially motivated his behavior, because:

A woman capable of recollection in danger, of warding

off groundless panics, of discerning the true mode of

proceeding and profiting by her best resources, is a
prodigy.1 3

96

Clara considers herself relatively unsusceptible to fears.
She remarks that she is "not fearful of shadows" and that
she finds only "ignorance and folly" in "tales of appari—

"189

tions and enchantments. She also has no fear of

robbers and hence does not bother to use any means "to

'190 Her ser-

prevent or counterwork their machinations.‘
vant's vocal admiration for her relative fearlessness leads
Carwin to put her to the trial. To him she seems "easily

swayed by fear."191

His criticism seems unjust. It
evinces neither the fallibility of reason or women's par-
ticular vulnerability to irrational impulses for.someone
to run from the sound of two hidden intruders, plotting
one's murder. Indeed, an attempt to confront the "perpe-
trators" would seem foolhardy. Furthermore, Clara is
capable of returning to the house after the murders there.
Finally, Clara's irrationality requires more fuel to flame
it than does Pleyel's, as his easily provoked jealousy
shows. Clara is, of course, more rational than her brother,
despite the differences in sex. Brown seems to conclude,
through Clara, that irrational behavior results from a com-
bination of education, habit, and hereditary predisposition
rather than from sex.

Marriage is not a central tOpic in Wieland. Clara's
paternal grandfather chooses a wife in spite of his parents'

prohibitions. Also, early in the novel, Theodore Wieland

spurns the role of tyrannical husband and insists on giving

97

his wife's opinions weight in decisions affecting them
both.

Marriage is a far more major theme in Ormond. The
concept of the sanctity of marriage may be un-Godwinian, but
it is in accordance with Wollstonecraft. Brown's own
esteem for the institution reinforces his belief in its
sanctity:

Marriage is incident to all; its influence on our hap-
piness and dignity, is more entire and lasting than
any other incident can possess. . . . To enable men

to evade the evils and secure the benefits of this
state, is to consult, in an eminent degree their hap-
piness.

Constantia demonstrates a proper attitude towards
marriage. She rejects her first suitor because of scruples
relating to "his age, to the imperfectness of their acquaint-
ance, and to the want of that permanence of character which
can flow only from the progress of time and knowledge."193
Her parents feel they have the right to order her to marry
him, but they forbear--out of kindness, according to their
View of the situation. Constantia's fears concerning this
young man prove to be well-founded since he stops his suit
as soon as her father's misfortunes are known. This disap-
pointment supports Constantia in her belief that marriage
requires a serious and mature consideration of which the
young are incapable.194 She decides as a result that she
will not marry for seven years.

Constantia's next suitor, Balfour, offers her econ-

omic security, with the condition that she "promise obedience

98

to one whose judgment was glaringly defective" im comparison
to her own.195 She realizes she could very easily per-
suade him to do as she wished through cunning, but she

does not wish to stoop to this. She decides that to "abdi-
cate the use of her own understanding was scarcely justi-
fiable in any case" and that her liberty is more important

than the security of wealth.196

Marriage should be more
than an affair of property, she feels. Her father, whose
acceptance of life's evils has become rather fatalistic by
this point, makes no effort to dissuade her once her mind
is set.

Her feeling that marriage is possible only between
equals extends to her decision concerning whether Helena
and Ormond should marry. Though, as a proper utilitarian,
she decides marriage would provide the greater good and the
lesser evil, she worries that: "A marriage of minds so
dissimilar could only be productive of misery immediately
to him and, by a reflex action, to herself [Helena]."197
In her consideration of Ormond, Constantia does not realize
he thinks marriage absurd because he has artfully hidden
this belief, planning to marry her if seduction fails.

She therefore deliberates over him as she would over any
suitor. In this instance, she recognizes him as mature and
as an intellectual equal. She also realizes her own attrac-

tion to him (though she does not know the extent to which

it influences her judgment). She hesitates, though, because

A
"v
Vb

am
Vt“

Us
(

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[TI

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99

"Ormond was imperfectly known" and had "embraced a multi—
tude of Opinions which appeared to her erroneous. Till
these were rectified, and their conclusions were made to

198

correspond, wedlock was improper." This hesitation

springs from her belief that marriage is justifiable "only

'199 Thus, Con-

by community of affections and opinions.‘
stantia exemplifies the feminist position that women are
better off single than unsuitably married.

Ormond bases his disapproval of marriage on "the
irrevocability of the vows" as well as the "general and
incurable imperfection of the female character."200 In
none of his novels does Brown concur with the former opin-
ion, although in Alcuin he shows an argument for divorce.
Ormond's second tenet appears to be substantiated by Helena
who "was calculated to excite emotions more voluptuous than

"201 Except for her chess-playing all of her

dignified.
skills require only memory and sensibility, but never reason.
Her attractiveness to Ormond lies in these skills and in

her physical beauty. Ormond unsuccessfully tries to aug-
ment her talents by his teaching, but his failure at this
leads him to decide that: "To make her wise it would be
requisite to change her sex. He had forgotten that his
pupil was female, and her capacity therefore limited by
nature."202 Helena's fate is Brown's argument against the

foolishness of leaving female children uneducated and with-

out provision.

100

Constantia convinces him that women are men's
equals, with individual differences caused in both cases
merely by birth and education. Brown tells us that the
education of women is usually "limited to what is sensual
and ornamental" as Helena's obviously had been. Constantia's
father has instead "sought to make her, not alluring and

203 . . .
" HIS aim is success-

voluptuous, but eloquent and wise.
ful. As has been noted, Ormond is impressed by Constantia's
ability to reason, and he observes that her skill and
strength in the face of adversity "were proofs of a moral
constitution from which he supposed the female sex to be

debarred."204

By her behavior, Constantia proves women's
equality to Ormond and successfully defeats most of the
challenges she meets. She is more capable of handling
Ormond than is Helena, though her experience does not teach
her to recognize that, unperceived, her passion has swayed
her judgment; this is the result of her education and not
her sex, however.

Martinette, though unessential to the action of the
novel, functions as Helena's Opposite. She also parallels
her brother, as a monster of rationalization, as mentioned.
Brown's abhorrence of extremes is obvious in his portrayal
of her in which "The female was absorbed, so to speak, in
the rational creature. . . ."205 Martinette, like Helena

and Constantia, demonstrates the role education has in form-

ing women's character. Hers has made her feel "imbued by a

lOl

. . . 2
soul that was a stranger to the sexual distinction." 06

Her characterization is so extreme that she appears not

just unfeminine but inhuman.
though delineated mostly through her gen—

Sophia,
shows what can be

eralizations rather than her actions,

accomplished by a balanced woman unswayed by a hidden pas-

sion. In her own history, she proves that obligations and
situations considered unsuitable for women can be handled

if given experience.207 Hence, her mother's lunacy, ill-

ness, and death makes her "expert in the management of all

affairs relative to prOperty."208 Her experience and detach-

ment give her the wisdom to be a formidable ally of Con-

Stantia's against Ormond, most likely refuting any remain-

ing doubts he may have retained about female competency.
In Arthur Mervyn, women characters teach Arthur

that women, as well as men, are affected and formed pri-

marily by education. In the first volume of the novel,

Arthur thinks in such terms as a "woman's fears" and "the
u311-521 attributes of women," and his responses towards indi—

Vicillal women are either simple adulation, if the woman is
,.209 For

Vir tuous, or complete horror, if she is "depraved.
emanflple, when he begins to realize Clemenza Lodi is Welbeck's
I“131:1‘e53, he notes that the "charms of this angelic woman

were tarnished and withered" although he had "formerly
"210

s .
u:':“’eyed her as a prec1ous and perfect monument.

 

102

In the second volume, Arthur at first seems to hold

a more equal view of the sexes. At one point he suggests

‘that knitting stockings is no more whimsical for him than

211 Yet, when he meets Miss Carl-

for a young, active woman.
txon, a minor character in a peripheral incident, Arthur
aissumes intellectual weakness from her external frailty and

tzimidity, and learns otherwise to his surprise. Miss Carl-

tran teaches him his first lesson.
The characterization of Eliza Hadwin provides the
When she is left alone, Arthur assumes he is neces-

second.
sary as a protector and presumes to make decisions for her.

F231: example, he decides for her that her "sex and age dis-

‘311211ified her to superintending the harvest-field and the
‘thxreshing-floor."212 Annoyed at both his lack of love for

her and his presumption, Eliza berates him:

I do not know how I should tell you every thing.
care so little about he that--I should only be trouble-
some. I am old enough to think and acg for myself, and

shall advise with nobody but myself.

You

is angered that he thinks "that assistance and counsel

$1162
214 She tells him her weakness

"“181: all proceed" from him.

and ignorance proceed from the same causes as his and that

£31163 Ilas an equal right to education and experience to alle-

‘VVLEii:ee them. In all, she teaches him "that human ignorance

VV . .
€153 czurable by the same means in one sex as in the other;

t: .
IIEiI: fortitude and Sklll were of no less value to one than

t:
(3 ‘tlle other."215 Arthur opts for the woman who can teach

I)_‘
JLII‘ ‘through her own past experience rather than for learning

¥

103

together with Eliza. Eliza is dropped from the novel

entirely, once Brown moves her to Ascha Fielding's home.
This is a defect in the novel because the reader's interest

is aroused by her earlier characterization, especially her

unexpected outburst .
Of all Brown's novels, Edgar Huntly is least con—

cerned with feminism. The main character, Edgar Huntly,

remains steadfast in his view of the sexes as unequal,

unlike Arthur Mervyn. Edgar refuses to send his fiancee,

Waldegrave's sister, those letters of her brother which
like others of her

saying that she,
216

argue against religion,

Sex, "art unaccustomed to metaphysical refinements."
Mrs. Lorimer demonstrates the evil of parents choos-

The good man of her own choice

ing a daughter's husband.
His early

is harassed, and a scoundrel is forced upon her.
death leaves Mrs. Lorimer free and, having learned the
'e\7lels of an unsuitable marriage, she remains single for a
J4DIISJ time, "determined to profit by her newly-acquired

independence," which suggests that Brown believes women
217

are happier single than unsuitably married.

Clara Howard, though only peripherally concerned
wi th feminism, deals with two related issues: women's edu-
cation; and the problem of marriage. The difficulties

which result from improperly educated women have already

1'.)
Gen discussed in terms of the character, Mary Wilmot. The

q”lestion of proper education is not limited to women

¥

104

characters; Mary's father and, supposedly, her brother also

suffer the effects of improper education. Furthermore,

in this novel, Brown elaborates very little on what he con—

siders a proper education to be.

Marriage is explored in more depth. The sanctity

of marriage is taken for granted. When Philip hears a

rumor that Mary Wilmot is living with Philip Sedley, but

not as his wife, he writes that it is "sacrilege so much as

218

to whisper to one's heart the surmise." Through the

characterization of Clara, Brown clearly defines the basis

on which love is to be placed. When Philip balks at being

returned to Mary, Clara tells him:

In my eyes, marriage is no sensual or selfish bargain.
I will never vow to honour the man who deserves only
my contempt; and my esteem can be secured only by a
just and disinterested conduct. Perhaps esteem is not
the only requisite to marriage. Of that I am not
certain; but I know that it is an indispensable requi-

site tO love. I cannot love any thing in you but
excellence. Infatuation will render you hateful or

pitiable in my eyes.219
LEit—er she tells him she loves him as she ought to love
hiIn~-she loves his happiness and his virtues. This policy

would be more effectively represented in the novel if she
ever seemed to show concern for his happiness. Instead
srklea appears to be responding largely from an over-heated,
j*131?ational generosity, enjoying her martyrdom. The vision
of marriage she describes to Philip, once she finally con-

es . . .
erIts, sounds more matriarchal than equal, With her firmly

pointing out his youthful errors.

105

Mary Wilmot shows more concern for Philip's happi-
ness by refusing to marry him until he can reciprocate her
love and by leaving him for Clara (although she cannot
resist leaving a Wertheresque farewell note bound to give
him guilt pangs). Furthermore, she, like Constantia
Dudley, will not marry him for security alone, and she

therefore refuses Sedley until she can return his esteem

and love .

Marriage is also an important issue in Jane Talbot,
vvliere it fits into the overall feminist question of whether

women should follow their own reason or social authority

in decision-making. The problem of reason versus social
authority can be applicable to either sex, of course, but

in Jane Talbot, the emphasis is feminist. For example,

 

Once Jane realizes her religion needs the support of reason,

3 he tells Henry:

Excellent advice is this to the mass of women; to
those to whom habit or childish fear or parental
authority has given their faith. . . . As to me, I
was once just such aZBretty fool in this respect as

the rest of my sex.2

CIii-he's experience proves that women, too, can make right
L1Seof reason on important questions like religion.

From her childhood, Jane's brother and father have
derided her ability to make rational decisions. This may
a~Qcount for her hesitancy and pliability later. The ques-
tZion of the amount of authority owed to kin is intensified

because of Jane's sex. Of her brother, she notes that:

106

. . . as my elder brother, and as a man, he thought
himself entitled to govern and despise me. He always
treated me as a frivolous girl, with whom it was a
waste of time to converse, and never spoke to me at

all except to direct or admonish.

“Unen she hesitates to lend him money, he wonders where "a
222

raw girl should gain all these scruples and punctilios."

riser father, though kinder, shares this sexual bias, and

Jreafuses to heed her comments about Frank's mishandling of

1:Ime money. In this instance, Jane is obviously willing to

risk censure and ridicule for important issues.

She also appears willing to act independently of

liear father and brother in her choice of a mate. Her father

had arranged a marriage with her cousin Risberg. Jane

itseailizes "the folly of such premature bonds“ as soon as she
reaches the age of reflection, and though she does not

u(szenly oppose" her father's wishes, she holds herself "free
223

't<3 obey any new impulse which circumstances might produce."
531162 equally repudiates her brother's attempts to dissuade
r1631: from marrying Risberg, deciding that if Risberg has been

falsely maligned, she should act with complete independence

c>15 Sher brother's inclinations.

Jane does not completely fulfill her good inten-
tli-<Dns, but, under the joint attack of her father and the

J:e‘Vered Mrs. Fielder, she is finally talked into marrying

:I‘SEVeis Talbot. He is a solid citizen whom Mrs. Fielder

l-)‘<>I>es will twp down Jane's romantic sensibilities. Jane

‘Jr‘eétrns from this experience: "Never, never let the placable

107

and compassionate spirit be seduced into a union to which
the affections are averse. Let it not confide in the after-

birth of love."224

Nevertheless, though she is not talked
into another tepid marriage, Mrs. Fielder's maternal sway
does cause a long delay in her marriage to Henry Colden.
This incident seems less related to her sex than to the
overall theme of children obeying their parents, as Janes
considers Henry Colden's responsibility to his father
equally important. Furthermore, the problem of their dif-
fering religious sentiments needs the time given by the
separation for even a somewhat credible resolution. The
question of whether women in particular ought to be guided
by social and parental constraints seems to be given a nega-
tive answer. Instead, both sexes are advised to show cau-
tion before following reason unchecked by authority.

Thus, Charles Brockden Brown's didacticism took a
rather experimental form. Consistently, he made use of
major women characters to test certain tenets through their
experiences. Their experiences increasingly tended, through-
out the course of his novels, to advocate moderation and to
support a shift from reason to reasonability. Individual
behavior which deviated from normative social behavior
became more suspect as Brown's continued investigations into
the human heart made him more conservative in his hope for

human perfection.

108

NOTES--CHAPTER I I I

lCBB, "Walstein's School of History," Monthly

Magazine 1 (September-December 1799), 408.

2CBB, "Advertisement," Wieland, p. 23.

3CBB, "Walstein's School," p. 408.

4Letter to Bringhurst (Dec. 21, 1792), DEK, p. 615.

5CBB, "Novel-Reading," from "A Student's Diary,
No. 24," Literary Magazine 1 (March 1904), 404. Ellipsis
is CBB's.

6

 

CBB, "Novel-Reading," p. 405.

7Berthoff, "Lesson," p. 47.

8Charles T. Pridgeon, Jr., "Insanity in American
Fiction from Charles Brockden Brown to Oliver Wendell
Holmes," Diss. Duke 1969, p. 6.

9Pridgeon, footnote 2, p. 87, notes that this can
be seen by examining Edward Cutbrush's "An Inaugural Dis-
sertation on Insanity" (1795), written under Rush's direc-
tion.

loNorman Dain, Concepts of Insanity in the United
States, 1789-1865 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1964), pp. 5 and 15. My indebtedness to this fine
history is more considerable than documentation can indi—
cate.

 

 

llDain, p. 16.

1zDain, p. 17.

13Dain, p. 21.

l4Elihu Hubbard Smith, Diary of Elihu Hubbard Smith,
ed. James E. Cronin (Philadelphia: American Philosophical
Society, 1973); Letter to Mary Mumford (Oct. 4, 1796),
p. 227.

15EHS Diary, Letter to Nathaniel Terry (Dec. 20, 1795),
pp. 107-108.

16
p. 226.

 

EHS Diary, Letter to Mary Mumford (Oct. 4, 1796),

109

l7CBB, "The Rhapsodist, No. 4," The Universal Asylum
and Columbian Magazine 3 (Nov. 1789), 664.

18CBB, "The Rhapsodist, No. 4," p. 664.

 

 

19Howard C. Warren, A History of the Association
Psychology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921),
p. 6.

 

 

20Pridgeon, pp. 107-108.

21John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understand-
ing, ed. Alexander Campbell Fraser (New York: Dover Publi-
cations Inc., 1959), I, p. 212 (II, xi, 17).

22Larzer Ziff, "A Reading of Wieland," PMLA 77
(Mar. 1962), 54.

23

 

Locke, I, p. 26 (Intro., 2).

24Locke, I, p. 531 (II, xxxiii).

25Warren, p. 68.

26Dain, p. 49.

27Arthur Gustaf Kimball, "Rational Fictions: A
Study of Charles Brockden Brown," Diss. Claremont 1965,
p. 45.

28Wieland, p. 56.

29Wieland, p. 55.

30Wieland, p. 94.

31Wieland, p. 150.

32Wieland, p. 79.

33Wieland, p. 39.

34Wieland, p. 55.

35Locke, I, p. 209 (II, xi, 13).

36Wieland, p. 104.

37Wieland, p. 39.

38Wieland, p. 177.

39Wieland, p.

40Ziff, p.

41Harvey Milton Craft,

110

172.

54.

tic and Organic Thought in the Major Novels of

Brockden Brown," Diss.

42Wieland,

43

Wieland, p.

44

Wieland, p.

45

Wieland, p.

46

Wieland, p.

47

Wieland, p.

48Wieland,

49Wieland, p.
50Wieland, p.

51

Wieland, p.

52

Wieland, p.

53Ormond,
54

p.

Ormond, p.

55

Ormond, p.

56

Ormond, p.

57

Ormond, p.

58

Ormond, p.

59

Ormond, p.

60

Ormond, p.

61Ormond,

62Ormond,

63Ormond,

p.
p.

p.

PP-

PP-

Tulane 1964, 33.

p.
202-203.

106.

55.

60.

155.

210.

101 and 197.

199.

205.

256.

25.

32.

20.

142.

153.

205.

247.

206.

267.

269.

273.

275.

"The Opposition of Mechanis—

Charles

Key," AL 44 (January

(Feb. 3,

64Ormond

65

Ormond

66

Sydney J. Krause,
1973),

67

Ormond

68

Ormond

69

Ormond

70

71Ormond

72Arthur

Ormond

, p. 276

, p. 276

r P-
, p. 255
, p. 117
, p. 123
r P-

Mervyn,

 

73Arthur

Mervyn,

 

74Arthur

Mervyn,

 

75Arthur

Mervyn,

 

76Arthur

Mervyn,

 

77Arthur

Mervyn,

 

78Edgar

Huntly,

 

79Edgar

Huntly,

 

80Clara

Howard,

 

81Clara

Howard,

 

82Clara

Howard,

 

83Jane T

albot,

 

84

 

85

 

86

Jane Talbot,

P

 

87CBB,

1788),
88

4.

109.

201.
I,

II,
II,
II,
II,

II,

p.

p.

p.

111

573.

pp.
p.
p.
pp.
p.
p.
43.
116.
290.
377.
409.

92.

Jane Talbot, p. 134.

Jane Talbot, p. 136.

203.

"The Man at Home, No.

Letter to WWW (1788),

"Ormond:

132-133.
79.
80.

Seduction

208-209.

214.

212.

DEK, p.

in a New

1," Weekly Magazine 1

 

407.

112

89See "On the Composition of Government," The New

York Magazine or Literary Repository 4 (July 1793), 404-407.

90Letter to Bringhurst (Oct. 30, 1795), DEK, p. 709.

ngee DEK, p. 125A3f6 and DEK, p. 1712B.

92Warfel, Charles Brockden Brown, p. 54.

 

93EHS Diary, Letter to CBB (March 27, 1796), p. 146.

94Warfel, Charles Brockden Brown, p. 64.

95Locke, I, pp. 26-27 (Introduction, 2).

96Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Centugy: Studies on
tlle Idea of Nature in the Thoughts of the Period (New York:
(ZCLIumbia University Press, 1941), p. 235.

97William Godwin, Enguiry Concerning Political
:1515stice, with Selections from Godwin's Other Writings, abr.
aridi ed. by K. Codell Carter (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971), p. 83.

 

 

98Godwin, pp. 144-145, 103-104, and 152-153.

99Godwin, p. 55.

looGodwin, p. 78.

101Godwin, p. 24.

102Note that by 1800 Godwin saw family relationships
Incxr?€e favorably, stating that one could do more good in this
SEDIIGeme than in others. See Basil Willey, p. 236.

103Godwin, p. 103.

104Godwin, pp. 148-150.
105Godwin, p. 187.
lOGGOdwin, p. 188.
jL 107John S. Martin, "Social and Intellectual Patterns

B: the Thought of Cadwallader Colden . . . and Charles
(:’<=kden Brown," Diss. Wisconsin 1966, p. 715.

108Wieland, p. 85.

109Wieland, p. 71.

113

lloWieland, p. 101.

lllWieland, pp. 98-99.

112Wieland, pp. 109-110.

113Wieland, p. 132.

114Jane Townend Flanders, "Charles Brockden Brown
aand.William Godwin: Parallels and Divergencies," Diss.
Wisconsin 1965, p. 287.

115Flanders, pp. 324-326.

116Ormond, p. 20.

117Ormond, p. 102.

118Ormond, p. 89.

119Ormond, p. 93.

120Ormond, p. 95.

121Ormond, p. 210.

lZZOrmond, p. 141.

123Ormond, p. 82.

124Ormond, p. 82.

125Ormond, p. 138.

126Ormond, p. 118.

1270rmond, p. 176.

128Ormond, p. 192.

}1 129Anyone who can still accuse Brown of a sense of
JH“DI’ after reading his novels should see Flanders' excel-

 

 

$191111: refutation of the idea that Arthur Mervyn was drawn
Satire (p. 148).
130Arthur Mervyn, II, p. 218.
131Arthur Mervyn, II, p. 212.
132

Arthur Mervyn, II, p. 217.

 

133Edgar Huntly, p. 36.

