Subject: 19th Century DramaDr: Sayyid Sadek By : Abd Al Azziz Azzhrani

Brown, Charles Brockden

Brown