 

aeters

Iflcij_

134Edgar

Huntly,

 

135Edgar

Huntly,

 

136Clara

Howard,

 

137Clara

Howard,

 

138Clara

Howard,

 

139Clara

Howard,

 

140Clara

Howard,

 

141Clara

Howard,

 

142Clara

Howard,

 

143Clara

Howard,

 

144Clara

Howard,

 

145Clara

Howard,

 

146Clara

Howard,

 

147

Jane Talbot,

 

148

Jane Talbot,

 

149

Jane Talbot,

 

150

Jane Talbot,

 

151

Jane Talbot,

 

152

Jane Talbot,

 

153

Jane Talbot,

 

154

Jane Talbot,

 

155

Jane Talbot,

 

156

157

Cunningham, pp. 100 and 109.

p.

p.

p.

p.

PP-

p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.
p.

p.

114

40.
72.
330.

327.

317.
318.
397.
302.
303.
348.
348.
379.
188.
136.
26.
9.
121.
85.
63.
62.
209.

CBB objects to Richardson's emphasis on filial
saying that this should depend on the parents' char-
See "Objections to Richardson's Clarissa.
Amet9r of the Monthly Magazine," The Monthly Magazine, and
“‘-3Egggan Review 3 (Nov. 1800) 322.

359-360.

158

Cunningham, p. 110.

115

See also Lulu Rumsey Willey's

The Sources and Influences of the Novels of Charles Brockden

 

Brown (New York:

159

Vantage Press,

Inc., 1950), pp. 126-127.

See L.M.'s "Reflections of the Character of Mary

Wollstonecraft Godwin," Monthly Magazine 1 (August 1799),

330-335.
CBB; he suggests (Samuel) Latham Mitchill instead.

1302C.

 

160

DEK notes that it is unlikely this was written by

DEK,

In The New York Magazine; or Literary Repository 4

 

(Feb. 1793) .

161

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights

 

off'Woman with Strictures on Political and

(New York:

Daughters . . .

YZDIjt:

162Wollstonecraft,

163Wollstonecraft,

164Wollstonecraft,

165Wollstonecraft,

166
(London:

167Wollstonecraft,

168Wollstonecraft,

169Wollstonecraft,

170Wollstonecraft,

171Wollstonecraft,

172Wollstonecraft,

173CBB,
17,

1788),
174

CBB, Alcuin: A Dialogae,

W. W. Norton & Company,

Inc.,

Vindication, p.

 

Vindication, p.

 

Vindication, p.

 

Vindication, p.

 

Moral Subjects
1967), p. 203.

97.
92.
72.

79.

Mary Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of

 

J. Johnson,

Vindication, p.

 

Vindication, p.

 

Vindication, pp.

 

Vindication, p.

83.

 

Thoughts, p.

Vindication, p.

 

 

Grossman, 1970),

175Flanders,

176

PP-

p.

87.

98-99.

Alcuin, pp. 13 and 21-22.

177

Alcuin, p. 26.

1787),

pp. 26-27.
97.
73.
200 and 207.

206.

282.

"The Man at Home, No. VII," Weekly Magazine 1

 

ed. Lee R. Edwards (New

178Alcuin, p.

179Alcuin, p.

180Alcuin, p.

181Alcuin, p.

182Alcuin, p.

183Alcuin, p.

184Wieland, p.
ccxnpetency to manage

116

43.
63.
75.
82.
70.
88.

42. CBB strongly states women's
for themselves in his "The Household.

ZiiFragment," Monthly Magazine 3 (Aug. 1800), 81-87.

 

185Wieland, p.

186Dunlap, II,

187Wieland, p.

188Wieland, pp

189Wieland, p.

190Wieland, p.

191Wieland, p.

192CBB, "Walst

193Ormond, p.

194

tbis respect he and B
rlage. Both also agr

101.

pp. 329-330.

257.

. 220-221.

65.

76.

222.
ein's School of History," p. 409.

21.

Though Godwin did not hold marriage sacred, in

rown concurred in their views of mar—
eed that unwise marriages result in

31,5931: unhappiness and a destruction of mental and moral
algor; and that, without sexual equality, marriage is just
n affair of property. See Flanders, pp. 301-302.

195Ormond, p.

196Ormond, p.

197Ormond, p.

198Ormond, p.

199Ormond, p.

200Ormond, p.

82.
82.
137.
177.
177.

118.

117

201Ormond, p. 116.

202Ormond, p. 126.

203Ormond, p. 32.

204Ormond, p. 155.

205Ormond, p. 75.

206Ormond, p. 201.

207Ormond, p. 246.

208Ormond, p. 246.

209Arthur Mervyn, I, pp. 37 and 40.

 

210Arthur Mervyn, I, p. 77.

211Arthur Mervyn, II, p. 18.

212Arthur Mervyn, II, p. 62.

213Arthur Mervyn, II, p. 79.

214Arthur Meryyn, II, p. 80.

215Arthur Mervyn, II, pp. 81-82.

216Edgar Huntly, p. 127.

217Edgar Huntly, p. 36.

218Clara Howard, p. 290.

219Clara Howard, p. 301.

220Jane Talbot, p. 134.

221Jane Talbot, p. 10.

222Jane Talbot, p. 33.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

223Jane Talbot, pp. 8-9.

 

224Jane Talbot, p. 56.

 

CHAPTER IV

SENTIMENTAL AND GOTHIC FIRST COUSINS

Brown wrote fiction to entertain, as well as to fur—
ther his own self-therapy and his didactic purposes. This
desire to entertain was probably influential in his choice
of two highly popular fictional models: the sentimental
novel and the gothic novel. Both forms had been well-
received in the United States by the time Brown was writing
novels, and he enjoyed both himself. His other favorite
kind of novel, the novel of purpose, was itself an adapta-
tion of the sentimental formula, using sentimental conven-
tions as a vehicle for the promulgation of new and liberal
ideas.

Brown's desire to entertain had fairly complex
sources. Of course, he generally rationalized entertain-
ment as simply a means to the socially acceptable end of
"supplying men not only with knowledge of just ends and
just means, but with the love and the zeal of virtue."1
Didactic intent justified the author's quest "to charm
curiosity, and sway the passions."2 However, Brown did not
see non—didactic fiction as necessarily pernicious, and he

generally defended novel reading as harmless. This may

118

119

have been due to his perpetual optimism about the chances
for enlightenment even with light fiction and a dull reader:
If you cannot transform him [the reader] to angel or
philosopher, you may somewhat influence his taste,
character and manners. If you cannot highly or last-
ingly benefit, you may innocently entertain, you may
gain an occasional hearing, at least, you may rouse
his curiosity, and by a skillful use of familiar
illustrations, by the lucky dexterity of invention and
wit, blend his pleasure with his benefit, and accomp—
lish by the same means, more ends than one.
Brown's desire to entertain was also the result of that
normal authorial wish to be widely read. In his case, this
wish was no doubt strengthened by his feelings of personal
inadequacy. A final reason for wanting a mass audience was
his hOpe of profiting from his writing. Brown was born
into a Quaker merchant family which placed a high value on
material self-sufficiency, if not on wealth. As a young
man, Brown had rejected the family's attempts to make him
into a lawyer, and he no doubt wanted to prove himself by
becoming a financially successful person doing the only
kinds of work for which he was temperamentally suited. Mone-
tary success would justify his choice of profession. At the
same time, however, he still felt the pressure of the gentle-
manly idea of the man of leisure who writes for his own
pleasure alone. In comparing professional and avocational
writers, Brown remarks wistfully:

As there is nothing I should more fervently depre—
cate than to be enrolled in the former class [profes-
sional writers], so there is nothing to which I more
ardently aspire, than to be numbered among the latter.

To write, because the employment is delightful, or
because I have a passion for fame or for usefulness,

120

is the summit of terrestrial joys, the pinnacle of
human elevation.

There is my friend H. . . . Can a man be situated
more happily? His aunt not only secures him and his
charming Eleanor from the possibility of want, she
secures them not only the pleasures and honors of
extraordinary affluence, but even from the common
cares of a master of a family.

Having no such obliging aunt, Brown was driven by necessity
into an attempt at professional writing which does not seem
to have been financially successful. Certainly he did not
earn enough to live upon during his first years as a writer.
His mother's diary shows constant gifts of money to Brown.
Kennedy suggests that he may have had an allowance from a
brother, a share on invested capital in the family ship-
ping firm, and help from his wife's family.5 Certainly
Brown himself admits that his writing was not lucrative.

In a letter to his brother James in 1800, Brown announces

his intention to write about more cheerful incidents than

those of Edgar Huntl . He appears to attribute the lack

 

of profit of his novels to their gloomy or extraordinary
nature because he follows this resolution by writing: "Book-
making, as you observe, is the dullest of all trades, and

the utmost that any American can look for in his native coun-
try is to be reimbursed his unavoidable expenses."6 Despite
the final lack of monetary success, his desire for financial
self-sufficiency as well as his didactic purpose and his ego
helped create in Brown a strong desire to write entertain-

ingly enough to capture a large audience.

121

The influence of sentimental and gothic fiction
was widespread in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century United States. The sentimental romance, modeled
upon Richardson, was the most pOpular fictional mode among
Americans at this time. As Russel B. Nye has stated, "It
was not accidental that the first English novel to be
reprinted in America was Benjamin Franklin's 1744 edition
of Pamela."7 Nye also notes that of the twenty-four Ameri-
can novels published before Wieland, twenty were Richard-
sonian romances.8 These include such well-known and much-

COpied novels as William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy

 

(1789), Susanna Haswell Rowson's Charlotte Temple (1791),

 

and Hanna Foster's The Coguette (1797). Short magazine

 

fiction from 1741 onward also shows numerous and varied
expressions of sentimental currents, with a primarily
British influence until the turn of the century, when German
literature began to become influential.9
Brown himself attests to his admiration for British
sentimental writers, particularly Samuel Richardson. He

considered Richardson the "sublimest and most eloquent of

writers" and favorably compared Sir Charles Grandison to

 

the Bible: "it is, as a work of invention, more accurate
and uniform and consequently more instructive."lo Brown
was also a reader of that lesser sentimentalist, Fanny

Burney. He notes in "A Jaunt to Rockaway in Long Island"

that a volume of Cecelia helped pass time on this vacation.

122

A copy of Camilla was found in his library upon his
death.11
Numerous critics, including such divergent commen-
tators as Herbert Ross Brown and Leslie Fiedler, have
remarked upon the influence of the British sentimental
novel upon Brown. Many elements of Brown's writing give
evidence of this overall impact, including: the epistolary
or pseudo-epistolary form; the theme of duty or reason
versus passion; the seduction motif; and various character
types, such as the seducer—villain, the man-of—feeling, and,
last but not least, the sentimental heroine.
Gothic literature was also very pOpular in the
United States, especially in the late 1790's. It was
especially popular on the stage and, as short fiction, in
the magazines. Brown's friend William Dunlap produced three
gothic plays during this decade. Brown was certainly aware
of these, and he may have seen them or discussed them with
his friend. Concerning the abundance of gothic short
fiction, Nye has observed that:
The magazines overflowed with stories crammed with
haunted castles, secret passages, ghosts, damp tombs,
mysterious chests, unearthly shrieks, and most impor-
tantly with magnificently malevolent villains patterned
after Mrs. Radcliffe's Montoni and Schedoni, or Lewis'
satanic monk, Ambrosio.l
The sources of American gothicism were Great
Britain and Germany. The two most influential models from

England were probably the novels of Ann Radcliffe and

Matthew "Monk" Lewis. Brown was familiar with both strains.

123

Whether or not he knew German, and there is no strong evi-
dence that he did, many translations of German gothic
novels would have been available to him, also.

Brown obviously admired Radcliffe highly, calling
her "the most illustrious of the picturesque writers" and
praising her narrative as "beautiful and interesting.“ He

probably read and enjoyed both The Mysteries of Udolpao

 

(1794) and The Italian (1797), judgingknrhis comment:

 

Her last two romances, "Udolfo," and "The Italian,"
are little else than a series of affecting pictures,
connected by a pleasing narrative, and in which human
characters and figures are introduced on the same
principles that place them on the canvas, to give a
moral energy and purpose to the scene. This is the
great and lasting excellence of her work. . . .14

Brown's familiarity with the standard formula of the gothic

novel is obvious from his introduction to Edgar Huntly, in

 

which he tells us that he intends to substitute the "inci—
dents of Indian hostility, and the perils of the Western
wilderness" for "Puerile superstition and exploded manners,
Gothic castles and chimeras."15 Such remarks suggest that
he was able to separate the kernel of gothicism from the
husk and to re—vitalize the genre.

Brown's acquaintance with the literary craze for
German literature is reflected in Wieland. Clara comments
on the prOposed reading, in German, of a tragedy by a Saxon
writer. According to her description of the work, the

tragedy is no doubt an example of extreme German romanti-

cism:

124

. . . it was minute and diffuse, and dictated by an
adventurous and lawless fancy. It was a chain of
audacious acts and unheard-of disasters. The moated
fortress and the thicket, the ambush and the battle,
and the conflict of headlong passions, were portrayed
in wild numbers and with terrific energy.

The Wieland ancestry from the German poet Christoph Martin
Wieland also shows Brown's familiarity with German litera-
ture. Harry Warfel, who thoroughly develops Brown's famili-
arity with German sources, notes that Brown had read

Wieland's Sémliche Werke in the Monthly Review.17 He also

 

 

observes that Brown reflected the heightened British inter-
est in German art in the 1790's, and he suggests that Brown
probably had German friends since he lived in Pennsylvania.
Warfel hypothesizes that Brown may have gotten the initial

ideas for Wieland from his reading of Cajetan Tschink's

Geisterseher, which had been translated by Peter Will in
18

 

1795 as The Victim of Magical Delusion.

 

Warfel's view of Brown's principal novelistic mode
is Obvious from the title of his biography and critical

work, Charles Brockden Brown: American Gothic Novelist

 

(1949). Brown's gothic tendencies have been noted by numer-
ous critics, and one of the principal issues in Brown
scholarship is the question of whether he was more heavily
influenced by the sentimental or by the gothic modes. Cer-
tainly many elements in his novels derive from the gothic
tradition, including the seemingly supernatural agencies;
the villains who appear to have mysterious powers; the for—

bidden rooms and darkened houses; the gothic wilderness; and

125

all the other elements of horror and terror. The duration

of the critical debate over the superior impact of one or

the other of these two traditions suggests that both were
considerable. With this evaluation in mind, it seems worth-
while to examine the women characters in typical sentimen—
tal and gothic novels to show first that there is no signifi—
cant distinction between their characterization in each
before going into the nature of their similarities to and
differences from Brown's women characters.

The heroine is surely the staple female character,
and often the central character of either sex, in both sen-
timental and gothic fiction. The classic plot of both forms
tends to include and even to center upon the removal of a
sensitive, well-brought-up girl from a nurturing home into
a hostile environment. When the novel does focus upon such
a character, she may be defined as the "heroine" of that
novel. The threat in her new environment is generally
embodied in a villain of unusual intelligence who wishes to
use her without responding to her needs as a person and a
member of a society. This is often explicitly represented
by an attempted rape which the heroine naturally tries to
avoid, although her forced isolation makes resistance dif-
ficult and dangerous. Other minor women characters are
also similar in both sentimental and gothic novels, includ-
ing villainesses, kind but garrulous servants, and confi—

dantes. These characters are expendable, however, and it

126

is the heroine who is the pivot around which the senti-
mental or gothic novel revolves.

One frequently hears terms such as "a standard
sentimental heroine" and "a typical gothic heroine." Yet,
if representative novels by, say, Richardson and Radcliffe
are compared, the same kind of heroine seems typical of
2223 genres. The heroines do not seem to be radically dif-
ferent, although the gothic heroines face more mysterious
and more terrifying hostile circumstances. By the time of
the gothic novel, the villains have become Mediterranean
counts or friars rather than rakish English gentlemen who
are received in the best London society. The place where
the villain detains the heroine against her will is trans-
formed from an English townhouse or country estate into a
crumbling castle in Italy or a catacomb beneath a convent.
The change in trappings does everything to increase the
reader's terror at the possible plight of the isolated
heroine, though the trials themselves are roughly equiva-
lent in their end results upon the heroine's life. Pamela
and Emily, for example, avoid physical violation and end up
happily married whereas the violated Clarissa and Antonia
are permitted to die in relative peace of mind. The gothic
environment, of course, can help establish or strengthen
certain themes which are absent from or present in more
muted forms in the sentimental novel. These include the

decadence of the aristocracy, illustrated by dilapidated

127

castles and seedy noblemen, and the benefits of resisting
hypersensibility.

This similarity in the characterization of heroines
in sentimental and gothic novels can be seen by comparing
the heroines of Pamela (1741), Clarissa (1747-8), and

Evelina (1778) to those of The Mysteries<1fUdolpho (1794)

 

and The Monk (1796). Samuel Richardson and Fanny Burney
represent the sentimental novel, and Ann Radcliffe and
Matthew G. Lewis, the gothic novel. The title characters
of the sentimental novels are basically quite similar to
Emily St. Aubert of Udolpho and Agnes de Medina and Antonia
Dalfa of The Monk. This is not to say, of course, that

the heroines are all but interchangeable. Even the two
heroines created by the same novelist, Richardson, differ;
Pamela has a robust resilience which Clarissa lacks, and
Clarissa is more genteelly refined as a result of her edu-
cation and social class. Also, none of the other three
noveliSts has Richardson's capability for precise character-
ization, though Radcliffe comes closest. Burney relies too
much upon stock characteristics and moralization, and Lewis
tends to over-idealize his virtuous women characters. How-
ever, despite authorial differences in style and skill,
there is no major shift in the characterization of women,
especially of heroines, between the sentimental novel and

the gothic novel, as these prototypes will demonstrate.

128

These particular novels were chosen for obvious
reasons. With the exception of Evelina, all of the others
are among the best known of their genres today. Evelina
is the best of the novels of Fanny Burney, who was a very
typical and strictly popular sentimentalist. Brown had
read several of her novels, though there is no record that
he had read Evelina. As mentioned earlier, he thought
extremely highly of Richardson, and he had read Clarissa.
Altogether, these three novels combine elements of the
best and the most popular sentimental fiction. Similarly
the two gothic novels are the most prominent of the major
gothic strains: the terror of Radcliffe and the horror of
Lewis. Unlike the works of Richardson, both works repre-
sent the culmination of a genre rather than the impetus to

it; like Clarissa and Pamela, The Monk and Udolpho are prob-

 

ably the most widely read novels of their genres today.
Brown admired Radcliffe and enjoyed Udolpho.19 There seems
to be no record of his response to "Monk" Lewis, but the
reference in Ormond to Martinette's education by a lecher—
ous priest strongly suggests that Brown had read The Monk
sometime before 1800.

The gothic heroines are similar to their sentimen-
tal precursors both in the guides they choose to regulate

their behavior and in the major characteristics of their

behavior.

129

One of the most striking generalizations which
can be made about these six heroines is that most of them
are capable of defying authority when that authority is
presented by the novelist as unworthy or perverted. For
example, when Mr. B. tries to seduce her, Pamela's sharp
response brings her a rebuke, to which she responds, "Well
may I forget that I am your servant, when you forget what
belongs to a master."20 Evelina braves the scorn of her
immediate family by generosity to Mr. Macartney who is
later conveniently revealed to be her brother. Clarissa
defies, with regret, her entire family when it wrongfully
tries to pressure her into marrying Solmes; however, she is
uneasy, despite her strong rationale, at disobeying her
father, and she tries to justify herself by saying that the
matter was not originally her father's will but her
brother's.21 Similarly, Agnes finally defies her family in
her attempted elopement with Raymond, although she did
encourage him to make an effort to win over her family's
concurrence to their marriage, while this still seemed
possible.

In Udolpho, the uneducated Antonia successfully fends
off Ambrosio's attempt to pervert her religious beliefs,
despite her great respect for his ecclesiastical position.
Emily is quite capable of rejecting Montoni's attempts to
assert himself over her. She obeys her aunt only with some

discrimination. Earlier, when her aunt tells her that she

130

should wish for the world's approval, Emily says: "I am
anxious for my own respect; my father taught me the value
of that; he said if I deserved my own esteem, that of the

22 The source of this inner-directedness

world would follow.
is generally the education of the heroines by their parents,
whether these were parents by blood or by adOption. This
education is often made explicit by the commands Of the
parents, as in cases of St. Aubert and of Pamela's parents.
Sometimes, too, the children directly thank their parents
with statements which reveal the nature of their moral and
intellectual training, as when Evelina thanks her guardian,
the Reverend Villars, for being a protector and guide.
Once separated from their parents, the daughters retain the
precepts they were taught and base decisions upon them.
Emily St. Aubert, for instance, remembering her father's
warnings about the dangers of indulging sensibility,
attempts to overcome first her regret at her position in
Madame Cheron's house and later her dismay at being under
the "protection" of Montoni.23 The education received
under the right authority gives the heroines strength to
defy false authority when they are isolated from direct
guidance.

The inner—directedness is often externalized in
both sentimental and gothic novels through the heroines'
reflections. One sees Clarissa, for instance, agonizing

over the morality of her disobedience in letters to her

131

confidante Miss Howe; the epistolary form common to the
sentimental novel facilitates this kind of dialogue, whether
it be the interior dialogue of a journal entry or the
exterior dialogue produced by an exchange of letters. Of
the two gothic novels, Udolpho, with its greater emphasis
on internal strife, stresses the process of reflection more
than The Monk does. This emphasisixrthe three sentimental
novels and in Udolpho helps support the theme of reason
triumphing over momentary passion. Emily, for instance,
conquers the passion of the moment to refuse Valancourt's
suggestion of a clandestine marriage, a refusal obviously
approved by Radcliffe who later says: ". . . the strength
of her mind had enabled her to triumph over present suffer-
ing, rather than to deserve the reproach of her conscience

24 The relative

by engaging in a clandestine marriage."
absence of the presentation of reflection in the heroines

of The Monk probably results from a combination of factors:
the slighter focus on the consciousness of any character;
the larger number of important characters and the centering
around Ambrosio; the author's lack of concern with didactic
intent; and the greater stress on physical rather than emo-
tional action. In general, however, a fairly extensive pat-
tern of careful reflection before decision making character—
izes both sentimental and gothic heroines.

Religion is the second source of help in isolation

for both the sentimental and the gothic heroines. Religious

132

belief strengthens Clarissa in her stand against wrongful
authority and helps her forgive Lovelace for having des—
troyed her life. Pamela's prayers fortify her so that she
is proof against Mr. B's arguments, despite the submission
she feels is proper because of her servant background.
Evelina feels supported by "the prayers and the wishes"

of Reverend Villars when she is in the clutches of Madame
Duval.25 Likewise, Emily depends for support in all her
major crises on prayer. After her aunt's death, when she
faces Montoni alone: ". . . she frequently addressed her-
self to Heaven for support and protection, and her pious
prayers, we may believe, were accepted of the God, that

giveth comfort."26

In The Monk, Antonia's piety helps her
refute the subtle theological arguments of the salacious
Ambrosio. A distinction is made in this novel between
"good" and "bad" religious authority. Those elements which
are extrinsically Roman Catholic, such as the monastic life
and many of those who lead it, are looked upon as evil.
Hence, Agnes "scrupled not to treat as ridiculous many
ceremonies which the nuns regarded with awe" during her
education in the convent.27 She does not want to become a
nun herself, and, once she has accepted her vows, she tries
to show Virginia de Villa-Franca that she should lead a
more virtuous and worthwhile life in the secular world than

in the convent. Agens rejects the extrinsic forms of

Catholicism, and yet once she has committed herself she

133

feels it would be a crime to break her personal promise to
God; she refuses to elOpe from the convent with Raymond
until her pregnancy makes any other course of action impos-
sible. Thus Lewis shows her as pious but rejecting what
the author considers false religious authority.

The heroines of sentimental and gothic novels are
not only similar in the guides to behavior which they
choose to follow but also in their characteristics.
Physically, all are beautiful. This is often necessary to
the plot, for most are the lust-object of a villain who
abducts them. The authors also may have considered that
beauty might help women readers want to identify with the
heroines' adventures.

In addition, all of these heroines are noteworthy
for a high degree of general decorum; they are models for
their sex in every respect. Contrary to pOpular beliefs
about sentimental and gothic heroines, these characters
tend to hold up very well considering the extraordinary
troubles they encounter. Emily St. Aubert, for example,
loses both parents and an aunt and survives two attempted
kidnappings, virtual imprisonment, a near shipwreck, and
continual obstructions to marriage with the man she loves.
Though her sanity wavers at low points during her imprison-
ment, she is physically and mentally healthy at the end of

the novel.

134

Furthermore, all of these characters maintain a high
level of sexual decorum. Pamela turns down Mr. B's offer
of riches for herself and her poverty-stricken family.
Once prOperly married to him, she flutters at the prepara-
tion of the bridal chambers ". . . for a guest, that, how-
ever welcome, as now my duty teaches me to say, is yet
dreadful to me to think of," and she blushes whenever her
potential children are mentioned.28 Clarissa's sense of
sexual decorum is so highly tuned that she is repulsed when
the odious Solmes brushes against the hOOp of her skirt.29
Though less finely wrought, Evelina is distraught by Sir
Clement's forwardnessixrthe carriage and alarmed by the sug—
gestive remarks of strange men when she is left alone at
Vauxhall, much as Emily St. Aubert is frightened by the
overtures of Montoni's friends. Emily is extremely scrupu-
lous about the words she says to her beloved Valancourt, and
is shocked by her aunt's accusations of what Emily con-
siders gross indelicacies. At the beginning of The Monk,
Antonia's innocence is so complete that it actually leads
her into breaches of decorum, as when she sees nothing
strange about Ambrosio entering her bedroom. After Ambrosio
rapes her, she feels that "death was to her a blessing"
because she would have not felt free to marry her beloved

Lorenzo.30 Although Agnes' one lapse might make her seem

an exception to the sexual decorum of these heroines, she

135

so deeply regrets her one moment of passion that she would
have renounced Raymond forever, had she not been pregnant.
Both sets of heroines are less docile, on the whole,
than pOpular belief would have one believe. Though they are
obedient to their parents and their religious dictates,
they are so only provisionally; that is, providing that
these authorities seem reasonable to them. Their tendency
to be guided finally by their inner dictates rather than
by outside authorities leads more to the characteristic of
independence than that of docility. In this, they embody
that break away from the sanctity of the institution to the
sanctity of the individual. Emily St. Aubert, for example,
does not let her aunt guide her decision making simply
because Madame Cheron is her legal guardian, although she
obeys those of her commands which do not directly violate
her own will. Despite their determined independence, these
heroines are not rebels but peacemakers. All seek to avoid
confrontation with authority whenever this can be done with-
out compromising their integrity; Emily advises her aunt to
do the same when she deals with the irascible Montoni.
Clarissa, for instance, does everything in her power to
prevent litigation between Lovelace and her parents. These
characters simultaneously want to maintain respect for
authority and to establish their individual independence

from that authority.

136

Sensibility, that capacity for strong emotional
feelings, is also abundantly present in many of these sen—
timental and gothic heroines. Even the country-bred Pamela
falls into fainting fits when Mr. B. attempts to seduce
her. Clarissa is called "over-nice, over-delicate" by her
best friend, Miss Howe, though Richardson defends his
heroine in an authorial aside.31 Interestingly, exagger—
ated and feigned sensibility is criticized in two of these
novels. In Evelina, the title character, who tends to try
to control her agitation, is favorably contrasted to the
pretentious Lady Louisa who proudly announces "I am nerve
all over."32 Throughout Udolpho Emily attempts to follow
her father's advice to avoid the indulgence of over-
sensibility.

Finally, both sets of heroines are characterized by
beneficence, material and emotional. In the eighteenth
century beneficence was considered the natural product of
sensibility, as can be seen in Radcliffe's description of
Emily:

She had discovered in her early years uncommon delicacy
of mind, warm affections, and ready benevolence; but
with these was observable a degree of susceptibility
too exquisite to admit of lasting peace.
Likewise, it is Evelina's sensibility which leads her to
perform benevolent actions, such as helping the poverty-

stricken Macartney and interceding when the Captain tor—

ments Madame Duval. Both the sentimental and the gothic

137

novelists seem to be trying to present some balance between
self—control and sufficient sensibility for their heroines
to respond passionately to distress or injustice. The
necessity of sensibility for beneficence can be seen in
Lewis' characterization of the villainess Matilda,vflx>com-
pletely lacks sensibility. Matilda advises Ambrosio not to
help the imprisoned Agnes because this might arouse suspi-
cion of him. He agrees that her reasoning navalid, but:

. . . when he thought of her expressions respecting

the devoted nun, he could not help blaming them as

cruel and unfeminine. Pity is a sentiment so natu-

ral, so apprOpriate to the female character, that it

is scarcely a merit for a woman to possess it, but

to be without it is a grievous crime.

Thus, the gothic heroines greatly resemble their
sentimental precursors. Both are amenable to the authority
of parents and church until these violate individual con-
science; then, they quietly stand their ground. As well as
the common denominator of physical attractiveness, both tend
to share many personal characteristics, including both gen-
eral and sexual decorum; a firm but gently stated indepen-
dence; a balance between sensibility and self-control; and,
finally, an abundant beneficence. The gothic heroine is
sister to the sentimental heroine, born ten or twenty
years later, and faced with similar trials in a more exotic
setting equipped with a more mysterious villain.

The sentimental/gothic heroine is at least first

cousin to Brown's heroines, and she is also closely related

138

to his "good" minor woman characters, such as Eliza Hadwin

in Arthur Mervyn. Although there are differences, both in

 

degree as well as in kind, there are many major similari-
ties betweenifluasentimental/gothic heroines and Brown's
heroines. The extent of these similarities suggests that
Brown used this prototype as a model, a rational act for a
late eighteenth century novelist who wanted his novels to
be read, considering the popularity of these two genres.
David H. Hirsch's analysis of Brown's use of the gothic
form equally applies to his use of the sentimental/gothic
heroine; the novelist was simply using a type which was both
pOpularly accepted and functional as a vehicle for ideas,
so there is no need to assume either a Chase-ian preoccupa-
tion with fleeing social reality or a Fiedler-ian fixation
on the inability to love.35
Brown's heroines follow similar patterns in their
choice of guides by which they can regulate their behavior.
The shift of authority from the institution to the indi-
vidual is certainly evident in Brown's characters. Like
the heroines of the sentimental/gothic novel, they are
often separated from that major source of authority, the
parents; this reinforces the theme of the self-directed
individual through the direct action of the plot. Like
Emily St. Aubert, the characters Clara‘Wieland, Constantia
Dudley, Helena Cleves, Martinette de Beauvais, Eliza Hadwin,

and Mary Wilmot are left orphans. All of these characters

139

are forced to make decisions on their own. Most are gen-
erally capable of develOping autonomy, providing that the
parental education has lain the groundwork for this. Clara
Wieland, for instance, runs her own household despite the
offer of a home with her much-beloved brother and his fam-
ily. Constantia Dudley, after her mother's death, has her
blind father dependent upon her. She considers and rejects
Balfour as a suitor despite the affluence he could bring
her. In contrast to the heroine of Ormond, Helena Cleves
is totally dependent after her parents die, and the differ-
ences in their education account for this. Martinette's
education makes her autonomous, but it neglects the incul—
cation of tenderness or compassion, as her history reveals.
Eliza Hadwin is left "ignorant and weak" when she is
orphaned, which she correctly attributes to her lack of
education and experience and which she sees as remediable.
Mary Wilmot "had been trained up in the most luxurious
manner. . . . All the prejudices and expectations of an

"36 As a

heiress were early and deeply imbibed by her.
result, her pride is greatly wounded by the poverty she
faces, and her adjustment is difficult. She even tries to

hide her losses from those who would help her. It is in

Jane Talbot that Brown shows the most allegiance to paren—

 

tal authority and the least to individual autonomy; as
described in the prior chapter, Brown had moved consider-

ably from his experimental adOption of Godwinian liberalism

140

by the time he wrote this novel. Jane's position is some-
times similar to Clarissa Harlowe's since both must choose
between renouncing either autonomy or parents at many
points. Jane is not blamed for her sacrifice of Colden to
Mrs. Fielder's falsely grounded commands. Yet, Jane's
father's refusal to listen to her warnings about Frank's
mishandling of the money is seen as false pride. Jane's
early marriage to Lewis Talbot, urged upon her by her
father and Mrs. Fielder, is also presented as the result of
a faulty use of authority. Frank's attempt to assert him-
self over Jane is seen as false authority, too, as Jane's
language shows: "He insinuated that brothership and elder-
ship gave him something like a title to parental authority
and insisted on obedience."37 Like Clarissa, Jane sees a
great deal of difference between the authority of a father
and that of a brother. Jane's conflict concerning where
her obedience lies neatly parallels Clarissa's barrister-
like deliberations of where her duty to her father begins
and ends. The delicate balance between autonomy and author-

ity in Jane Talbot comes closer to that of the English and

 

sentimental novel than does any other Brown novel. This
novel's careful division of authority into "true" and
"false" categories also characterizes Udolpho, in which
Emily gives absolute obedience to her father, qualified
obedience to her aunt, and no more than an occasional dip—

lomatic show of it to the rascal, Montoni.

141

Brown's heroines' struggle with the question of
individual autonomy versus a reliance on parental authority
seems based on the sentimental/gothic model. When Brown
is more influenced by Godwin or other liberal thinkers, his
characters become considerably more autonomous than this
model. For example, Constantia Dudley is responsible for
her father's livelihood as well as for her own. Constantia's
willingness to completely disregard traditional patriarchal
patterns and act on her own can also be seen in her deci—
sion to talk to Ormond concerning his relationship with his
mistress:

The father or brother of Helena might assume the office
without indecorum. Nay, a mother or sister might not
be disbarred from it. Why then should she, who was
actuated by equal zeal, and was engaged by ties stronger
than consanguinity in the promotion of her friend's hap-
piness?
It would be hard to imagine Evelina or even Emily thinking
such a task would be suitable to an unrelated female, dif-
ficult to see them undertaking a similar errand, and impos-
sible to picture them fulfilling it with "invincible"

composure as Constantia did.39 In Clara Howard and Jane

 

Talbot, the novels during the writing of which Brown was
probably least influenced by social liberalism, his women
characters are much more similar to those of the sentimental/
gothic novel in the degrees of personal autonomy which they
embody.

Brown, like his sentimental precursors, often uses

the pseudo-epistolary form. -In novels which utilize this

142

form, such as Wieland, he too uses it to show his heroines'
reliance upon the stream of reflection proper to rational
thought and appropriate to a degree of individual autonomy.
In Ormond, which the heroine does not narrate, her narrator,
SOphia Westwyn, attempts to provide us with an indirect
view of Constantia's process of decision making, telling us,
for instance, that:

She [Constantia] had learned to square her conduct,
in a considerable degree, not by the hasty impulses
of inclination, but by the dictates of truth. She
yielded nothing to caprice or passion. Not that she
was perfectly exempt from intervals of weakness or
from the necessity of painful struggles, but these
intervals were transient, and these struggles always
successful.40

Clara Howard and Jane Talbot utilize this same decision-
making process despite their greater conservatism. Hence
it is evident from all of Brown's major women characters.

Brown's two earlier heroines, Clara Wieland and
Constantia Dudley, are far less reliant on religion as a
guide to behavior than are the sentimental/gothic heroines.
Clara describes the casual religious education of Catherine
and herself:

Our education had been modelled by no religious stan-
dard. We were left to the guidance of our own under-
standing and the casual impressions which society
might make upon us. . . . It must not be supposed
that we were without religion; but with us it was the
product of lively feelings, excited by reflection on
our own happiness, and by the grandeur of external
nature. We sought not a basis for our faith in the
weighing of proofs and the dissection of creeds. Our
devotion was a mixed and casual sentiment, seldom ver-
bally expressed, or solicitously sought, or carefully

143

retained. In the midst of present enjoyment, no

thought was bestowed on the future. As a consola-

tion in calamity, religion is dear.41
Clara's remarks show that she regrets her lack of religious
fervor and education and that she feels these might have
aided her in her trials. The causes and results of her
father's and brother's religious zeal suggest that probably
only the lack of education, not the lack of enthusiasm, was
the key ingredient in their madness, especially since both
father and brother were self-taught devotees. Constantia
Dudley also lacks a religious education. Her father had
believed that religious truth is "incompatible with infan-

42 Therefore, he purpose-

tile and premature instruction."
fully leads her mind away from religion "to accustom her to
the accuracy of geometrical deduction and to the view of
those evils that have flowed, in all ages, from mistaken
piety."43 As a result, she becomes indifferent to religion
and is supported in her views by her good Opinion only.

Her friend and narrator, SOphia, considers her for this
reason particularly vulnerable to the atheistic Ormond,
whom Constantia would have otherwise rejected on religious
grounds and whose arguments would have then presumably been
revealed to her as specious. Sophia simply states this,
however, and Constantia's need for religion is never devel—
Oped dramatically, which makes it less convincing.

Clara Howard seems to be conventionally grounded in

religion. Brown shows us this much as Burney demonstrates

144

Evelina's piety. Interwoven with these characters' conver-
sations, especially in crisis situations, are pious exclama-
tions such as Clara's after Philip rescues the drowning
girl: "The merciful God grant that he may find you alive!"
44

and, later, "Thanks to my God, you are out of danger."

Religion is much more an issue in Jane Talbot, as has been

 

discussed at length in the previous chapter. In this novel
Jane deviates markedly from the unquestioning piety of the

romantic/sentimental heroine, which she terms superstitious
and false ". . . since it merely originates in deference to
the Opinions of others, wrought into belief by means of

habit."45

Jane's insistence on rational justification for
religion moves considerably beyond the model of the
sentimental/gothic heroine who occasionally questions the
authority of the family and society but not religion. The
Monk's Agnes, with her rejection of the nuns' superstition,
and Antonia, with her refutation of Ambrosio's theologi-
cal entanglements, come closest. However, they are still
very far away from Jane's investigations since their actions
are simply reaction rather thanaction, a mere reflection
of Lewis' crudely chauvinistic rejection of Catholicism.
Brown's heroines' religious autonomy, as well as their
greater independence from their families, is sometimes more
extreme than the sentimental/gothic model. This is again

apparently the result of the influence of liberal social

philOSOphers on Brown.

145

Brown's women characters share some major character-
istics with the sentimental/gothic heroine, including general
decorum, sensibility, and the tendency to try to control
their sensibility with reason. There are some major diver—
gencies, however. Brown's women do not always have the
physical beauty of their precursors. Also, they are sexually
bolder and less easily shocked by referencestx>sex. Finally,
they often lack even the appearance of docility, being
markedly courageous and independent.

Brown's heroines are much like Richardson's in that
their behavior is thought by many other characters to be a
model for the female sex. This is particularly true of
Brown's first two, Clara Wieland and Constantia Dudley.
Clara is so much a model to those around her that Pleyel
keeps a journal of everything she does and says. His atten-
tion is so minute that it extends to "the colour of a shoe,
the knot of a ribbon" and the arrangements of her break-

46 Carwin's interference in the life of Clara

fast table.
and her friends is instigated by her reputation. Judith,
no paragon of virtue, is so awed by Clara's virtues that
she praises her highly to Carwin, whose curiosity leads him
to tempt this prodigy. Similarly, Constantia's general
decorum_wins the approval of the unsentimental Balfour and
the admiration of the exacting Ormond. Her strength in

adversity is contrasted, of course, to Helena's lack of

resourcefulness. Clara Howard and Jane Talbot are also both

146

highly principled, though Jane is such a realistically

drawn character that her foibles make her an unlikely sen-

timental heroine.

bility,
typical
English
ability
be seen

Men
for

Brown's women also tend to be susceptible to sensi-
though somewhat less so than the heroines of the
sentimental or gothic romance. Brown, like these
novelists, condemns over-sensibility though some

to feel is shown to be necessary to virtue, as can

from Brown's introduction to Arthur Mervyn:

 

only require to be made acquainted with distress
their compassion and their charity to be awakened.

He that depicts, in lively colours, the evils of dis-
ease and poverty, performs an eminent service to the
sufferers, by calling forth benevolence in those who

are

able to afford relief. . . .47

Clara Wieland is certainly the most feeling of Brown's

women characters. She has, as William M. Manly suggests,

a tendency to veer into a melodramatic world of haunting

speculation, though this does not completely negate her

48

reliability as a narrator, as Manly also states. Clara's

sensibility is easily aroused. She writes her memoirs in

part because it is "a luxury thus to feast upon my woes."

49

Within a more mundane situation, her sensibility is obvious

when she describes Catherine:

She never met my eye or occurred to my reflections
without exciting a kind of enthusiasm. Her softness,

her

intelligence, her equanimity, never shall I see

surpassed. I have often shed tears of pleasure at
her approach and pressed her to my bosom in an agony
of fondness.

147

Her feelings are moved by Carwin's voice upon their first
meeting, even though the content of his speech is only a
request for something to drink. Pleyel, easily aroused to
jealousy, says of Clara's reactions to Carwin: "They bespoke
a sensibility somewhat too vivid. . . ."51 Clara strives
to make reason reign over feeling rather than to encourage
these tendencies in herself, however, and the value of
reason to guide oneself is asserted in Wieland, as suggested
by the previous chapter.

Constantia, thanks to her rational education, is
able to overcome sensibility far more than any of the model
gothic and sentimental heroines. She is obviously con-
scious of the dangers of over-sensibility, as we can see
when, after nursing the fatally ill Mary Whiston, she tries
to stifle her feelings that she is mortally ill herself.52
The narrator, to reiterate, says of Constantia that she
"yielded nothing to caprice or passion."53 Inexperience
and a lack of self-knowledge draw Constantia into dangers,
but never emotionalism; her only moment of frenzy is after
Ormond attempts to rape her, when the ambivalence between
her fear and her feelings of attraction to him would natu-
rally be extremely distressing. Helena, by contrast, is
all sensibility, all passion, with no tempering reason.
Her temperament is obviously meant to be a didactic counter-

point to Constantia's. At the other end of the continuum is

Martinette. At first glance, "Her education seemed not

148

widely different from that which Constantia had received."54

However, her experiences in the French Revolution completely
harden her so that she is insensible to individual human
suffering. As she expresses her invulnerability to Con-
stantia, "What are bleeding wounds and mangled corpses when
accustomed to the daily sight of them for years?"55 When
Constantia expresses disbelief that Martinette, being a
woman, would become so inured to the shedding of blood,
Martinette reminds her that women are as influenced by

habit as men. Through Helena and Martinette, Brown criti-
cizes the extremes of hypersensibility and insensibility

since neither leads to virtuous behavior.

In Arthur Mervyn, as in Edgar Huntly, most of the

 

 

sensibility is seized by the hero of the title. A minor
character, Susan Hadwin, is "a soft enthusiast, in whose
bosom devotion and love glowed with an ardour that has

seldom been exceeded."56

Her sensibility leads indirectly
to her death of a broken heart, a sentimental cliché. Ascha
Fielding is her opposite. After her own great sorrows,

she brings herself to America, in hopes that the change of
surroundings and the activity will restore her contentment.
Her plan is efficacious, and self-control is rewarded,
whereas Susan Hadwin's self-indulgence is punished by its

consequences.

Within Clara Howard, both Clara and Mary are ram-

 

pantly sensible. Clara turns hot and cold towards Philip,

149

becoming very loving only when she thinks he is about to die.
Her hysterical benevolence is rewarded by the plot. Mary
does things like leaving Wertheresque notes for Philip,
saying:
Be under no concern, my friend, on my account. Think
not how I shall endure the evils of my former condi-
tion, for I never shall return to it. Thy Mary is
hastening to the grave with a very quick pace. 7

Their indulgence in sensibility seems almost a parody at

times, which is one reason that Clara Howard is Brown's

 

weakest novel.
Jane Talbot is, in some ways, much like Emily

St. Aubert. Both have a natural tendency to over-sensibility.
Mrs. Fielder says to Jane:

Certain indications I early saw in you of a sensibil-

ity that required strict government; an inattention

to anything but feeling; a proneness to romantic

friendship, and a pining after good not consistent

with our natures.5
Both heroines have parents or guardians who attempt to tem-
per these tendencies towards emotional indulgence. Jane's
guardian, unfortunately, rather than trying to teach her
self-control, tries to control Jane by demanding unques-
tioning obedience to herself. Thus Jane is rendered incap-
able of consulting her own understanding about Henry Colden
and simply obeys whichever one is present. As Jane expresses
this herself:

A very different creature, doubtless, I should have

been, if placed under any other guidance. So easily

swayed am I by one that is lord of my affections. No
will, no reason, have I of my own.

150

Her brother takes advantage of her persuadability early in
the novel, and Mrs. Fielder behaves much the same way later,
though not for such selfish reasons. Jane realizes that
her lack of freedom from her emotional ties is a fault

and attempts to become more independent of her feelings.

To a certain extent, she is successful, as evidenced by

her ability to withstand her brother's insistence that she
return with him to Europe. Brown, as mentioned in the
previous chapter, attempts to strike a not-entirely suc-
cessful medium between the value of self-sovereignty and

the value of following wise authority. The death of

Mrs. Fielder, her last minute approval of Henry Colden, and
Colden's conversion all permit a happy ending despite Jane's
lack of adequate freedom from the emotional influence of
those she loves.

In total, many of Brown's women are prone to sensi-
bility, though not to the extent that the typical senti-
mental or gothic heroine is. Like many of the writers in
these British genres, Brown tends to approve a balance
between sensibility and rationality, though his balance
generally tips even more toward the latter. From this
sensibility comes the benevolence which all of Brown's
heroines possess and which was discussed as part of Godwin's
influence on Brown in the previous chapter.60 Brown may
question benevolence through one male character, Edgar

Huntly, but he never questions it through his female

151

characters. This is true even when beneficence may seem

to the reader to be carried to ridiculous and irrational
extremes, as when Clara Howard gives up Philip to Mary
Wilmot. Benevolence is one characteristic which Brown's
women have completely in common with the sentimental/gothic
heroine.

Brown's heroines sharply differ from this model in
three respects. First, they are not always physically
attractive; physical beauty is not shown as a prerequisite
for masculine attention. Also, they are sexually much
bolder than their British counterparts. Finally, they
often lack even the appearance of docility.

Brown's women characters vary a great deal in their
physical attractiveness, and he generally devotes less
space to outward appearances than do such sentimental and
gothic novelists as Richardson and Lewis. His emphasis is
much more upon the characters and minds of the women. This
may be partially accounted for by Brown's de-emphasis on
the standard seduction plot. It also may be a result of
Brown's greater interest in the intellectual and moral than
in the more sensuous aspects of aesthetics. Indeed, those
women characters whom he presents as being chiefly note-
worthy for physical beauty are often intended as negative
contrasts to more complete women. Helena Cleves is a good
example of such a character. Her physical attributes are

described in much greater detail than are those of the

152

heroine, Constantia; Brown describes Helena's beauty at
great length:

Helena Cleves was endowed with every feminine and
fascinating quality. Her features were modified by
the most transient sentiments, and were the seat of

a softness at all times blushful and bewitching.

All those graces of symmetry, smoothness, and lustre,
which assemble in the imagination of the painter when
he calls from the Paphian divinity, blended their per-
fections in the shade, complexion, and hair of this
lady.61

Clemenza Lodi, Welbeck's mistress in Arthur Mervyn, is

 

another example of this type of character, and she is simi-
larly described.

The heroines and more approved women characters
tend to vary in physical appearance, but even when they are
very lovely, Brown underplays their physical attractive-
ness. Clara Wieland's beloved Pleyel would be in an excel-
lent position to praise her beauty during his conversations
and monologue. However, the few comments he makes about
this are clearly subordinated to his concern with her intel-
ligence and spirit, as can be seen in his most physical
descriptions of her:

"Here/'said I [Pleyel], "is a being after whom sages
may model their transcendent intelligence and paint-
ers their ideal beauty. Here is exemplified that
union between intellect and form which has hitherto
existed only in the conceptions of the poet."62
He continues by speaking of her abilities to debate, her
principles, and her other talents. One would be hard

pressed to draw a portrait of Clara from the description of

her attentive lover.

153

Similarly, Constantia's beauty, though mentioned at
a number of points in Ormond, is neither stressed nor made
concrete. As noted, less space is devoted to a physical
description of Constantia than is given to that of Helena.
Constantia's physical appearance is not made a major ele—
ment in Ormond's desire to seduce and his decision to rape
her. In this respect, Brown sharply differs from senti-
mental and gothic novelists. Lewis, for instance, centers
Ambrosio's lust for Antonia in her physical beauty and,
less importantly, her innocence; Ambrosio wants her as
soon as he sees her. Richardson, in his portrayal of
Lovelace's lust for Clarissa, comes closest because Clarissa's
pride and inaccessibility form a major part of her attrac-
tiveness to her assailant.

A number of Brown's other women characters are
simply assumed attractive, the author devoting a similar
lack of attention to their appearances. These include

Miss Carlton and Eliza Hadwin in Arthur Mervyn, Clarice and

 

Mrs. Lorimer in Edgar Huntly, Jane Talbot, and Clara Howard.

 

Other women are presented as plain or actually unattrac-
tive. Mary Wilmot, for instance, contrasts her own home-
liness to Clara Howard's beauty in a discussion with Philip:

That passion which a form homely and uncouth like mine,
tarnished and withered by drudgery and sorrow and by
comparative old age (for I am nine years older than
you) . . . was incapable of weakening, cannot fail to
be excited by the youth and beauty, the varied accomp-
lishments and ineffable graces, of this stranger.

154

Her self-description is not merely modest self—disparagement
since it is corroborated by Philip's account:
She was much older than I. Humiliation and anxiety
had deeply preyed on her constitution, which had never
been florid or robust, and made still less that small
portion of external grace or beauty which nature had
conferred upon her. . . . I never loved Mary Wilmot.
Disparity of age, the dignity and sedateness of her
carriage, and perhaps the want of personal attrac-
tions, inspired me with a sentiment very different
from love. 4
That Philip's love should center on the lovely Clara rather
than on the homely Mary fits the sentimental formula. How—
ever, this consistency is contradicted by the wealthy
Sedley's unflagging pursuit of Mary's love. Once Mary has
recovered from her heartbreak over the loss of Philip

Stanley, his persistence is rewarded with marriage.

In Arthur Mervyn, Brown reverses the usual formula.

 

Mervyn rejects the loving Eliza whom he describes as having
"artless loveliness" and about whom he says:
She has surely the sweetest voice, the most speaking
features, and most delicate symmetry that ever woman
possessed. Her guileless simplicity and tenderness
made her more enchanting.
Instead he chooses Ascha Fielding about whom Dr. Stevens
says "A brilliant skin is not hers; nor elegant proportions;
nor majestic stature. . . ."66 Clearly Brown has rejected
the simplistic equation of physical beauty and intrinsic
character, an equation prevalent in his sentimental and

gothic precursors. His lack of emphasis on the superficial

permits him more time and space to explore characteristics

155

which are the result of something beyond mere chance, and
the implication is that his readers should do likewise.

Another difference between Brown's women and their
precursors is that many of the American heroines repress
their sexuality less. They tend to be more direct in their
relationships with men and to find conventional feminine
modesty difficult and even dangerous. This directness often
permits Brown's heroines more tenderness, verbal and physi-
cal, with their lovers before marriage, though they by no
means permit pre-marital sexual consummation.

Clara Wieland learns the value of Openness, as
Pleyel's jealousy might have been forestalled had she given
him a direct avowal of her affections. At the same time
that she is deciding not to say anything, she thinks to
herself, "The line of delicate propriety--how hard it is

67 After her

not to fall short, and not to overleap it!"
trials are complete and when she has regained Pleyel, she
views even her halting modesty as perverse: "My scruples

68 Clarissa, on the other

were preposterous and criminal."
hand, is so far from being able to admit her attraction to
Lovelace, even to herself, that she says "I am . . . by
God's grace, above temptation from this sex."69
Clara Wieland also rejects, at least emotionally,
the sentimental ethic that the rape victim should kill her-

self rather than her assailant:

156

bk) cowardice had ever been held by me in greater

abhorrence than that which prompted an injured female
to destroy, not her injurer ere the injury was perpe-
trated, but herself when it was without remedy. . . .

70
She is, as mentioned, angry at herself for having considered
self-destruction when she feels in danger, and she is deter-
mined not to repeat this error.

Ormond, as Sydney Krause has suggested, contains
considerably more sensual excitement than even the blatantly
sexual gothic novel, The Monk, and it hold more explicit
sexuality than its sentimental predecessors.7l As Krause
has noted, part of the vicarious excitement results directly
from the greater depth of the characters and the fact that:

Constantia also differs from the stereotyped pursued

maiden in that she is keenly attracted to her seducer

and refuses to see his motive even when he suggests

it to her.72
This is a convenient blindness for one who always feels
obliged to act rationally according to the information she
knows; thus, she thinks she can absolve herself on the
basis that she cannot be expected to act on what she does
not recognize. If she had allowed herself to consciously
recognize Ormond's sexual intentions, she would not have
reacted to his night time visit to her deserted country
home "with some degree of palpitation . . . whether from
fear or from joy, or from intermixed emotions, it would not

be easy to ascertain."73

Her unconscious self-deception
might have been easily bearable had she not been forced to

kill Ormond to avoid rape.

157

Constantia is also an unlikely sentimental/gothic

heroine because of her disregard for sexual conventions.
She is not as easily distressed by sexual overtures as, say,
Pamela or Emily. For instance, when she goes to the tavern
to find Craig, the innkeeper lewdly suggests that her pretty
face will bring him home soon enough; however:

Constantia was not disconcerted at this address. She

knew that females are subjected, through their own

ignorance and cowardice, to a thousand mortifications.

She set its true value on base and low-minded treat-

ment. She disdained to notice this ribaldry. . . .
Also, she becomes close friends with Helena, even though she
knows Helena is Ormond's mistress, and with Ormond himself,
who publicly keeps a mistress and flaunts society in var-
ious ways. Helena's position does not horrify her; rather,
Constantia is concerned with the unhappiness which results
from her friend's role. She even hesitates before deciding
that marriage would be the best solution, and she is dis-
tressed at Helena's suicide. A sentimental heroine would
have considered marriage or death the only viable solutions
to Helena's problems. Once Constantia does determine that
Ormond should marry his mistress, she violates all conven-
tion by seeking an intereview with him, a near stranger at

this time, to inform him of his duties.

Eliza Hadwin, in Arthur Mervyn, is similarly uncon-

 

ventional. She is explicit about her love for Arthur. She
asks to live with him in the city as a sister, not a wife,

in an attempt to avoid losing him. Although Arthur is

158

concerned with the gossip which such a situation would
probably arouse, Eliza has no fears of this.

Jane Talbot feels conflicted between passion and
duty. This conflict is present in many sentimental and
gothic heroines, but Jane's frequent disregard for sexual
conventions and her expressions of fondness to her lover
are not typical. Mrs. Fielder Often articulates Jane's
indiscretions from the viewpoint of one who has a highly
sentimental View of sexual chastity; she is given to
remarks like "The preservation of your virtue was unspeak-
ably of more importance in my eyes than of your life."75
For one thing, while betrothed to Lewis Talbot and visit—
ing friends, Jane permitted "such yeey frequent visits, such
yegy long walks" that the friends inform Mrs. Fielder who
writes Jane a warning note about allowing "one not regu-

76 Once Jane is married

larly introduced" such liberties.
and Talbot is away on a voyage, her relationship with Colden
becomes, to Mrs. Fielder's eyes, regrettably more intimate
and confidential. Jane also commits a great indiscretion

by permitting Colden to spend the night in her house once
during a storm. Only she and her maid are there, and Jane
talks with him until three or four o'clock in the morning.
This incident opens the way for Miss Jessup's slanderous
evidence for Jane's supposed infidelity to Talbot. The

doctored letter causes Jane great confusion because of her

unconscious emotional infidelity. She tells Colden:

159

Me thinks I then felt as I should have felt if the
charge had been true. I shuddered as if to look back
would only furnish me with proofs of a guilt of which
I had not hitherto been conscious--proofs that had
merely escaped remembrance, or had failed to produce
their due effect, from some infatuation of mind.

Once she is widowed, she gladly permits Colden
liberties that no sentimental or gothic heroine could have
allowed without enormous guilt; certainly Pamela does not
permit Mr. B. half as many demonstrations of affection.

For instance, in a letter to Colden, Jane teases him by
saying: "But that somebody's hand was never (if I recollect
aright) so highly honoured as this paper. Have I not told
you that your letter is deposited eexe my heart?"78 In a
reversal of the behavior of most sentimental heroines in
love, she accuses her beloved of being "not quite passionate
enough" and urges him to show "a little more impetuosity

and fervour in thy tenderness."79 Apparently, she fre-
quently takes the initiative in demonstrativeness; she tells
Colden that "The little impertinent has often stopped your
mouth--at times too when your talk charmed her most; but

then it was not with words."80

At another point, she writes
him that she would bestow a hearty kiss or two if he were
within arm's length.81 Emily St. Aubert would have been
shocked at such behavior.

Their increased sexual independence is just one
facet of Brown's heroines' tendency to be much more indepen-

dent than the sentimental and gothic models they followed.

As has been shown earlier, they have a much greater tendency

160

to follow inner sanction than external authority. Often
they reject even the appearance of docility which Pamela
and Emily cultivated. This is more true of Clara Wieland
and Constantia Dudley than of Jane Talbot. In this
instance as in so many others, the characterization of
women in Brown's novels leans more towards the sentimental—
gothic model the less it is influenced by his earlier
interest in testing out liberal ideas derived from asso-
ciationist psychology, Godwinian liberalism, or feminism.
Hence, Brown's earliest women characters are somewhat less
like the sentimental and gothic prototypes than are the
later ones. All of them, however, despite differences
(especially differences of degree), show the strong influ—
ence of this type on Brown's characterization. The strength
of this influence is not surprising, both because he appre-
ciated these two genres and because he recognized their
popularity. Because of personal reasons and a desire to
instruct, Brown hOped that his own novels would be equally

entertaining so that many people would buy and read them.

161

NOTES--CHAPTER IV

lCBB, "Walstein's School," (August), p. 337.

2CBB, "Walstein's School," (August), p. 337.

3CBB, "A Modern Socrates. To the Editor of the
Monthly Magazine," Monthly Magaeine 2 (May 1800), 328.
Clark states that this article "may with fair certainty
be assigned to Brown." Clark, p. 251, footnote 13.

4
1803), 9.

SDEK, p. 68A3.

 

CBB, "Authorship," Literary Magazine 1 (Oct. 1,

 

6Letter to James Brown (April 1800), from Clark,

p. 195.

7Russel B. Nye, "Introduction," to KSU-CEAA Ormond,
unpubl. T8 at KSU Bibliographical and Textual Center,
p. III, 1.

8Nye, p. III, 1.

9Mildred Davis Doyle, "Sentimentalism in American
Periodicals, 1741-1800," 1944 abr. of Diss. New York Uni-
versity 1941, p. 2.

10Letter to Bringhurst (Dec. 21, 1792), DEK, p. 615.

llNye, p. III, 3.

l3CBB, "On a Taste for the Picturesque," Monthly
Magazine 3 (July 1800), 13.

l4CBB, "On a Taste for the Picturesque," p. 13.

15Edgar Huntly, p. 4.

 

16Wieland, p. 97.

17Harry R. Warfel, "Charles Brockden Brown's German
Sources," MLQ 1 (Sept. 1940), 359.

18Warfel, "German Sources," pp. 362-363. Tschink's
work was a variation on Schiller's incomplete work, Der
Geisterseher (1789).

19

 

See footnotes 13 and 14, this chapter.

162

20Samuel Richardson, Pamela (New York: W. W. Norton

and Company, Inc., 1958), p. 16.

21Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin Company, 1962), p. 115.

22Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho (London:
Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 126.

23

 

Radcliffe, pp. 119 and 123.

24Radcliffe, p. 584.

25Fanny Burney, Evelina, or the History of a Young
Lady's Entrance into the World (New York: W. W. Norton and
Company, Inc., 1965), p. 92.

26

 

 

Radcliffe, p. 375.

27Matthew G. Lewis, The Monk (New York: Grove Press,
Inc., 1952), p. 145.

28Richardson, Pamela, p. 367 and pp. 279, 395, and
494.

29Richardson, Clarissa, p. 26.
30Lewis, p. 375.

1Richardson, Clarissa, p. 184.
32Burney, pp. 260 and 267.
33Radcliffe, p. 5.
34Lewis, p. 234.

35David H. Hirsch, "Charles Brockden Brown as a
Novelist of Ideas," Books at Brown 20 (1965), 167-168.

36

 

Clara Howard, pp. 317-318.

 

37Jane Talbot, p. 123.

 

38Ormond, p. 141.

39Ormond, p. 143.

40Ormond, p. 20.

41Wieland, p. 42.

163

42Ormond, p. 175.

43Ormond, p. 175.

44Clara Howard, pp. 310 and 312.

45Jane Talbot, p. 134.

46Wieland, p. 141.

47Arthur Mervyn, I, p. 4.

48William M. Manly, "The Importance of Point of

 

 

 

View in Brockden Brown's Wieland," American Literature 35

(1963):

 

313.

49Wieland, p. 240.

50Wieland, p. 47.

SlWieland, p. 142.

52Ormond, p. 50.

53Ormond, p. 20.

54Ormond, p. 185.

55Ormond, p. 201.

56Arthur Mervyn, I, p. 132.

57Clara Howard, p. 296.

58Jane Talbot, p. 66.

59Jane Talbot, p. 92.

 

 

 

 

60
See Chapter 3; PP- 69-70, 73, and 76-81.

61Ormond, p. 116.

62Wieland, p. 140.

63Clara Howard, p. 298.

 

64Clara Howard, p. 319.

 

6SArthur Mervyn, II, pp. 78 and 87.

 

66Arthur Mervyn, II, p. 218.

 

67
68

Wieland, p.

Wieland, p.

69
7O

Wieland, p.

lKrause, pp.

98.

98.

116.

164

Richardson, Clarissa, p. 187.

572-574.

72Krause, p. 577.

73Ormond, p.

74

Ormond, p.

75Jane

Talbot,

 

76Jane

Talbot,

 

77Jane

Talbot,

 

78Jane

Talbot,

 

79Jane

Talbot,

 

8OJane

Talbot,

 

81Jane

Talbot,

 

261.

92.

74.
68.
82.
53.
54.
79.

110.

CHAPTER V

BROWN'S NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE AND

THE CREATION OF CHARACTER

In the preceding chapters, the focus has been upon
how Brown's three motives for writing--self—therapy, didac-
ticism, and the desire to entertain--led to the three major
emphases in his characterization of women. 'In this chapter,
the focus will shift to an examination of how Brown employed
narrative techniques to create women characters who were
far more memorable than those of his American contempo-
raries. Character function, form, point of view, and style
constitute four categories of narrative techniques which
intersect to create character. All of these categories
inter-relate and, at some points, over-lap.

The concept of character function assumes that
particular characters perform specific functions in certain
works. The range of functions and the particular functions
required vary enormously according to the nature of the
work. Spenser's Una, Milton's Satan, Tolstoi's Pierre
Bezukhov only begin to suggest the possible range. Robert
Scholes and Robert Kellogg have established three useful

divisions of character functions: the illustrative, the

165

166

representational, and the esthetic.l In its purest form,
into which fictional characters rarely conveniently fall,
the illustrative character demonstrates ethical or meta-
physical principles; the personification of Lust in a
medieval morality play is illustrative and does not move
the audience to reSpond as though this figure were a whole
or real human being. By contrast, the representational
type does elicit such a response. Scholes and Kellogg
divide this category into the sociological and the psycho-
logical:
Most representational meaning in narrative lies in
that area contested by the individual and society.
Some novelists are more concerned with social por-
traiture, others with psychological, but representa-
tional values must be seen both psychologically and
sociologically. They are the product of the novelist's
concern for the identity of the individual and the wel-
fare of the society.2
Of these two forms of representational presentation, Scholes
and Kellogg suggest that the psychological is more mimetic
than the sociological since characterization by sociologi-
cal situation requires a process of generalization. By
contrast:
. . . characterization by presentation of thought pro-
cess does not inevitably include references to systems
of psychological classification. The psychological
impulse tends toward the presentation of highly indi-
vidualized figures who resist abstraction and general-
ization, and whose motivation is not susceptible to
rigid ethical interpretation.
Not inevitably, certainly, but Brown is at times directly

influenced by such psychological systems, as shown in the

third chapter of this dissertation. Whileluaisaniexception

167

to Scholes' and Kellogg's generalization, psychological
classification does not weigh as muchzhithe balance with
Brown's characterization of his principal women characters
as does mimesis.

The third type of character function which Scholes
and Kellogg present is the esthetic. This function, which
tends away from both mimesis and meaning, utilizes char-
acters for a strictly literary purpose. A villain whose
sole function is to be villainous would be an example of
this type. In Brown's work, the maiden in distress whom
Edgar Huntly rescues is a textbook example of the esthetic
function; she is both maidenly and distressed, but not a
bit more.

Art, following life, tends not to be so easily cate-
gorized. Character function is no exception, as Scholes
and Kellogg would be among the first to insist. For
instance, they posit the tales of Hawthorne as belonging
to those "narrative works which gain many of their effects
precisely by straddling this precipitous border between the
illustrative and the representational."4 Many of Brown's
major characters, too, are at once esthetic, illustrative,
and representational, leaning toward mimesis. The esthetic
element may be traced to his use of sentimental and gothic
models; the illustrative, to his didacticism; and the repre—
sentational, to his authorial eye turned upon himself and

Others.

168

In speaking about the representational element in
Brown, it is useful to borrow W. J. Harvey's term, "angle

of mimesis." Harvey informs us that Middlemarch has a far

 

narrower angle of mimesis than does Alice in Wonderland.5

 

While all of Brown's novels tend more toward Eliot's angle

in Middlemarch, some have a narrower angle of mimesis than

 

others. Most critics would agree that the angle is nar-

rowest in Brown's last two novels, Clara Howard and Jane

 

Talbot; widest in the middle two, Edgar Huntly and Arthur

 

Mervyn; and in-between in the first pair, Wieland and Ormond.
No value judgment is intended by this ranking. It merely
reflects a difference in the nature of the novels themselves.
Interestingly, women characters are least important in
those novels in which the mimetic angle is widest, though
no particular significance can be attributed to this. It
is important not to make too much of this shift toward
mimesis in Brown's last pair of novels because all six were
published within a: four-year period (1798-1801) and, at
one point in 1799, Brown apparently worked on five of his
published novels simultaneously.6

In addition to function, form affects characteri-
zation. The class termed "narration" splits into two major
orders which Scholes and Kellogg call the empirical and
fictional.7 The novel certainly constitutes a major family
of the fictional order. Novels can be further subdivided

into numerous genera. All of Brown's novels fall into the

169

genus of "epistolary novel" if this term is used very
loosely. Its looseness is obvious when the vast differ-
ences in the forms of Ormond, Arthur Mervyn, and Jane Talbot
are considered. To differentiate these forms adequately,

we must incorporate point of view.

Point of view, in all its shadings, has tremendous
effect on character. Scholes and Kellogg say well what
should be but is not obvious when they remind us that point
of View is different for the author than it is for the
audience. For the author, it is

. . . the primary way he controls and shapes his mate-
rial. Once made, his choice of point of View and the
mode of language apprOpriate to it will influence his
presentation of character, incident, and every other
thing present.8
On the other hand, for the reader:
. . . point of view is not an esthetic matter but a
mode of perception. The point of View in a given
novel controls the reader's impression of everything
else. . . . The story takes the shape its author has
given it, a shape guaranteed for us primarily by the
point of viewgthrough which the characters and events
are filtered.
In Brown's case, as with so many other eighteenth century
novelists, we cannot know how much his control and shaping
reflect a conscious choice. In our century, the novel and
criticism of narrative technique are taken much more seri-
ously than they were a hundred and seventy-five years ago;
we must be careful not to graft our obsessions onto another

age. Despite this caution, the distinction between point

of view for author and audience remains valuable.

170

Just as the epistolary novel form is used too broadly
by Brown to be a useful classification, so the term "first
person narrator" does no more than stack all of his novels
into a single heap. Wayne Booth, who has adamantly objected
to such oversimplifications, proposes some distinctions
which will be useful in consideration of these novels.lo
First, he suggests that a differentiation be made between
the historic person of the author and the implied author.
The historic author's personal viewpoints will always dif-
fer at least a little from the author created in the novel,
the implied author. Narrators can be divided into those
who are undramatised (who may be essentially the same as
the implied author) and those who are dramatised. Drama—
tised narrators include observers and narrator—agents who
produce some effect on the events. All of Brown's nar-
rators are dramatised narrator-agents; when the term "nar-
rator" is used in discussing Brown's novels, this should
be remembered. He presents a complete continuum of
narrator-agents, ranging from the peripherally involved

Dr. Stevens in Arthur Mervyn, to Sophia Westwyn's greater

 

involvement in Ormond, to Clara Wieland's central and total
involvement in Brown's first novel.

Narrators can also range from being extremely self-
conscious of their roles as writers to being apparently
unconscious of their writing functions. None of Brown's

major narrators is an unconscious scribe, though the

171

narrators in the last two novels are much more conscious
than in the others. Some of the "incidental" narrators
within the framework of the other novels are unconscious
insofar as their words are addressed only to characters and
not to readers; Clithero's confession exemplifies this.

Narrators can choose to tell their stories primarily
as scene, mostly as summary, or as a combination of both,
the most common.. While "telling" is sometimes flatly con-
sidered inferior to "showing" by many modern critics,
obviously summary permits compression of time and enables
a writer to focus on more important events or characters
by greater dramatic develOpment. Within Brown's novels,
those narrator-agents who are least actively involved tend
to offer mostly didactic commentary, whereas those who are
more actively involved are also important to the dramatic
structure. In Ormond, Sophia Westwyn remains an ethical
voice in the wings until she rejoins Constantia midway
through the novel. After this, her didactic barrage influ-
ences Constantia to give up Ormond, which causes him to
attempt rape, and which finally concludes in his death. No
other of Brown's narrators makes such a shift.

Another important element is the degree and kind
of distance. The kind of distance principally involves
moral, intellectual, temporal, and spatial. The narrator
has more or less distance from the implied author, the

characters in the story, and the reader. The implied

172

author, in addition to having a certain distance from the
narrator, has more or less distance from the reader and
from the characters. One of the problems which frequently
arises in Brown criticism in that critics often read
greater distance between the implied author and the char-
acters than Brown probably intended. This causes them to
see purposeful irony where they should see a difference in
values between those of an eighteenth century implied
author and those of a twentieth century audience.ll

A special type of distance which Booth mentions is
reliability. A narrator may be reliable or unreliable.

If he is unreliable, he may be simply mistaken, or he may

be trying to misguide us; there are also differences in
degree of unreliability. Modern novelists tend to use the
purposefully unreliable narrator much more than their pre-
decessors, so care should be taken in finding ironic unreli-
ability in Brown's fiction. Whether or not he or she is
reliable, the narrator's viewpoint can be isolated, sup-
ported by other vieWpoints, or corrected by other nar—
rators. This is an important element in the presentation

of characters.

Finally, Booth points out that narrators may be
considered limited to what can be learned by natural means,
or they can seem to have a special privileged access to
information. Brown's women characters present the full

possible continuum here, ranging from Clara Howard's

173

complete ignorance of events until she had received infor-
mative letters to SOphia Westwyn's mysterious comments to
the equally mysterious I. E. Rosenberg on her sources of
information about Ormond: "It was not prudent to unfold
ell the means by which I gained a knowledge of his
actions. . . ." and "I shall omit to mention the means by
which I became acquainted with his character. . . ."12
The fourth element of narrative technique which
helps create characterization is style. Style is, as any
translator could tell us, inextricably bound up with con-
tent. The way we say something seeps into and becomes
part of whatever it is that is communicated. What two
words, for instance, are truly synonymous? From the other
end of the situation, obviously an author's very choice of
subject elicits some words more readily than others; a
mysterious death is more apt to call forth words like
"murder" or "suicide" than "giraffe" or "calliope." This
permutation is more obvious in some literary forms than in
others. It is a stronger tendency in the tightly knit
sonnet than in the epic drama, and stronger in the epic
drama that in that "baggy monster," the novel. The major
reasons for this have been suggested by Ian Watt, who
states that the aim of producing a supposedly authentic
account of actual experience of individuals leads to dif-
fuseness rather than concentration and to representation

rather than metaphor.l3 In general, the style of novels,

174

the way they are written, is closer to the language of
everyday life than is the style of poetry--excluding those
modern novels which depart from both the traditions of
romance and of realism. This greater referentiality
results in less of a meld of style and content and makes it
easier to consider style separately.

Style is comprised of two major elements: syntax,
including sentence structure, sentence length, and punc-
tuation; and diction, encompassing the sources of words,
their relative familiarity, and whether they are more or
less abstract or concrete, and figurative or literal. The
style creates a "tone" or implied attitude towards the sub-
ject and the reader, which is often discernible even when
it is very difficult to analyze how the writer has created
it stylistically. The style in which a character "speaks"
or "writes" helps characterize him or her, even though
Brown may not have attempted to do so as consciously as a
modern author might.

In general, attitudes towards Brown's style have
shifted quite a bit. As David Lee Clark has said:

It is significant that Brown's contemporaries con-
sidered his style elegant, pure, and unaffected,
while later generations, with some exceptions, con-
demned it as Latinized, overscholarly, artificial,
and melodramatic. The "elegant" style of his novels
was falling into disfavor even as he wrote.1

John Neal, for instance, in 1824 praises Brown's simplicity:

His language was downright prose--the natural dic—
tion of the man himself--earnest--full of substantial

175

good sense, clearness, and simplicity; very sober

and very plain, so as to leave only the meaning upon

the mind. . . .15
Such praise was tempered by the fact that Neal did not
believe Brown knew how to write differently. Even more
favorably, G. C. Verplanck in 1819 praises Brown for both
simplicity and close observation of external objects:

Most of his descriptions are simple and many might

appear bald. There is no attempt at what is too

vaguely called fine writing; no needless ornament,

no sacrifice of spirit and energy from a weak ambi-

tion of harmony or finish, no use of a strictly

poetical turn to excite the imagination, when another

and simpler one will convey the meaning more defi-

nitely. 6
That Brown's early critics were no more unanimous than his
later ones can be seen by Richard Henry Dana's criticism
eight years later. Dana claims that he has difficulty
bearing with Brown's "dull poverty and pedantry of phrase"
as well as with "a most painstaking avoidance of the Saxon,
whenever it is possible, and a use of words of Latin origin
in such combinations as they were never put into before."17

It is the negative opinion of Brown's style which

has predominated in this century until very recently. This
is obvious from both the relative absence of attention to
Brown's style and also the nature of what has been said.
Those twentieth century critics who favor Brown have usually
tempered criticism or benign neglect of his style, with
admiration for his ground-breaking role as an American

novelist, his presentation of abnormal psychology, or his

use of ideas. For instance, Warfel praises Wieland for

176

intellectual content and psychological insight into char-
acters, but says of the style:
Brown's style emphasizes the intellectuality of the
novel. The vocabulary is large; the words are not
notably learned although the tendency to employ poly—
syllables of Latin derivation is apparent. . . .
Circumlocution replaces direct description.

More recently, the pendulum has swung back to a
somewhat more favorable View of, and greater interest in,
Brown's style. Donald Ringe typifies this change by
remarks such as this:

Though it is not at all difficult to find in his
[Brown's] books examples of his writing that are
clearly ludicrous, such defects are not really so
serious as they seem to be when the sentences are
pulled out of context and viewed in isolation.
Brown is, of course, no great stylist; but in his
three best books, the style serves as a suitable
vehicle for the action presented.19

Despite this shift in attitude and interest, commen-
tators have generally underplayed or overlooked one impor-
tant cause of much which is now considered pretentious
writing. That is, Brown's writing probably seemed simpler
and more straightforward to reviewers of his age because
they contrasted it to other writing of their time, whereas
to an audience accustomed to modern writers, it appears
relatively Latinate and convoluted. The movement towards a
plain and easy prose which began in the late seventeenth
century had already influenced some writers by Brown's
time, but the tradition of stylistic embellishment had not
died entirely. According to Ian Watt, before the eighteenth

century:

177

The previous stylistic tradition for fiction was not
primarily concerned with the correspondence of words
to things, but rather with the extrinsic beauties
which could be bestowed upon description and action
by the use of rhetoric. So even if the new writers
of fiction had rejected the old tradition of mixing
poetry with their prose . . . there would still have
remained a strong source of interest in its own right,
rather than as a purely referential medium.
Watt is speaking, of course, of an English audience, but
there is little reason for Americans to have felt much
differently as early as 1800; certainly they admired many
of the same writers as did their British counterparts.

It must be remembered in these considerations that
the reading of much secular literature was relatively new
to those outside of the upper classes. Brown himself
yearned at times to be that magnificent anachronism, a
gentleman of letters. Members of the upper-class audience
had been well-educated to understand and to write, for
their own amusement, literature in a style quite unlike
ordinary speech. They could understand classical allusions,
for they had read the classics; Latinate words posed no
difficulty, for they could read and write Latin. Therefore,
it is not surprising to find that many early novels were
written in what now seems a rather "high" style. The break
from the older tradition could hardly be made overnight,
and writers of the new genre, the novel, needed time to
develop new traditions. To many of his contemporaries,

therefore, Brown's novelistic style may have represented

another step in the direction of simplicity and directness.

178

For the purposes of these prefatory remarks on
style, it has been necessary to lump together all of
Brown's writing as though he used a single style consis-
tently. This is, of course, not the case. One of the
major reasons for the recent increase of interest in Brown's
style is that he does alter style to fit the occasion and
the character.

In the course of this consideration of how Brown's
choice of character function, form, point of view, and
style combine and interact to characterize women, we will
begin with Wieland and proceed chronologically through the
novels, noting comparisons and contrasts as these seem
appropriate. Despite the short span of time in which Brown
wrote all of his novels, Jane Talbot, while not Brown's
best-remembered female character, is the one whose char-
acterization involved the greatest craftsmanship. There-
fore, this choice of organization will permit us to con—
clude with some reflection upon a great but often overlooked
achievement by Brown.

Wieland contains four women characters: Clara
Wieland, Catherine Pleyel Wieland, Louisa Conway, and
Judith. Of these, only Clara is characterized in any depth,
and her characterization is extensive indeed. Judith,
Clara's servant, fulfills a largely esthetic role: her
affair with Carwin is necessary to explain his original

motives for secrecy and ventriloquism. Also, her stories

179

about Clara arouse Carwin's curiosity and lead him to
test her fearlessness. Louisa Conway, on the other hand,
is so unnecessary esthetically that the scenes in which
she appears are often considered a flaw in the total pat-
tern of Wieland, a peripheral subplot. Her only discern-
ible esthetic purpose is to provide Clara a chance to prove
her benevolence which Brown could have done in other sim-
pler ways. Possibly he had intended to expand Louisa's
role and hasty composition led him astray. As it is, her
only significant function is illustrative. She provides
an opportunity for Clara to discover and relate Louisa's
mother's story, a standard seduction subplot in which her
mother is betrayed by a secretive male. A vague parallel
is possible here with Carwin's secrecy. In Wieland's
conclusion, Clara herself draws this parallel out further
than seems natural by stating that in both cases, if the
victims had been wiser, the deceivers would have been
foiled.21
Catherine is a surprisingly flat character. Con-
sidering her relationship with Catherine as both beloved
childhood friend and sister-in-law, Clara tells us very
little about her. Clara describes her statically in a few
scenes and tells us that they have similar religious views
and temperaments. Catherine may be an additional foil to
Wieland, whose metaphysical interests and disposition are so

diametrically Opposed to his wife's. If so, this is another

180

way she fulfills an esthetic function, her major role in
tflmanovel. Mainly she embodies the reproachless wife and
produces the children for her mad Wieland to slaughter.
Their deaths, in turn, give Clara a mystery to solve and a
tragedy to overcome.

In constrast, Clara is a tender balance of the
esthetic, illustrative, and representational. Her esthetic
role is obvious: she is the main narrator-agent and the
heroine who is intricately involved with all major plot
strands. Her illustrative role has been dealt with in
the third chapter; she acts out or embodies elements of
associationist psychology, Godwinism, and feminism. She
goes beyond these categories at many times to be truly
mimetic, surprising to the reader and, perhaps, to the
author. It is not esthetically necessary for her to decide
to meet Carwin at Mettingen; Brown has already shown the
escaped Wieland breaking into Pleyel's house and trying to
find Clara at their uncle Cambridge's house. It would not
have been improbable for him to have tried once again, this
time successfully so that the attempted murder could have
taken place elsewhere. Instead, Clara surprises the reader
by giving:h1to her desire to see her old house after
apparently having recognized the foolishness of it and
changing her mind. She demonstrates her feeble rationaliza-
tion, a process with which most readers would be able to

identify, by stating that she must go there to retrieve some

181

journals which obviously her uncle could have obtained
for her. This incident causes a number of responses in the
reader: surprise at her action, fear for her, and recog-
nition of her self-justification of a silly decision.
Such a complex of responses gives the reader a sense of
her realness which is obtained neither from the other
female characters in this novel nor from the heroines of
Brown's competitors' novels.
The form of Wieland is only nominally epistolary.
Lewis M. Bush supplies a more positive term for it: fic-
titious autobiography. He suggests that it is set in the
form of a rhetorical monologue, that it is a confession
novel whose non-fiction predecessor is the memoir.22
The narrative pretense is that Clara has been
requested to write an account of the events which occurred
in her family to an unidentified person who has a right to
hear of them. She also justifies the narrative because of
its didactic value. Apparently, the bulk of it is to
seem to have been written before the fire which finally
forces her to leave the source of her sorrows. Within this
narration, Clara is alternatively calm and re-frightened
by the events she has just survived, though she tries to
remain composed. This long discourse includes two short
letters from Carwin, Pleyel's long soliloquy, part of a
transcript of Theodore Wieland's defense before the bar,

and Carwin's confession to Clara. One final letter by

182

Clara to her mysterious correspondent follows the major nar-
ration. This letter, supposedly written three years after
the fire, permits Clara to recount her recovery and to
re-evaluate the events which have happened to her.
Obviously, the novel's form allows less Opportunity to hear
other viewpoints on Clara, other characters, and the
reported events than a truly epistolary novel would, and it
allows Clara to control how much of the consciousness of
other characters is seen. It does provide extensive self-
evaluation and self-characterization of Clara herself. To
borrow words from John Bayley, the process of creation in
this form is one and the same with the reader's knowing

and finding out what she is like.22 Her process of telling
what has happened, her very words, create her for the audi-
ence. This is appropriate since the center of the novel

is not the action, as gory and dramatic as it is, but
Clara's response to it, her transformation.

Clara's is not the only transformation in the novel,
although it is the most important one. The repentant
Carwin becomes an agriculturist in Pennsylvania, and the
stricken Wieland, of course, commits suicide once he com-
prehends his murder. This is one example of the device
which gives somewhat more shape to Wieland's form than does
Clara's essentially chronological monologue. Warner Bertoff

defines this element of order as:

183

. . . thematic repetition of successive and cumula-

tive analogy. Brown's novels proceed through a

chain of incidents which, though disconnected, restate

and sometimes deepen, each one, the common theme.
The Stuart—Maxwell subplot is, as suggested earlier, a less
successful version of this technique. The Wieland family
history of insanity, especially religious mania, is a much
better one since it Operates on several levels: as a plot
device, it foreshadows Theodore Wieland's madness; as
intellectual background, it suggests the hereditary nature
of insanity; and as explanation of character motive, it
helps create Clara's concern about her brother, which leads
to her foreshadowing dream about him.

Clara, as the central narrator of Wieland, is also
the most actively involved of all of Brown's female
narrator-agents. She is relatively self-conscious of her-
self as a writer. Occasionally she explains events to her
correspondent. For instance, after Pleyel mentions that a
voice has told him that the Baroness de Stolberg is dead,
she tells her reader "This was her whom he loved."25 At
several points when she becomes emotionally involved with
events, she talks about her difficulty in continuing with
the narration. One might say that her continuance helps
exemplify her fortitude, if it were not that without it,
the novel would end prematurely. Paul Witherington, in his
dissertation on Brown's narrative techniques, has made the

perceptive observation that Clara describes all major char-

acters in Wieland in their order of appearance, which is

184

somewhat staggered so that Brown can take them one at a
time.26 In general, he states, one character's estimation
of another is generally given a full and immediate presen-
tation; such presentation is made more believable by its
presence in some kind of letter form as well as by Brown's

27 As a narrator, Clara frequently

belief in physiognomy.
uses summary, not only to characterize others but also to
relate habitual occurrences, such as the typical lifestyle
at Mettingen, and past occurrences when the action is not
too exciting. For instance, her summation of her father's
history becomes more detailed and involves directly quoted
conversation the nearer she comes to the point of her
father's death, at which time it becomes scene. Similarly,
events which occur to her directly tend to be presented in
scene when they are very exciting or frightening, such as
Wieland's attempt to murder Clara.

3 One of the most characteristic marks of Clara's
narration is her constant internal monologues when some-
thing troubles her. This incessant self—debate creates a
Clara who is extremely reflective, conscientious, and con-
cerned with issues such as causation and motivation. Point
of View shades directly into characterization at this point.
Witherington observes that each of these debates follows
the same basic pattern. The debate is framed by introduc-
tory remarks which state her solitude and agitation, and

concludes with an announcement that the debate is over.

185

Between these frames, she relives the experience and ques-
tions its reality; she relates it to past experiences; she
analyzes the significance of events with emphasis on
motives; she analyzes herself, exploring her alternatives;
she resolves to be more courageous; and she eXpresses fur—
ther doubts.28 The formality of this pattern reminds us
that while Brown uses interior monologue, it does not pre-
sent a "stream of consciousness": it does not imitate
actual thought. However, it is important to the plot in
revealing Clara's confusion; to the thematic content, in
exploring the nature of appearance versus reality; and to
Clara's characterization, in developing the characteristics
mentioned above.

The use of Carwin's and Wieland's points of View
does not greatly expand the characterization of Clara.
Carwin tells her, "I found you easily swayed by fear," but
his judgment seems severe considering both the imaginary
scenes he has put her through and the actual threats she
has faced.29 Pleyel, in his long soliloquy on Clara,
helps corroborate our favorable views of her intelligence
and self-discipline.

Witherington has commented that the purpose of the
multiple narrators may be to suggest the complexity of the
origin of evil, but another explanation that he offers
seems more probable; that is, that the multiple focus

30

fills gaps in information. The reason that the second

186

explanation, though less interesting, is more probable,
is related to the concept of reliability. Wieland is a
certified lunatic and Carwin is a self-admitted charlatan.
Pleyel, as shown from his unreasonable jealousy about
Theresa de Stolberg, tends to leap to conclusions, when
his emotions are involved. All of this leaves Clara's
reliability in a relatively good position. Her position is
improved by several factors. First, her lengthy soliloquies
create an image of an earnest, sincere individual who is
trying to find the truth. She weighs evidence and changes
position when new facts justify such a change. For instance,
when she learns that Theresa de Stolberg is alive, she
moves away from her belief that the voice which asserted
the baroness's death was a benevolent spirit.31 Also,
Clara admits to not understanding events or her own beha-
vior when this is so, and attempts to clarify her beliefs
to her correspondent when she thinks she has been unclear;
for instance:
I now speak as if no remnant of doubt existed in my
mind as to the supernatural origin of these sounds;
but this is owing to the imperfection of my language,
for I only mean that the belief was more permanent and
visited more frequently my sober meditations than its
Opposite.32
'The one exception to her reliability seems to be her accounts
of her relationship with Pleyel. When she goes to Pleyel's
house to defend her chastity, she sees him gazing at some-

thing which she assumes is her picture.33 She and the

:reader only learn much later that at this time Pleyel had

187

learned his baroness was still alive, and that he was pre-
paring for a journey to meet her, not for a trip to forget
Clara's supposed infamy.34 After she is enlightened, she
feels as though she no longer loves Pleyel. This feeling,
a product of her generally low state, is reversed once she
regains her mental health. In her final letter, in which
she supposedly speaks with all illusions behind her, she
is guilty of yet another fallacy, her belief that Pleyel
had been bound to Theresa "by ties more of honor than of

35 Conveniently, she has forgotten Pleyel's wild

love."
jealousy when he thinks Theresa may have been unfaithful
to him during their courtship. Generally, Clara's view of
Pleyel seems to be shaped by her wish that he love her as
much as she loves him.
This is the only element of her life in which what
Clara says seems to contradict events. Usually the implied
author is undistinguishable from Clara. Her verisimili—
tude is further established by the use of footnotes to sup—
port her evidence.36 Furthermore, the fact that she is
limited to what she could have learned naturally adds to
her believability; the use of privileged undisclosed sources
can add an air of artificiality if not of untruthfulness.
Limited to one reliable narrator—agent who is the
only fully developed woman character, the reader must accept

much of what Clara tells about herself as truth. Her self—

portrayal shows by statement and action that she is loving,

188

observant, independent, relatively brave, truthful, benevo-
lent, just, and a little vengeful. Her heart is attracted
by religion, but her mind doubts. Sometimes these quali-
ties are presented as event only; she does not remark on
her powers of observation, but we see them applied to a
comparison of the Wieland and the Pleyel property. Also,
she does not note her own vengefulness, but she does try to
call down a just punishment on Carwin for having sparked
the fatal chain of events. Occasionally, she proceeds in
the manner of an essayist, naming a quality and then offer-
ing supporting examples, as she does with her benevolence
when she tries to decide who could be trying to hurt her.37

The final element of narrative technique which Brown
employs to create characters in Wieland is style. The most
important element here is how the way in which characters
speak helps characterize them.

Among the women characters in Wieland, Clara is
the only one heard frequently enough for her style to add
significantly to her characterization. As narrator, all
she "writes," with the exception of direct quotations of
other characters, may be considered self-characterizing.
Her style chiefly portrays herself as one who values reason
and control but who is not always capable of attaining these
goals despite great efforts. For instance, in the third
chapter, Clara is summarizing her childhood and the growing

Ibonds of affection between Catherine Pleyel and Theodore

189

Wieland. The sentence structure of most of this summary
tends to favor the short simple sentence, conventional
subject-verb order, and avoidance of exclamation. The tone
is controlled and matter of fact:
My brother's advance in age made no change in our
situation. It was determined that his profession
should be agriculture. His fortune exempted him
from the necessity of hard labour. The task to be
performed by him was nothing more than superinten-
dence.
The only element of this, Clara'snormal, controlled summary
style, which would distinguish it from modern conversation
is the slightly greater use of words of a Latin origin:

"agriculture" rather than "farming"; "necessity of" rather

than "need for"; and "superintendence" rather than "over—

seeing." Yet, seven sentences later, her memories cause
too much pain, and Clara exclaims: "Oh, my brother."40
She recovers herself immediately: "But the task I have

set myself let me perform with steadiness. The felicity

of that period was marred by no gloomy anticipation."41

A similar shift can be observed later before her descrip—
tion of Carwin, when she remembers the harm his meddling
has done. Her agitated attempt to control her language
contains a number of the characteristics which, in addition
to exclamations, often mark her speech when her restraint
is overthrown by emotions: "thee" and "thou" forms; delib-
erate repetition, sometimes building to a high point by

the use of periodicity; figurative language; and questions:

190

And thou, 0 most fatal and potent of mankind, in
what terms shall I describe thee? What words are
adequate to the just delineation of thy character?
How shall I detail the means which rendered the
secrecy of thy purpose unfathomable? But I will not
anticipate. Let me recover, if possible, a sober
strain. Let me keep down the flood of passion that
would render me precipitate or powerless. Let me
stifle the agonies that are awakened by thy name.
Let me for a time regard thee as a being Of no ter-
rible attributes. Let me tear myself from contempla-
tion of the evils of which it is but too certain that
thou wast the author, and limit my View to those
harmless appearances which attended thy entrance on
the stage.
Her success in this endeavour is obvious from her following
sentence: "One sunny afternoon I was standing in the door
of my house, when I marked a person passing close to the
edge of the bank that was in front."43 David Loren Butler,
in his thesis on the style of Brown's novels, has Observed
that Brown characteristically uses a clear and uncompli-
cated style; however, when he attempts to show a disturbed
Inind, an unusual event (such as Wieland's slaughter of his
familY): or duplicity, then Brown "resorts to the unortho-
<dox and prolix style which critics so often condemn with-
out.realizing Brown's deliberate shifts in style are made
to underscore characterization or theme."44
The use of questions is particularly characteristic
<3f Clara's style during her self-debates. For instance,
axfter Clara disregards the mysterious voice and finds
Carwin in her closet, she ponders the nature of the being

who had warned her of him:

191

Why should I be selected as the object of his care?

or, if a mere mortal, should I not recognize some

one whom benefits imparted and received had prompted

to love me. What were the limits and duration of

his guardianship? Was the genius of my birth intrusted

by divine benignity with this province? Are human

faculties adequate to receive stronger proofs of the

existence of unfettered and beneficent intelligences

than I have received?45
The apparent seriousness of the events which have recently
befallen her preclude this from suggesting idle curiosity.
Instead, the style of her self-catechisms heightens the
impression they give of her as an earnest seeker after
truth, weighing evidence and trying to find answers.

Another critic has suggested more in Clara's style

which might be considered self-characterizing. Carl W.
Nelson has suggested that Brown's use of Cicero is an
ironic emblem for Clara's embellishing deceitfulness as a
narrator. He specifically suggests that Cicero's speech
to Cluentius, mentioned in the fourth chapter, is a reveal-
ing analogue to Clara's narrative because Cicero after-
wards bragged that in arguing for an unjustifiable cause,

46 This seems

he had thrown dust in the eyes of the jurors.
unlikely for several reasons. First, as shown before,
Brown presents Clara as a relatively reliable narrator
except when she describes her relationship with Pleyel.
.Also, an allusion to an undisclosed portion of Cicero's
«oration for Cluentius would require a crossword puzzle

intricacy of craftsmanship which is not at all characteris-

tic of Brown; it is reminiscent instead of such modern

192

writers as Nabokov and Durrell. Finally, if Brown meant
to characterize anyone with the references to Cicero, it
would be Theodore Wieland rather than Clara. It is he who
is the Ciceronian scholar, who purchases Cicero's bust,
and who defends Cicero's genius in that oration. In the
last instance, Clara is not even involved in the argument;
she is, instead, sewing.47

Nelson also remarks that Clara tries to inflate her
tale with Manichean imagery of supreme good wrestling
supreme evil in her account of events which have befallen
her.48 While Nelson's description is accurate, his inter-
pretation seems to ignore the fact that for a long time
available evidence suggested supernatural intervention to
Clara, in which case this imagery would be appropriate, not
inflationary.

While Clara's speech shows skill on Brown's part
in using style to characterize, his skill had its limits.
Except for dialogue, he does not seem confident to record
conversation in any way but summary. No women characters
other than Clara have enough direct discourse for char-
acterization. This may appropriately emphasize Clara's
consciousness. However, in the several monologues offered
by male characters, there is insufficient distinction in
style to differentiate them adequately from each other and

from Clara. For instance, in Pleyel's long monologue on

Clara's fall from virtue, his anguished style is quite

193

similar to Clara's own in her moments of tensions. One
explanation may be that in recording conversation, Clara

as narrator unconsciously alters other characters' style,
but this may impute more subtlety in craftsmanship to Brown

than is likely.

Even more than Wieland, Ormond centers around the

 

conflict between a female protagonist and a villainous
antagonist. Ormond has more women characters that play at
least secondary roles, and the use of narrative technique
to characterize the women characters also differs in some
interesting ways.

Several of the women characters are so minor that
they have smaller roles than does Mr. Dudley's lute. These
include Constantia's mother, Mrs. Melbourne, Mary Ridgely,
Madame Roseli, and the Dudleys' maid, Lucy. Aside from
these there are a number of relatively minor ones worthy
of some mention: Mary Whiston, Sarah Baxter, Lady D'Arcy,
and SOphia's mother. Both Mary Whiston and Sarah Baxter
have the same principal character functions of illustrat-
ing Constantia's benevolence. The Mary Whiston incident
does this more effectively because Of its greater length
and its use of concrete detail showing the repulsiveness
of caring for a fever victim without help or money:

Mary's condition hourly grew worse. A corroded and
gangrenous stomach was quickly testified by the dark
hue and poisonous malignity of the matter which was

frequently ejected from it. Her stupor gave place
to some degree of peevishness and restlessness. She

194

drank the water that was held to her lips with

unspeakable avidity and derived froggthis source a

momentary alleV1ation of her pangs.
In addition to her illustrative function, Sarah Baxter has
a minor esthetic function. She is the kindly lower-class
woman who recognizes Constantia for a lady despite her rags.
She is also a hook for the Baxter subplot which gives a
first mysterious glimpse of Martinette. Lady D'Arcy is
present only in Martinette's history. She illustrates the
constancy of Martinette's goals by contrast to her own
flightiness. Also, she enables Martinette to move away
from the wicked Bartoli and functions as the comedic parent
by forbidding Martinette to marry Wentworth for a time.
SOphia's mother's function, although exemplifying the
dangers of profligacy and other extreme behavior, is pri-
marily esthetic. Her early depravity accounts for SOphia
and Constantia being reared almost as sisters. Her later
repentance and illness require Sophia to leave Constantia
for a long period; out of duty, she must accompany her
mother to physicians in England and to a more salubrious
climate in Italy.

As well as these minor characters, Ormond contains
two secondary women characters, Helena Cleves and Martinette.
Both are, for the novel form, very much illustrative char-
acters. It is interesting to Observe how Brown expands in
their cases on his usual practice of introducing a char-

acter fully with all action stopped. Helena principally

195

occupies one chapter, and Martinette, two. Their char-
acter sketches seem roles given very much for their own
sakes and for contrast with each other.

Of the two, Helena has the most connection with
the rest of the plot. She provides Constantia an oppor-
tunity to practice a more complex kind of benevolence in
her role as intermediary between Helena and Ormond. Her
role as Ormond's mistress helps characterize him, as does
his treatment of her once he falls in love with Constantia.
Mostly, though, she exemplifies a logical extreme of tradi-
tional femininity, permitting Brown to demonstrate how an
inadequate and frivolous education can ruin women.

Martinette's connection with the rest of the novel
is esthetically quite tangential. She obviously exists as
Helena's Opposite, showing in her absence of feeling the
other dangerous pole to which faulty education can lead
women. Also, she is a female double of her brother, Ormond.
Helena and Martinette help illustrate by contrast Constantia's
balance of emotion and reason, as well as Brown's own pref-
erence for centrism.

The two major women characters are Sophia Westwyn
and Constantia Dudley. SOphia is also the narrator, but
she becomes more than simply a story-teller in the second
half of the novel at which point she is re-united with
Constantia. Obviously, she fulfills all three character

functions. Esthetically, she is the voice which tells the

196

story and adds editorials. Also, she causes Constantia to
give up Ormond and arranges to whisk her safely off to
Europe. It is even more difficult in Ormond than in Wieland
to separate the implied author from the narrator; hence,
as far as is discernible, Sophia Westwyn does present the
voice (literally) of wisdom and experience. The name
"Sophia" is an Obvious clue, as is her contrasting her
experiences in Europe to Constantia's ignorance of world
affairs and the dangers of both revolutions and their
propagators. Her mimetic function is slighter, yet she
does have a kind of density in her very busyness, such as
her tireless tracking of her friend and, best of all, her
mad dash for the Dudley farmhouse. Mimetic impact is more
difficult to gauge than the other functions, and critics
have not Often responded to Sophia as a mimetic character,
so this may be an unprovable hypothesis.

Constantia is more universally accepted as a blend
of all three elements. Her esthetic role is obviously a
variation of the sentimental heroine's role. Illustrative
aspects in her characterization include those elements of
feminism and Godwinism discussed in the third chapter. Her
representational function is much more obvious than is
Sophia's. If she seems too "good" to be mimetic, she does
make errors in understanding her own heart. The internal
debate and hesitancy which precede many of her decisions

give her actions dimensionality. The debate can be seen

197

in her thoughts before she goes to visit Ormond to remon-
strate with him about his relationship with Helena. Once
there, her hesitancy is obvious when she begins by discuss-
ing Craig, a recognizable ploy for any reader who has ever
been in an awkward social situation. Also, Ormond's
strange behavior causes her much puzzlement, ranging from
incomprehension of what he is saying to discomfiture when
he departs for his six—minute dinner. Such touches add a
degree of mimesis not evident in other women characters in
Ormond, though the angle of mimesis is wider than in
Brown's portraiture of Clara Wieland, partially because of
problems with the narrative point of View.

Ormond, like Wieland, is only nominally epistolary.
The correspondent to whom it is addressed is identified
and located, I. E. Rosenberg of Germany, unlike Clara
Wieland's undisclosed correspondent. However, Ormond's
narrative is not divided into letters at all but consists
simply of a cover letter to I. E. Rosenberg plus a single
narration. If Wieland is a fictitious autobiography,
Ormond is a fictitious biography, the pseudo-authenticity a
nod to its eighteenth century audience's dubiousness about
the morality and value of novels. Relatedly, Sophia
Westwyn justifies the value of her tale to her correspondent
by saying that if Rosenberg is not deeply interested in the

fate of Constantia, then the information about the democratic

198

lifestyle in the United States may still make reading her
account useful.

While the main thread of plot and theme in Ormond
is Constantia's relationship with Ormond, Sophia's focus
is not nearly that limited. For the sake of dramatic
impact, too much space is given to Stephen Dudley's history.
Nelson has suggested that:

Brown was not after formal unities of dramatic action,
nor, in a tradition that saw such loose meanderings
as Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne offered, to name
.only the most competent, could he be expected to seek
such qualities.5
Dramatically irrelevant subplots, such as that of Mary
Whiston or Martinette, illustrate values approved by Brown,
demonstrate the presence of qualities in characters, or
develop characters by comparison and contrast. Nelson jus-
tifies this looseness in Ormond further:
The story does not exist for its own sake. It is an
excuse for discourse, and the subject is always the
same-“the human sensibility, its laws, tendencies,
and needs, according to the moralizing point of view
embodied in the narrative voice.

Brown's use of the narrative voice in Ormond influ-
ences the ways in which he can develOp women characters.
The sole narrator is Sophia Westwyn; this is the only pub—
lished novel of Brown's which nominally contains merely a
single narrator. Although SOphia is a narrator-agent, she
is less involved in the action than is Clara Wieland. This

gives a quieter tone to the novel. Also, the relative lack

of involvement may embellish her position as commentator.

199

Her entry into the action immediately results in Constantia's
giving up Ormond, and it marks the new direction which
Constantia takes.
Sophia and Clara are equally conscious of their
roles as narrators. Sophia does not often refer to her
writing tasks, but she does preface the Baxter story with
the necessary comment to Rosenberg that this incident's
connection to the main narration would become evident
later.52 Similarly, she precedes her sketch of Ormond with
remarks on the problems of understanding and describing
him: "I know no task more arduous than a just delineation
of the character of Ormond."53
Perhaps because she is a less involved narrator—
agent, Sophia uses less "scene" than does Clara Wieland.
Summary is used for background, characterization, and con-
versation. Her cameo presentationscmeelena and Martinette
have already been noted; she begins her characterization
of Ormond in the same way. The fact that SOphia veers away
from the rape attempt to relate her own travels to the farm-
house is often cited as an example of how Brown throws away

Opportunities for dramatic scenes.54

What SOphia omits in
scene, she more than compensates for in the amount of com-
mentary. The point of her commentary is almost always moral,
as befits her name.

As mentioned earlier, it is difficult to separate

Sophia from the implied author. Therefore, as Patricia

200

Jewell McAlexander has noted: ". . . it is difficult to
know whether the interspersed moralizing in the novel
should be considered as Brown's own Opinion (as many critics
take it to be) or as that of his characters."55
One of the very obvious elements in Sophia's narra-
tive style is that she considers her judgment superior,
morally and intellectually, to that of other characters.
For instance after Constantia kills Ormond, she describes
the other people on the scene in this fashion:
The people that surrounded me were powerless with
terror. Their ignorance and cowardice left them at
a loss how to act in this emergency. They besought
my direction, and willingly performed whatever I
felt proper to enjoin upon them.
Obviously, too, Sophia has no doubts that Constantia needs
her advice and help to survive, despite the many trials
which her friend has gotten through on her own. She regards
Constantia's attraction to Ormond with a jaundiced eye:
The mind of my friend was wavering and unsuspicious.
She had lived at a distance from scenes where prin-
ciples are hourly put to the test of experiment. . . .
Hence, my friend had decided without the sanction of
experience, had allowed herself to wander into untried
paths, and had hearkened to positions pregnant with
destruction and ignominy.
Obviously, there is a great deal of narrative distance here.
It may be that by having the reader view characters through
Sophia's viewpoint, Brown is trying to create what Bayley
calls "that form of shared superiority or patronage which
author and reader mutually enjoy in a novel Of old-type

characterization."58

201

If so, this effect is reduced by our reservations
about the infallability of Sophia's judgment, arising from
her unreliability as a narrator. While she sincerely
wishes to be truthful, her prejudices sometimes blind her.
To some extent she realizes her bias for Constantia: she
warns I. E. Rosenberg of this in the preface. Her extremely
positive treatment of Constantia contrasts with her antag-
onism for all other characters.59 She is, for instance,
very critical of Stephen Dudley. At a time when he is
blind, reduced to abject poverty, bereft of his wife, and
dependent on his daughter, Sophia notes critically that he
could seldom be prompted to smile.60 Another element of
Sophia's narration which brings her reliability into ques-
tion is her view on Constantia's lack of religious beliefs.
As one commentator has noted, she would have us believe
that Constantia's lack of religion had created the diffi-
culties she had in dealing with Ormond. Yet, Constantia
seems remarkably capable of taking care of herself through
her other troubles without the solace of religion. Further-
more, not needing religion to handle Ormond alone before
Sophia's entrance might be considered a personal strength.
Finally, the other evidence which Sophia presents about
religious beliefs would seem to contradict Sophia's view
of its potential value for Constantia. The one religious
authority in Ormond is the corrupt Father Bartoli. Also,

the two examples of religious conversion represent no more

202

than enthusiasm. Lady D'Arcy's conversion to Catholicism
is seen as just another passing fancy for a woman easily
swayed. While these first two incidents may simply reflect
anti-Catholicism, Sophia's account of her own mother's con-
version to Methodism cannot be:
In this, as in her former career, she was unacquainted
with restraint and moderation. Her remorses gained
strength as she cherished them. . . . Her thoughts
became, by rapid degrees, tempestuous and gloomy, and
it wazzat length evident that her condition was mani-
acal.
Yet, despite these experiences with religious belief,
SOphia sees its absence as the cause of Constantia's prob-
lems.

Another reason that Sophia's reliability is diffi-
cult to accept is that it is difficult to accept the range
of her knowledge.63 She attempts to account for her
astounding knowledge by mysterious references to secret
sources of information about Ormond and extensive conver-
sations with Constantia. Yet, an enormous suspension of
disbelief is necessary to accept such things as her knowl-
edge of the workings of Constantia's mind and her exact
quotations of Martinette's lengthy autobiographical mono-
logue. There is an obvious conflict here between proba-
bility of knowledge and the authorial desire to create
impressions Of first-hand experience; SOphia's narration is

an uneasy compromise, wavering between a limited and an

omniscient narration.

203

All of these signals of narrator unreliability may
cause the audience to hesitate in accepting Sophia's view
of characters. We may be slightly less prone to accept
the totally negative portraits of Martinette. Also, we
probably see Constantia as less virtuous but more compe-
tent to fend for herself than SOphia would have us think.
Finally, Sophia's wisdom may be read at times as merely a
kind of physical and moral busyness. Interestingly, this
helps create the mimetic element in her own characteriza-
tion, perhaps because imperfect characters who think too
well of their own judgments seem more human than infallible
oracles.

Style is less important in Ormond than it is in
Wieland for characterizing the heroine. Because of the
difference in point of view, there is less of Constantia's
exact language to develop her. As mentioned above, the
narration leans more toward summary; the style of Sophia's
summary can only characterize SOphia.

Some directly quoted conversation is given for
Constantia, as well as for a few of the other female char-
acters. As Paul Witherington has observed, speech for
characters in all of Brown's novels tends to be limited to
monologue and dialogue:

Dialogue between two characters suits Brown's limited
talents in writing conversation and picturing a large
scene, and it suits his inclination to work with the
complementary and antagonistic relationship between

two people, the confession of the revelation and the
conflict of ideas.64

204

Constantia is not quoted in even this limited form of
dialogue until some twenty-eight pages after her introduc-
tion, and her direct words are not heard again for forty-
six pages. In these first two pages, both manner of
address and content combine to show her respect for her

father.65

Not until her first dialogue with Ormond do we
hear much from her lips. In most of her interviews with
Ormond, her conversational style is simple, plain, and
direct. For example, when she refutes the slanderous
stories Craig has told about her to Ormond, her diction
and sentence structure are simple and her tone is controlled:
You are deceived. I am sorry, for your own sake,
that you are. He must have some end in view, in
imposing these falsehoods upon you, which perhaps
they have enabled him to accomplish. As to myself,
this man can do me no injury.6
In these conversations, Ormond by contrast often shows
himself as mysterious, abrupt, and less conventional. At
the end of their first dialogue, he tells her cryptically:
Your home is your citadel. I will not enter it with-
out leave. Permit me to visit you when I please.
But that is too much. It is more than I would allow
you. When will you permit me to visit you?
When Constantia complains that he clothes his words "in a
garb so uncouth" that she does not understand him, he mock—
ingly bows and asks:
Shall I have the honour . . . of occasionally paying
my respects to you at your own dwelling? It would
be cruel to condemn those who have the happiness of

knowing Miss Dudley, to fashionable restraints. At

what hour will she be least incommoded by a visitant?68

205

She retorts that she is as little pleased by such formali-
ties as he, and she answers his question. Generally,
Constantia's conversation shows her as direct but neither
cryptic nor rejecting polite conventions.

At times, Sophia attempts to represent the workings
of Constantia's consciousness. This is somewhat less effec-
tive than Clara Wieland's account of her own thoughts
because of the improbability of narrator knowledge, but some
of the same stylistic devices help show Constantia's char-
acter. In particular, Brown uses questions liberally to
show her debating an issue within herself. For instance,
when she considers how to approach Ormond on the issue of
marrying Helena, she asks herself:

In what manner should it be performed? Should an
interview be sought and her ideas be examined without
confusion or faltering, undismayed by ludicrous airs
or insolent frowns? But this was a point to be exam-
ined. Was Ormond capable of such behavior?69
Constantia's speech exhibits marks of passion and excite—
ment less often than does Clara Wieland's, suggesting
Constantia's greater self-control and calmer response to
problems. However, during and immediately after her fatal
interview with Ormond, she does speak in an exclamatory
style, using archaic forms, when she addresses Sophia:
What voice is that? Sophia Courtland! O my friend!
I am imprisoned! Some demon has barred the door,
beyond my power to unfasten. Ah, why comest thou so

late? Gnur succour would have somewhat profited if
sooner given: but now, the lost Constantia--7O

206

Such speeches show Constantia, though of an usually "con-
stant" temper, not completely impassive.

While Helena barely speaks directly at all in the
novel, Brown does use her last letter. Its style is simple,
almost childlike, and the tone created by her unconscious
repetition is that of pathos; it is a terrible reproach
which affects Ormond greatly.

Martinette is characterized by Sophia's editorial-
izing, Constantia's response to her, and her own words.

Her long autobiographical account is given in a simple
style and a flat tone, considering the bloody nature of the
events she narrates. In her conversations with Constantia,
two items are noteworthy. The first is the use of archaic
forms "thee" and "thou," which is unusual considering that
Brown usually saves these for times of great passion. Per-
haps, accustomed to the Quaker plain style, he uses this

to denote her revolutionary avoidance of forms of address
suggesting rank. The other element, which has received
little notice, is the scornful tone with which she addresses
Constantia. For instance, when Constantia states that
Martinette's vagabond background is wonderful, Martinette
responds: "Wonderful! Pish! Thy ignorance, thy miscalcu-

71 Constantia's

lation of probabilities, is far more so."
politeness in response may seem even more wonderful. Another
example is in the contrast she makes between herself and

Constantia: "You grew and flourished, like a frail mimosa,

207

in the spot where destiny planted you. Thank my stars, I

am somewhat better than a vegetable.”2

This scornful,
egotistical tone backs up the content of her long narra-
tion. As well as suggesting her warlike nature, her ego-
mania is evident in comments like her self-congratulation
about her survival in military camps: "Few would survive

"73 It is

these hardships with better grace than I did.
difficult to imagine Constantia trumpeting her own hardi-
ness in such fashion.

The narrator is also characterized by choice of
language. There are greater style shifts in her language
than in Constantia's; more instances in which her language
becomes effusive, exclamatory, prolix, and archaic. Of
course, she has a larger number of Opportunities to show
us the inner workings of her consciousness than does
Constantia, but the impression which is given is that she
is more emotional and less controlled. This may seem
ironic, considering her role as advisor to her friend.
Another difference between the styles of Sophia's and
Constantia's thoughts is the relative absence of questions
in SOphia's. Considering the mysteries she faces in find-
ing Constantia, this is striking. It suggests a person
with a Very fixed view of life and morals, one who sees
everything in black and white rather than in shades of gray.
This view is supported by Carl Nelson, who sees SOphia as

sentimentally inflating her rhetoric to suggest a Manichean

208

world view of a struggle between Satanic physical evil and
renunciatory spiritual virtue; Ormond, being the evil, and
Constantia, being the virtue, of course.74 As has been
noted, Sophia does tend to be extremely favorable towards
Constantia and negative towards all other characters. Her
most powerful invective is saved for Ormond, of whom she
once says:

There was no fortress, guarded by barriers of stone

and iron and watched by sentinels that never slept

to which she might retire from his stratagems. If

there were such a retreat, it would scarcely avail
hem' against.a.fOe circumspect and subtle as Ormon

d.75

The incident of Ormond's brutalities while in the army was
fearsome, but Sophia does seem to need to inflate her friend's
virtue and her own role as savior by making Ormond more
demonic than he is. Unlike Clara Wieland, Sophia is not
driven by circumstances to consider the Manichean View the

only plausible explanation for occurrences.

Arthur Mervyn and Edgar Huntly are easily grouped

 

 

together for the purposes of this study because of the rela—
tively small proportion of attention to female characters.
Because of this, the analysis Of narrative techniques will
be summarized quite briefly.

The first volume of Arthur Mervyn utilizes a fairly

 

large number of women characters, but only two are drawn
in any detail. In addition to some extremely shadowy fig-
ures like Arthur's mother and Mrs. Wentworth, there are

three secondary characters who are presented a little more

209

fully: Eliza Stevens, Clemenza Lodi, and Susan Hadwin.
Eliza functions esthetically by urging her husband to allow
Arthur to stay, and by encouraging him to tell his story.
In addition to these actions, her husband's comments char-
acterize her--as one with a luxurious education who usually
shuns nursing.76 Likewise, Clemenza Lodi largely has an
esthetic function. In her case, she embodies the helpless
orphan who is robbed of virtue and money by the villainous
Welbeck, thus providing Arthur with another cause for his
benevolence. Susan Hadwin also offers Arthur a chance for
benevolence in her role as the languishing beloved. Her
esthetic function slides into the illustrative by Offering
the narrator a chance to denigrate such soft enthusiasm as
she exhibits.

Betty Lawrence and Eliza Hadwin are both somewhat
more mimetically drawn than any of the other women in this
first volume. Betty, of course, also functions esthetically
by removing Arthur from his home and following him with
slander. She is Brown's fullest portrayal of a lower-class
woman. Her machinations to seduce Arthur reveal both her
lustiness and her humorous misjudgment of character. Eliza
Hadwin is even more fully drawn. She, too, provides Arthur
with a chance for benevolence and helps demonstrate both
his mercenary attitudes towards marriage and his misjudg-
ment of women. Enough of her own discourse is given to

characterize her differently than Arthur views her.

210

The second volume introduces some other very unim-
portant women characters like Mrs. Althorpe and the widow
of Amos Watson, who function only as plot machinery. Two
new secondary characters, Mrs. Villars and Miss Carlton,
are brought forth. Like most of the secondary women char-
acters in this novel, Mrs. Villars' function is largely
esthetic; she runs the house of prostitution from which
Clemenza must be rescued by Arthur. She is also illustra-
tive in that her shooting of Arthur reveals the dangers of
passion. Miss Carlton is used solely illustratively to
demonstrate female fortitude and ingenuity in a fairly
tertiary side plot.

The most important new female character in the
second volume is Ascha Fielding. Even more than Eliza
Hadwin, Ascha functions on all three planes. Esthetically,
she is the dark wealthy mama for whom Arthur is searching.
One commentator has been fascinated by the vampire-like
way in which he wants to absorb Ascha's knowledge and experi-
ence. This same critic has also warned that it is danger-
ous for the post-Freudian reader to make too much out of
Arthur's maternal fixation, because his behavior falls
directly in line with the sentimental love tradition in
which the romantic lover is like a suppliant at his mother's
knee.77 Ascha also illustrates certain virtues such as
benevolence and the love for privacy rather than the public

pomp which her wealth could buy for her. Several qualities

211

help make her mimetic. One is undeniably the fact of her
physical unattractiveness, singular for the beloved in a
novel of this period. The other is the reader's sympathy
for her feelings, her shifts of mood, when the unseeing
Arthur talks to her of his concern for Eliza Hadwin.
Before Arthur sees her love, it is revealed to the reader,
who shares her frustration at his blindness.

Unlike the preceding two novels, the form of Arthur
Mervyn is a set of frames within a frame. The outermost
frame is Dr. Stevens' narration of Arthur's story, which in
turn contains tales told by Welbeck, Wallace, Estwick, and
Medlicote. Stevens also hears Welbeck directly at one
point and listens to a tale by Wortley. Wortley's narra—
tion frames Williams' story of his brother-in-law, Amos

Watson. In all, Arthur Mervyg is the verbal equivalent of

 

one of those puzzles which contains box within box within
box.

The form hints at duplicity because the number of
narrators places the narration at several removes from the
characters, possibly echoing the theme of appearance versus

reality.78

Not knowing whom to believe affects audience

acceptance of what one character says about another. While
there seems no reason to doubt Dr. Stevens' sincerity, the
unreliability of some of the other narrators seems obvious.

Welbeck, for instance, practices duplicity in most of his

actions. Wortley would like to seek revenge on Welbeck

re

212

through Arthur. Finally, Arthur himself is in a defensive
position throughout the novel, trying to refute the various
charges brought against him before his benefactor's tri—
bunal. This role would require him to put the best light
on his own actions. Furthermore, Arthur's characterization
of women, often presented in summary form, is contradicted
several important times when we actually hear from these
women themselves. These misjudgments, while probably not
purposeful, decrease the acceptance of his portrayals of
women whom we do not hear directly, like Betty Lawrence.

One example of such misjudgment occurs with Ascha
Fielding. Arthur's reverence for her causes him, as men-
tioned before, not to realize that she loves him. When she
questions him about Eliza Hadwin, the reader can see her
discomposure in the tone of her speech:

Thou knowest that her gentle heart is touched with
love. See how it shows itself in the tender and
inimitable strain of this epistle. Does not this
sweet ingenuousness bewitch you?79
Her conversation is accompanied by blushes and starts, but
Arthur does not comprehend her feelings.

The other major instance of his misunderstanding of
the women in his life is when he persists in "fixing" Eliza
Hadwin as a sweet uneducable farm girl, refusing to see the
similarity in their backgrounds. In her famous statement
of revolution, both her militant tone and content tell the

80

reader how far Arthur has underestimated her. Also, once

213

he decides that he might do better than her for a wife, he
coolly decides that her passion for him "was young and
easily extinguishable" as long as he quickly removed "any

mistakes into which she had fallen."81

He ignores the

fact that she had not been mistaken in her perceptions Of
his original intentions. Thus, style conspires with content
in making Arthur's characterization of women Open to ques—

tion, both of his expediency, as well as his insightfulness.

Edgar Huntly has even fewer women characters. The

 

minor women characters include Miss Waldegrave, Edgar's
fiancee; Clarice; the girl whom Edgar rescues; and Old Deb.
Miss Waldegrave, sister to Edgar's dead friend, functions
esthetically as his correspondent. She is characterized

by Edgar in his praise of her justness of Weymouth. Also,
in his unflattering comments to her, he tells her that her
lack of education does not fit her for metaphysical refine-
ments and that she loves independence and ease so much that
she may not be just to Weymouth. Clarice also has a purely
esthetic function as the maiden offered to Clithero as a
reward by the benevolent Mrs. Lorimer. She is not differ-
entiated from any other young, pretty girl. Similarly,

the girl whom Edgar rescues from the Indians is a piece of
plot furniture drawn less fully than the rescued maidens

of some dime novels. Unlike these other three minor char-
acters, Old Deb has no apparent esthetic function, yet her

cameo portrayal has a mimetic force despite its brevity.

214

Brown shows her grandly ordering about both her dogs and
the intruding white settlers alike, an eccentric with a
touch of the frightening clinging to her.

The only woman character of any major importance
is Mrs. Euphemia Lorimer. Her esthetic function is
obvious; she is Clithero's benefactress and the target of
his insanity. She embodies the virtues of benevolence,
democracy, and fortitude as well as the weakness of believ-
ing that her fate is mysteriously linked with her twin's.
This balance of many virtues plus one weird fault does not
come across mimetically. She is too statically a virtuous
figure against whom Clithero's madness is silhouetted.

The form of Edgar Huntly returns to the fictitious

 

autobiographical form used in Wieland. It is made slightly
more epistolary because it is more reasonable that Mary
Waldegrave, being Edgar's fiancée and Waldegrave's sister,
would be interested in an account of the events.83 Also,
the major letter to Mary is dated and contains a closing.
After this major narrative are three short letters: two

from Edgar to Sarsefield, and one from Sarsefield to Edgar.

Witherington has suggested that Edgar Huntly contains two

 

books, the first being the episodic story of Indian warfare,
and the more important being a tightly knit study of guilt
and its effects.84

Since the women in Edgar Huntly are characterized

 

almost entirely by the summary of the two main narrator-agents,

215

Clithero and Edgar, narrator reliability is important.
However, Clithero is Obviously insane, and Edgar Huntly's
reliability is assailed by his grave mistakes in judging
Clithero, shown by Sarsefield's closing letter. There is.
no outside correction for these judgments, so they cannot

be taken with any great sureness. Unlike Arthur Mervyn,

 

this novel does not contain enough direct discourse from
even the principal woman character to correct potentially
false portrayals. Therefore, neither the style nor the
content of the women characters' speech helps develop their

characterization in Edgar Huntly.

 

Clara Howard has fewer characters than Edgar Huntly,

 

 

but these few are both more develOped and more important

to the novel. Aside from such extremely minor figures as

Mrs. Valentine and Mrs. Bordley, there are four: Mrs. Howard,
Mrs. Wilmot, Mary Wilmot, and Clara Howard. Mrs. Howard func-
tions esthetically only. She is, of course, Clara's mother.
Philip Stanley compares Clara to her mother, seeing both as
poised and attractive.85 This parallel is thematically rele-
vant, for Mr. Howard had to prove his worthiness to win his
wife's love, just as Philip has to prove his to win Clara.
Mary Anne Wilmot illustrates the fate of forgetting "her

dignity and her duty."86

This error brings her to America
with her husband and her illegitimate child. This past may

partially account for Mary Wilmot's touchy pride.

216

The two main female characters are Mary Wilmot and
Clara Howard. Both function esthetically, illustratively,
and representationally. Esthetically, Mary becomes the
necessary moral task which Philip is assigned by his stern
taskmistress, Clara. Her past behavior exhibits the fault
of having too much pride in the face of economic adver-
sity. Some of her very faultiness, the contradictions
between her self-conceptionanuireality, give her a mimetic
dimension. For instance, she considers her farewell note
to Philip an act of generous self-sacrifice, whereas it is
obviously calculated to make him feel very guilty about his
behavior; it is an act of vengeance for his disloyalty.
Clara Howard functions esthetically as the beloved, the

grande dame sans merci whom Philip must win. As with Mary,

 

the contradictions between Clara's self-image and true
character provide a mimetic dimension in her characteriza-
tion. In Clara, the conflict is between her self-perception
as a person who is more rational, more controlled, and wiser
than Philip, and her true self, a person who is as emotional
and more foolish than he.

The form of Clara Howard represents Brown's first

 

use of the truly epistolary, which he emplOys again in Jane
Talbot. As Witherington has pointed out, the major problem
with the epistolary form as Brown uses it is that the

87

author's control is too clearly seen. Letters are never

lost or delayed unless it suits Brown's purposes. Also,

217

as letters are not predominantly sent to any one person in
the novel, there is some blurring of focus.88 As well as
these disadvantages, his use of the epistolary form has its
advantages. Dramatic suspense and the immediacy of a char-
acter's feelings are expressed more forcibly. Characteri-
zation sometimes gains depth by the use of multiple points
of view. Also, the use of letters simplifies time shifts.
Finally, as in the fictional biography, fictional epistles
allow ample Opportunity for the ratiocination and soul-
searching of characters, anticipating the internalized
psychological action of more modern and SOphisticated
writers.89

McAlexander makes additional observations concerning

the overall forms of both Clara Howard and Jane Talbot.

 

 

First, in his previous novels, Brown had presented one
larger-than-life protagonist, each of whom, whether male
or female, contains a struggle between passion and reason
within herself or himself. Now, in these last two novels,
Brown uses a split-protagonist technique with an equal focus
on a male and female character, with the woman in Clara
Howard generally speaking for duty, reason, and institu-
tions, while the man speaks for passion. Their final union
presents a meld of these two sets of values.90

Point of view is, of course, affected by the move to

an epistolary form. With letters, there is no sure way of

distinguishing the implied author from the narrator. Brown

218

does not provide an authorial preface as Richardson does

in Clarissa so that the reader may know how the author would
have the characters judged. The entire group of thirty-
three letters is sent in a packet to some unknown corres-
pondent of Philip Stanley, who is curious about Stanley's
transition from watchmaker's apprentice to wealthy gentle-
man. Within this packet are several letters within letters,
reminiscent of the Chinese puzzle box narration of Arthur
Mervyn. The principal narrators are Philip Stanley, Clara
Howard, and Mary Wilmot. One Francis Harris exists in the
novel solely to receive a thirty-seven page letter from
Stanley, giving a history of his entire situation to some-

one on the outside.91

All of the three principal narrators
are very actively involved narrator-agents. All are quite
conscious of their roles as writers of particular letters,
though not as contributors to the narrative as a whole. All
use a combination of scene, summary, and commentary, the
latter having a largely moral purpose. Of the three, Clara
perceives herself as morally superior to the other char-
acters, knowing what is best for all of them; her role as
the pursued beloved lady may contribute to this false con—
ception, as may her greater education and her wealth, despite
statements asserting her lack of concern about class back-
grounds. Their three points of view tend to help correct

any false impressions they would create of themselves.

Finally, they are generally limited to what they can learn

219

naturally. The closest Brown comes to using any privileged
source of information is when, coincidentally, Mary Anne
Wilmot turns out to have been the cousin of Mrs. Howard;
the use of only one such unlikely coincidence shows unusual
restraint for an author of Brown's period, of course.

The use of Clara's and Mary's letters themselves
allows ample material to examine how their speech character-
izes them in style and content; in contrast, only the sum-
maries of others characterize their mothers. Clara, as
mentioned earlier, perceives herself as superior in her
rationality and moral discernment. When she feels she has
the upper hand, her style is usually simple and straight-
forward; her tone, cool if not unkind, as in an early letter
upbraiding Philip:

My life has known much sorrow, but the sharpest
pangs will be those arising from the sense of your
unworthiness.

In my eyes, marriage is no sensual or selfish
bargain. I will never vow to honour the man who
deserves only my contempt; and my esteem can be
secured only by a just and disinterested conduct.
Perhaps esteem is not the only requisite to marriage.
Of that I am not certain; but I know it is an indis-
pensable requisite to love. I cannot love any thing
in you but excellence.

She is capable of working herself into a kind of frenzy of
benevolence and apparent self-abnegation, especially when
this is necessary to rouse Philip to what she perceives as

his duty. At such times, she tends to use archaic forms,

questions, exclamations, and figurative expressions. This

220

can be seen when she reproaches Philip for believing gossip

about Mary's chastity:

Ah, my friend, art thou so easily misled? Does
slander find in thee a dupe of her most silly and
extravagant contrivances? At second-hand, too, with
all the deductions and embellishments which must
cleave to every story as it passes through the imagi-
nation of two gossips!

Her finest oration occurs when, after relenting briefly

toward Philip, she tries once more to make him feel guilty

about Mary:

Does not your heart, my Philip, bleed for poor Mary?
Can I rob her of so precious a good, bereave her of
the gem of which she has so long been in secure pos-
session? Can I riot in bliss, and deck myself in
bridal ornaments, while she lives pining in dreary
solitude, carrying to the grave a heart broken by
the contumelies of the world, the horrors of indi-
gence and neglect, and chiefly by the desertion of
him on whom she doted?

This rings more of theatre than of genuine anguish. When
she is truly distressed, her style is less fanciful. She
then uses shorter sentences and paragraphs and jumps from
one idea to another, as she does in the ninth letter.
After hearing that Philip may die as a result of saving a
girl in a drowning incident, Clara writes:

My father carries you this. The merciful God
grant that he may find you alive! Philip, is it
impossible for you to forgive me. But I deserve it
not. I have lost you forever! My wickedness and
folly merited no less.

My father smiles, and says there is hope. He
vows to find you out, to restore you to health, to
bring you back to us alive and happy.

GoOd God! What horrible infatuation was it that
made me write as I did? If thou diest, just will be
my punishment. Never more will I open my eyes to
the light.95

221

Thus, her genuinely impassioned style differs from her self—
indulgent histrionics, designed to manipulate Philip into
guilt or action. These differences in style show a dis—
crepancy between Clara's self-image and her real self.

Mary Wilmot's style of expression can be seen in
two long letters: one written to Clara Howard, relating
her experiences since her disappearances; and a much earlier
one, bidding farewell to Philip, who sends a copy of it in
a missive to Clara. The first letter shows little differ—
ence in style from that of Clara's "controlled" letters.

It is difficult to perceive any of the differences which
education or personality would probably have caused between
these two characters. This paragraph of Mary's might have
been written by either:
I once again entered my native city. Sedley was pre-
pared to meet and welcome me. He was apprized of my
contention as to Stanley, and did not disapprove; he
even wrote the billet by which I invited your friend
to my lodgings.96
Her earlier letter to Philip, written at a time when her
emotions must have been extremely aroused, is written in a
more controlled manner than Clara's impassioned style.
There are few exclamations and questions, and no flights of
figurative fancy; the tone seems a mixture of sadness and a
proud attempt to hide that sadness:
I see how it is. This Clara will be yours. That
intelligence, that mien, that gracefulness, which

rustic obscurity cannot hide, which the garb of a
clown could never disguise, accompanied with the

222

ardent commendations of her father, will fascinate
her in a moment. I cannot hesitate what to wish,
or how to act.9
At the same time, form and content combine to reproach
Philip for his boorish betrayal of her. The sad tone is
combined with embarrassingly negative contrasts of herself
and Clara, with reminders of the wealth he will gain from
marrying Clara, and with direly phrased prophesies of her
own death. Mary tells him:
Long before the expiration of the half-year, I shall
be removed beyond your reach. This is not the illu-
sion of despair. I feel in my deepest Vitals the
progress of death. Nature languishes within me, and
every hour accelerates my decay.98
The self-abnegating contrasts show her lack of self—esteem,
perhaps stemming from her illegitimacy and her loss of for-
tune. More importantly, in a letter ostensibly freeing
Philip, she binds him in tethers of guilt.

The difference between Mary's and Clara's conflict
between self-concept and reality is that Mary is convinced
of her error after Mrs. Valentine brings it to her atten-
tion, and she corrects it by assuring Philip of her happi-
ness. Her trials may have made her more willing to see
imperfections in herself than Clara is, since Clara has
never been tested by fortune. Clara never relinquishes her
self-image as the high-priestess of rationality and morality.
In her last letter to Philip, she tells him that she will
assume some of the prerogatives of an older sister in their
marriage because she considers herself superior in moral

discernment.99

 

 

 

1111311“

223

Interestingly, Mary and Clara are doppelgangers in
many ways. They are second cousins; both have loved Philip;
and both are faced with the aforementioned conflict between
self-image and reality. Finally, they are similar in their
pride. For instance, they vie with each other in benevo-
lence as though it were a competitive sport. Mary's par-
ticular arena is false pride in her economic situation.

The plot resolves this by her marriage to the wealthy
Sedley. Clara's pride is her moral superiority, and she
comes through the novel with her moral certitude intact.

Jane Talbot is a longer and more successful episto-

 

lary novel than Clara Howard. There is one minor woman

 

character worth consideration, Harriet Thomson; one secon-
dary character, Miss Jessup; and two major characters,
Mrs. Fielder and Jane Talbot herself.

Harriet Thomson makes a brief and belated entrance
as the sister of the dying friend whom Henry Colden goes to
comfort. She fulfills a largely esthetic function. Her
arguments foreshadow and make more plausible Colden's con—
version.

Miss Jessup plays a slightly larger role. She
occurs fairly early in the novel as the gossip who makes
Jane undeservedly jealous of the sick woman whom Colden is
visiting. Brown skillfully foreshadows Miss Jessup's
larger esthetic role by having Jane remark about her at

this time that ". . . she is not entirely without design

224

in her prattle."100

Later, Miss Jessup is responsible for
stealing and forging part of a letter which causes

Mrs. Fielder to believe that Jane had an adulterous rela—
tionship with Colden. This, of course, helps create

Mrs. Fielder's hatred for Colden.

Mrs. Fielder does not go much beyond an esthetic
function. It is interesting to observe that she provides a
new twist on the role of the comedic parent who forbids a
child's marriage in that some of her objections to Colden
are valid and in that she is motivated by genuine concern
for Jane rather than selfish purposes. To this extent, at
least, she departs from type in the direction of mimesis;
her words and actions present her as loving and protecting
Jane, despising Colden, and using her considerable energy
and determination to keep them apart.

Jane Talbot obviously fulfills an esthetic function
as the comedic heroine caught between the wishes of a
beloved parent and her love of a young man. However, Jane
is Brown's most mimetic portrayal of a woman character,
even an average woman.101 Brown skillfully characterizes
her in scene and statement as wavering from actions which
she feels she should do, quite unlike the dauntless
Constantia. For example, she knows full well that she
should not lend her brother money, and yet she does so.

Her persuasibility causes her to be an easy mark for the

determination Of Mrs. Fielder as well as for the loving

225

embraces of Henry Colden. Furthermore, she seems lifelike
because she actually changes, from a state of over—
sensibility to one in which sensibility and rationality
are more in balance. Her religious change is one indica-
tion of this change as is the fact that when her brother
returns from Europe, he is no longer able to win her over
as he was before he left.

Like Clara Howard, Jane Talbot is truly epistolary

 

 

in form. Jane Talbot also has the form-related problems

 

of being blurred in focus due to the various correspondents
and to being too clearly under Brown's control. The same
advantages are shared: suspense and immediacy; easy time
shifts; provision for opportunities to explore individuals'
consciousness; and depth of characterization by various
points of View on the same person. This last quality can
be seen in the characterization of Jane which is created by
her own comments and those remarks and actions of Henry
Colden, Mrs. Fielder, Jane's father, Frank, Miss Jessup,
and Mrs. Montford. One advantage of the epistolary form in
revealing characters in a love relationship is that it per-
mits the two lovers to characterize each other both directly
to the beloved and indirectly to other parties. The form

of Jane Talbot, like that of Clara Howard, also rests on

 

 

the union of two protagonists who initially represent sen-
sibility and rationality. The male—female roles switch

from Clara Howard; in this final novel, it is the male who

 

 

 

226

represents rationality (if not institutions) and the female

who represents passion, at least initially. In Jane Talbot,

 

Brown adds a further refinement by having these two pro-
tagonists move to more centrist positions themselves before
they can be united.

The epistolary form of Jane Talbot affects point of

 

view. There are seventy letters and no narrative pretense
of shipping off the whole packet to someone, a departure
from Brown's practice in his other novels. As in Clara
Howard, there are again some letters within letters and
other variations of the "puzzle box" narration. Also, as
in Brown's other novels, it would be difficult here to dis-
tinguish the implied author from the narrators in Jeee
Talbot. Henry Colden, Jane Talbot, and Mrs. Fielder are
the principal narrators; Colden's sister and brother-in-
law are introduced towards the end of the novel largely

to provide correspondents now that Mrs. Fielder is dead and
now that Jane and Colden no longer correspond. All of the
principal narrators are very actively involved as well as
being conscious narrators insofar as they are writing let-
ters. None of the main narrators seems unreliable as none
of their behavior deviates markedly from their self-images.
The comments of the various narrators sometimes support and
occasionally correct each other's, adding correction when
there is misleading or incomplete evidence. Mrs. Fielder,

as appropriate to her position and years, perceives her

227

viewpoint as wiser than that of Jane or Colden; at times,
the reader might agree with her while at other times, her
difference of opinion seems more directly a product of her
different role.
There is sufficient direct discourse to consider
how the styles of Miss Jessup, Mrs. Fielder, and Jane help
characterize them. Miss Jessup's is the least useful because
there is the smallest quantity. Tone and content in her one
letter to Mrs. Fielder suggest the deepest remorse for the
unhappiness her deceit has caused:
I know how little I deserve to be forgiven. Nothing
can palliate the baseness of this action, I acknowl-
edge it with the deepest remorse, and nothing,
especially since the death of Mr. Talbot, has lessened
my grief, but the hope that some unknown cause pre-
vented the full effect of this forgery on his peace. . . .
All my enmities and restless jealousy found their
repose in the same day.10

The insincerity of her contrition is obvious by her imme-

diate denial of the forgery and her confession to

Mrs. Fielder. Thus, the style and content of her letter

condemn her by being at such variance with her actions.

Mrs. Fielder writes in a grand and passionate
style and is prone to the use of deliberate repetition of
words and phrases. She often uses strong words easily in
her condemnation of Colden, as she does after Miss Jessup
claims her confession is a lie:

I pity you, sir; I grieve for you: you have talents

of a certain kind, but your habits, wretchedly and
flagitiously perverse, have made you act on most occa-
sions like an idiot. Their iniquity was not sufficient

to deter you from impostures which--but I scorn to
chide you.10

228

One wonders what she would have said if she gee deigned to
chide him! Only on her deathbed does she seem to have any
doubts that her views are unassailable. Stylistically,
the same use of repetition and even periodic structure
remains, though her sentences are shorter. Interestingly,
she cannot unbend enough even at this point to speak the
name of Henry Colden, which she goes to great pains to
avoid:
I have wronged thee, Jane. I have wronged the absent;
I greatly fear, I have. Forgive me. If you even meet,
entreat hlm to forgive me, and recomgense yourself and
him for all your mutual sufferings.

Jane is, of course, most fully characterized of
these three women by her own style. Her pliability is shown
by her equally sincere promises of fidelity to Henry Colden
when she is near him, and to her mother when Mrs. Fielder
is close enough to control her. When Jane has first
renounced Colden and gone to live with her mother, he simul-
taneously receives two letters from Jane, both vehement in.
tone and exclamatory in style. The first gives him this
advice:

Oh, comfort me, my friend! plead against yourself;
against me. Be my mother's advocate. Fly away from
these arms that clasp you, and escape from me, even
if your flight be my death.105
The subsequent letter, written just three days later, is in
the same style and even uses the same imagery of flight:
"Fly to me. Save me from my mother's irresistable expostu-

"106

lations. I cannot-~cannot withstand her tears. The

229

use of the same style in these two contradictory letters
clearly demonstrates her ambivalence.

Earlier, Brown uses her style at more relaxed times
to characterize her as affectionate and even sensual. She
teases Colden for his forebodings of their poverty should
they marry:

What do you mean, Hal, by such a strain as this? . . .
Must I huddle, with a dozen squalling children and
their notably-noisy or sluttishly-indolent dam, round
a dirty hearth and meagre winter's fire? Must sooty
rafters, a sorry truckle-bed, and a mud-encumbered
alley be my nuptial lot?107
Her use of Colden's nickname, of exaggeration, and of coined
hyphenated adjectives helps create the affectionate and
teasing tone. Her sensuality, exemplified by chiding
Henry for his cold style of parting from her and writing
to her, is also evident in her style. Coyly, she teases
him about touching her breast:
I have just placed this dear letter of yours next
my heart. The sensation it affords, at this moment,
is delicious; almost as much so as I once experienced
from a certain somebody's hand placed on the same
spot. But that somebody's hand was never (if I recall
aright) so highly honored as this paper. Have I not
told you that your letter is deposited next my heart?108
Her repetition of the location of the letter, the coyness of
"a certain sombody's hand," and the parenthetical remark
designed to cause him to remember their caresses, all help
create a tone of sensuality.

Witherington has suggested a shift in Jane's style

which reveals her move away from insecurity and some unsure-

109

ness of Henry's love. For instance, early in the novel,

230

she speaks of her heart to Henry as a "temple," later as
a more assailable "mansion," and, in her last letter as

110 While style does not help

merely a "frail tenement."
reveal that shift in her from sensibility to rationality,
the content of her words and actions alone is; enough to

do this. More of a change in style, reflecting some change
in personality, is evident in Colden's later letters which
move towards the exclamatory and staccato, showing the

111 Earlier, the

outpouring of distress and anticipation.
differences between his style and Jane's had helped char-
acterize both of them, emphasizing their differences. As
Butler has suggested, Colden's style at that point

". . . reflects rational thinking rather than the excited
and breathlessly bombastic nature of Jane's short sentences,

112 Jane is

exclamations, invective, and reversed syntax.
also characterized by the contrast between her style and
her brother's, whose style is rough and blunt, even profane.
Early in the novel, he calls himself a "damned oaf! to be
thus creeping and cringing to an idiot--a child--an ape!"113
Later, the difference between Jane and Frank is clearly
exhibited in this exchange about Talbot's death:

Jane: It is long since the common destiny has ended

all Talbot's engagements.

Frank: Dead is he? Well, a new aspirer, I suppose,

has succeeded, and he is the bone of contention.

Who's he?114

In Jane Talbot, Brown shows that he has learned a great deal

 

about writing dialogue. The dialogue in his last novel is

231

not only clearly differentiated in style but also helps
create characters by its differentiations. Hence, Jeee
Talbot leans much less heavily on the summary characteri-
zation by a narrator than do Wieland and Ormond.

In the last two novels, despite their more limited
sc0pe, Brown's plots are more unified and the overall form
is subsequently tightened. The endings seem more closely
unified with what came before them than does Wieland's.

In his very last novel, Brown was able to portray his most
mimetic women character because of his improved literary

technique. Jane Talbot most skillfully uses character

 

function, form, point of view, and style; and the result
is his closest approximation of a real woman, Jane Talbot
herself. Charles Brockden Brown's scope may have narrowed
in his last novels, but his craftsmanship shows improve—

ment despite the brief course of his career as a novelist.

232

NOTES-~CHAPTER V

lRobert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of
Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966),
pp. 88-105. I am also indebted to the lectures of Profes-
sor Bernard J. Paris of Michigan State University on this
topic.

 

2Scholes and Kellogg, p. 98.

3Scholes and Kellogg, p. 101.

4Scholes and Kellogg, p. 89.

5W. J. Harvey, Character and the Novel (London:
Chatto and Windus, 1965). PP. 16-17.

6Paul Witherington, "Brockden Brown's Other Novels:
Clara Howard and Jane Talbot," Nineteenth Century_Fiction 29
(December 1974), 258.

 

 

 

 

7Scholes and Kellogg, p. 13.

8Scholes and Kellogg, p. 275.
9Scholes and Kellogg, p. 275.
10

Wayne C. Booth, "Distance and Point-of-View: An
Essay in Classification," Essays in Criticism 11 (1961),
rpt. in The Theory of the Novel, ed. Philip Stevick,
pp. 91-107. The following six paragraphs present a summary
of relevant distinctions made by Booth.

llIan Watt remarks on the existence of this same

problem in modern criticism of Defoe. See The Rise of the
Novel (Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University
of California Press, 1967): P. 127.

 

 

12Ormond, pp. 4 and 109.
13Watt, pp. 27-30.
14

Clark, Charles Brockden Brown: Pioneer Voice of
America, p. 307.

15John Neal, "American Writers, No. II," Blackwood's
Magazine 16 (October 1824), 421.

 

233

16G. C. Verplanck, "Brown's Life and Works [A

review of The Life of Charles Brockden Brown . . . by
Dunlap]," North American Review 9 (June 1819), 73 and 76.

17Richard Henry Dana, Sr., "The Novels of Charles
Brockden Brown," U.S. Review and Literary Gazette 2 (August
1827), 323-324 and 329.

18Warfel, Charles Brockden Brown: American Gothic
Novelist, p. 108.

19Donald A. Ringe, Charles Brockden Brown (New
Haven, Conn.: College and University Press, 1966), p. 139.
Ringe considers Wieland, Edgar Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn
Brown's best. See p. 138.

20Watt, p. 28.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21Wieland, p. 263.

2Lewis M. Bush, "The Genesis of the American Psycho-
logical Novel," Diss. University of Maryland 1969, p. 144.

23John Bayley, "Character and Consciousness," New
Literary History 5 (Winter 1974), 226.

24Berthoff, "A Lesson on Concealment," p. 47.

25Wieland, p. 62.

 

26Paul Witherington, "Narrative Techniques in the
Novels of Charles Brockden Brown," Diss. University of
Texas 1964, p. 125.

27Witherington, "Narrative Techniques," p. 124.

28Witherington, "Narrative Techniques," p. 164.
Witherington gives as examples of her announcement of con-
clusion: "Such were the reflections that haunted me dur-
ing the night, and which eventually deprived me of sleep,"
and "Such were the ideas that, during the night, were
tumultuously revolved by me." See Wieland, pp. 86 and 114.

29Wieland, p. 222.

30Witherington, "Narrative Techniques," pp. 24 and
112.
31 .
Wieland, pp. 202-203.
32

Wieland, p. 167.

234

33Wieland, p. 134.

34Wieland, p. 202.

35Wieland, p. 258.

36It is universally accepted that anything foot-
noted must be true.

37Wieland, p. 85.

38Wieland, pp. 140-143.

39Wieland, p. 41.

40Wieland, p. 41.

41Wieland, p. 41.

42Wieland, pp. 69-70.
43Wieland, p. 70.

44David Loren Butler, "A Study of the Literary
Style of the Novels of Charles Brockden Brown," Diss.
St. Louis University 1972, p. 71.

45Wieland, pp. 113-114.

46Carl W. Nelson, "The Novels of Charles Brockden
Brown: Irony and Illusion," Diss. SUNY (Binghamton) 1970,
pp. l4-16. .

47Wieland, pp. 43-45 and 50.

48Carl W. Nelson, "Brown's Manichaean Mock-Heroic:
The Ironic Self in a Hyperbolic World," West Virginia
University Philological Papers 24 (September 1973), 32-33.

49Ormond, p. 51.

 

 

50Carl W. Nelson, "A Just Reading of Charles Brockden
Brown's Ormond," Early American Literature 8 (Fall 1973),

 

51Nelson, "A Just Reading . . . ," p. 164.

52Ormond, p. 60.

53Ormond, p. 109.

235

4Sydney Krause on "Ormond: Seduction in a New
Key" argues that this criticism is unjust and that Brown
did not permit us to see Ormond's struggles with Constantia
so that we would be left with as good an impression of
Ormond as possible. See pp. 582-583.

5Patricia Jewell McAlexander, "Sexual Morality in
the Fiction of Charles Brockden Brown: Index to a Personal
and Cultural Debate Regarding Passion and Reason," Diss.
University of Wisconsin 1973, p. 204.

56Ormond, p. 282.

57Ormond, p. 246.

58Bayley, "Character and Consciousness," p. 226.

59Nelson, "Brown's Manichaean . . . ," p. 37.

60Ormond, p. 27.

61William L. Hedges, "Charles Brockden Brown and

the Culture of Contradictions," EAL 9 (Fall 1974), 118.

62Ormond, p. 220.

63Witherington, "Narrative Techniques," p. 104.

64Witherington, "Narrative Techniques," p. 120.

65The first mention of Constantia is on page 10;
she is directly quoted first on page 38 and next on page 84.

66Ormond, p. l45?l46.
67Ormond, p. 151.
68Ormond, p. 151.

69

Ormond, p. 142.

7oOrmond, p. 280.

71Ormond, p. 187.

72Ormond, p. 188.

73Ormond, p. 197.

74Ormond, p. 26.

236

75Ormond, p. 256.

76

Arthur Mervyn,

 

77

McAlexander,

78

Butler,

79

Arthur Mervyn,

p.

PP-

 

80

Arthur Mervyn,

 

I, 8 and 17.

PPo
252—253 and 250.

133.

I, p. 189.

II, 79-82.

PP-

See my closer

evaluation of this within the feminism section of the third

chapter.

81Arthur Mervyn,

 

82Edgar

Huntly,

 

83

Witherington,

84

Witherington,

and 148.
85

Clara Howard,

 

86Clara

Howard,

 

87

Witherington,

88

Witherington,

89Butler,

90

PP-

McAlexander,
that the male voice speaks for passion in Jane Talbot too,
See my treatment of that novel later in

but I disagree.
this chapter.

91Clara

Howard,

 

92Clara

Howard,

 

93Clara

Howard,

 

94Clara

Howard,

 

95Clara

Howard,

 

96Clara

Howard,

 

97Clara

Howard,

 

PP-

II, 77-78.

PP-
pp. 127 and 148.
"Narrative Techniques,"

"Narrative Techniques,"

pp. 339-340.

p. 368.
"Narrative Techniques,"

"Narrative Techniques,"

141—142.

292-293.

p. 98.

pp. 32

pp. 160-161.

p. 99.

McAlexander argues

 

pp. 314-351.
. 301.
. 355.
351.
. 311.
. 396.

. 298.

237

98Clara Howard, p. 298.

 

99Clara Howard, p. 409.

 

100Jane Talbot, p. 56.

 

101

Witherington agrees. See his ”Narrative Tech-
niques, p. 45, and "Brockden Brown's Other Novels,"
p. 272.

102Jane Talbot, p. 191.

103Jane Talbot, p. 198.

104Jane Talbot, p. 217.

105Jane Talbot, p. 180.

106Jane Talbot, p. 181.

107Jane Talbot, p. 110.

108Jane Talbot, p. 53.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

109Witherington, "Narrative Techniques," p. 272.

lloJane Talbot, pp. 97, 137, and 235.

 

lllButler, p. 155.

112Butler, p. 154.

113Jane Talbot, p. 34.

 

114Jane Talbot, p. 121.

 

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

In summation, then, Charles Brockden Brown's remark-
able female characters were the result of a complex and
often conflicting set of motives: his psychological need
for self-therapy; his didactic desire to test and teach
the ideas of associationist psychology, Godwinism, and
feminism; and his economic necessity for writing enter-
tainingly, which, to him, meant following the popular sen-
timental and gothic patterns. All of these motives not
only caused him to write but also influenced the kinds of
characters he presented. His psychological problems prob-
ably made him want to live through powerful male villains
who required equally strong female characters for counter-
balance. This need eventually weakened to the point that,
after his marriage in 1804, he did not need to write fic-
tion at all. His progress toward this point begins with
his portraiture of villains with seemingly (or perhaps
actual) supernatural powers in the first two novels and
moves towards his portrayal of definitely terrestrial vil-

lains like Frank in Jane Talbot; their female counterparts

 

become concomitantly less awesome. An analogous shift

238

239

takes place in Brown's testing of associationist psychol-
ogy, Godwinism, and feminism. Throughout the brief course
of his novels, the experiences of his women characters
increasingly tend to support moderation and a change from
reason to reasonability. As he becomes more conservative

in his hopes for human perfection, individual behavior which
deviates from even the appearance of normative social behav-
itu' becomes suspect. With the lessening of impact of lib-
eral ideas, the influence of the model of sentimental and

gothic heroines increases. In Clara Howard and Jane Talbot,

 

 

therefore, the women characters are most strongly influenced
by these types. However, even in these last two novels,
Brown's heroines show a much greater tendency to follow
inner sanction instead of external authority than do their
British cousins.

Compared to his contemporary American novelists,
Brown's use of narrative techniques to achieve subtle char-
acterization is just as impressive as the impact of his
complex set of motives. In character function, he departs
from the use of purely esthetic types--such as the repent-
ann: fallen heroine, Charlotte Temple-—to create women
characters who balanced esthetic, illustrative, and mimetic
functions. In his final novel, tamer in the exploration of
ideas than his first ones, he creates his most mimetic
average woman, Jane Talbot. Also, Brown uses a variety of

novelistic forms, all calculated to reveal the inner workings

240

of the human consciousness. For the purpose of character-
ization, he was more successful with the fictional auto~
biography and the purely epistolary forms than with the
fictional biography form used in Ormond that creates some
disbelief in the narrator's access to other characters'
thoughts. The question of narrator reliability influences
audience acceptance of characterization by the narrator in
all of Brown's novels, especially since the views of the
implied author are rarely evident. Finally, Brown utilizes
stylistic techniques to characterize women. The range of
Clara Wieland's responses and feelings is clearly shown by
her shifts in syntax. While in his earlier novels Brown
has difficulty differentiating characters of the same social
class by speech styles alone, he does improve in this skill

so that by Jane Talbot, contrasting distinctions of style

 

help create character.

Brown's women characters are, then, equally fascinat-
ing for the shifts they reveal in his artistic personality
and thinking, for the ever-improving techniques which
create them, and, of course, in and of themselves as por-
trayals of headstrong idealistic peOple of nearly two cen—
turies past. It is no wonder that they have interested so

many students of American literature.

THE BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE B IBLIOGRAPHY

Works Cited by Charles Brockden Brown

 

Brown, Charles Brockden. "Advertisement to Sky-Walk."
The WeeklyeMagazine of Original EsseyngFugitive
Pieces, and Interesting Intelligence 1 (March 17,
1788), 202.

 

 

. Alcuin: A Dialogue. Ed. Lee R. Edwards. New
York: Grossman, 1970.

 

. "Authorship." The Literary Magazine and Ameri-
can Register 1 (October 1, 1803), 8-9.

 

 

. Charles Brockden Brown's Novels. 6 vols.
Philadelphia: David McKay, 1887; rpt. New York:
Burt Franklin, 1970.

 

. "Thetflfference Between History and Romance."
The Monthly Magazine, and American Review 2 (April
1800), 251-253.

 

. "The Household. A Fragment." The Monthly Maga-
zine, and American Review 3 (August 1800), 81-87.

 

 

. Letter to W[illiam] C[oleman] of August 29, 1793.
Journal of Charles Brockden Brown. Permission to
quote from MS from Humanities Research Center,
University of Texas, Austin.

 

. "The Man at Home, No. l." The Weekly Magazine
of Original Essays, Fugitive PiecesL and Interesting
Intelligence 1 (February 3, 1788), 1-4.

 

 

. "The Man at Home, No. 2." The Weekly Magazine
of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting
Intelligence 1 (February 10, 1788), 33-37.

 

 

 

. "The Man at Home, No. 3." The Weekly Magazine
of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting
Intelligence 1 (February 17, 1788), 65-67.

 

 

 

241

242

. "The Man at Home, No. 7." The Weekly Magazine
of Original Esseys, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting
Intelligence 1 (March 17, 1788), 193-195.

 

 

 

. "The Man at Home, No. 9." The Weekly Magazine
of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting
Intelligence 1 (March 31, 1788), 257-261.

 

 

 

. "The Man at Home, No. 12." The Weekly Magazine
of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting
Intelligence 1 (April 21, 1788), 352-355.

 

 

 

. "A Modern Socrates. To the Editor of the Monthly
Magazine." The Monthly Magazine, and American
Review 2 (May 1800), 326-328.

 

. "Novel-Reading," from "A Student's Diary,
No. 24." The Literary Magazine and American Register
1 (March 1804), 403-405.

 

. "Objections to Richardson's Clarissa. To the
Editors of the Monthly Magazine." The Monthly
Magazine, and American Review 3 (November 1800),
321-324.

 

 

. “On a Taste for the Picturesque." The Monthly
Magazine, and American Review 3 (July 1800), 11-13.

 

 

. "The Rhapsodist, No. 2." Columbian Magazine; or,
Monthly Miscellany 3 (September 1789), 537-541.

 

 

"The Rhapsodist, No. 4." Columbian Magazine; or,
Monthly_Miscellany 3 (November 1789), 661-665.

 

 

. "Walstein's School of History. From the German
of Krants of Gotha." The Monthleragazine, and
American Review 1 (August 1799), 335-338, and
(September, October, November, and December 1799),
407-411.

 

 

Other Works Cited

 

Bayley, John. "Character and Consciousness." New Literary
History 5 (Winter 1974), 225-235.

 

Berthoff, W[arner] B. Introduction to Brown's Arthur
Mervyn, or Memoirs of the Year 1793. New York:
Holt, 1962.

 

243

"'A Lesson on Concealment': Brockden Brown's
Method in Fiction." Philologicaleguarterly 37
(January 1958), 45-57.

 

Booth, Wayne C. "Distance and Point-of—View: An Essay in
Classification." Essays in Criticism 9 (1961),
60-79. Rpt. in The Theory of the Novel. Ed.
Philip Stevick. New York: The Free Press, 1967.

 

Burney, Fanny. Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's
Entrance into the World. New York: W. W. Norton
and Company, Inc., 1965.

 

 

Bush, Lewis Michael. "The Genesis of the American Psycho-
logical Novel." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Maryland, 1969.

Butler, David Loren. "A Study of the Literary Style of
the Novels of Charles Brockden Brown." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, St. Louis University, 1972.

Carlson, Constance Hedin. "Heroines in Certain American
Novels." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Brown
University, 1971.

Cicardo, Barbara Joan. "The Mystery of the American Eve:
Alienation of the Feminine as a Tragic Theme in
American Letters." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
St. Louis University, 1971.

Clark, David Lee. Charles Brockden Brown: Pioneer Voice of
America. Durham: Duke University Press, 1952.

 

Cowie, Alexander. Introduction to KSU-CEAA Wieland.
Unpublished T8 at KSU Bibliographical and Textual
Center.

Coyle, James J. "The Problem of Evil in the Major Novels
of Charles Brockden Brown." Unpublished Ph.D. dis-
sertation, University of Michigan, 1961.

Craft, Harvey M. "The Opposition of Mechanistic and Organic
Thought in the Major Novels of Charles Brockden
Brown." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Tulane
University, 1964.

Cunningham, Judith Ann. "Charles Brockden Brown's Pursuit
of a Realistic Feminism: A Study of His Writings
as a Contribution to the Growth of Women's Rights
in America." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ball
State University, 1971.

244

Dain, Norman. Concepts of Insanity in the United States,
1789-1865. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers
University Press, 1964.

 

Dana, Richard Henry, Sr. "The Novels of Charles Brockden
Brown." The United States Review and Literary
Gazette 2 (August 1827), 321-333.

 

Doyle, Mildred Davis. "Sentimentalism in American Periodi-
cals, 1741-1800." 1944 abstract of unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1941.

Dunlap, William. The Life of Charles Brockden Brown;
together with Selections from the Rarest of His
Printed Works, from His Original Letters, and from
His Manuscripts Before Unpublished. 2 vols.
Philadelphia: James P. Parke, 1815.

 

 

 

 

Flanders, Jane Townend. "Charles Brockden Brown and
William Godwin: Parallels and Divergencies."
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Wisconsin, 1965.

Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice with
Selections from Godwin's Other Writings. Ed. and
abr. K. Codell Carter. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971.

 

 

. "On the Composition of Government." The New-
York Magazine; or, Literarnyepository 4 (July
1793), 404-407.

 

Grove, James L. "Visions and Revisions, A Study of the
Obtuse Narrator in American Fiction from Brockden
Brown to Faulkner." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Harvard University, 1968.

Harvey, W[illiam] J[ohn]. Character and the Novel. London:
Chatto and Windus, 1965.

 

Hedges, William L. "Benjamin Rush, Charles Brockden Brown,
and the American Plague Year." Early American
Literature 7 (Winter 1973), 295-311.

 

 

Hirsch, David H. "Charles Brockden Brown as a Novelist of
Ideas." Books at Brown 20 (1965), 165-184.

 

Kennedy, Daniel Edward. Charles Brockden Brown: His Life
and WOrks. Unpublished TS and MS in Kent State
University Bibliographical and Textual Center.
Permission granted by Sydney J. Krause, General
Editor of the KSU-CEAA Brown edition.

 

 

245

Kimball, Arthur. "Rational Fictions: A Study of Charles
Brockden Brown." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Claremont, 1965.

Krause, Sydney J. "Ormond: Seduction in a New Key."
American Literature 44 (January 1973), 570-584.

 

Lewis, Matthew G. The Monk, A Romance. Ed. Louis F. Peck.
New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1952.

 

Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy,
and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1955.

 

 

L.M. [Samuel Latham Mitchill?] "Reflections of the Char-
acter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin." The Monthly
Magazine, and American Review 1 (August 1799),
330-335.

 

 

Manly, William M. "The Importance of Point of View in
Brockden Brown's Wieland.“ American Literature 35
(November 1963), 311-321.

 

Martin, John S. "Social and Intellectual Patterns in the
Thought of Cadwallader Colden, Benjamin Thompson
(Count Rumford), Thomas Cooper, Fisher Ames,
Timothy Dwight, David Humphreys, Benjamin Silliman,
and Charles Brockden Brown." Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1965.

McAlexander, Patricia Jewell. "Sexual Morality in the
Fiction of Charles Brockden Brown." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1973.

McCay, Mary Ann Dobbin. "Women in the Novels of Charles
Brockden Brown." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Tufts University, 1973.

Miller, Raymond A., Jr. "Representative Tragic Heroines
in the Work of Brown, Hawthorne, James and Dreiser.
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wis-
consin, 1957.

Montgomery, Judith Howard. "Pygmalion's Image: The Meta-
morphosis of the American Heroine." Unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1971.

Neal, John. ”American Writers, No. II." Blackwood's
Magazine 16 (October 1824), 415-428.

 

246

Nelson, Carl W. "Brown's Manichaean Mock-Heroic: The
Ironic Self in a Hyperbolic World." West Virginia
Universiterhilological Papers 20 (September 1973),
26-42.

 

 

"A Just Reading of Charles Brockden Brown's
Ormond." Early American Literature 8 (Fall 1973),
163-178.

 

. "The Novels of Charles Brockden Brown: Irony
and Illusion." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
SUNY (Binghamton), 1970.

Nye, Russel B. Introduction to KSU-CEAA Ormond. Unpub-
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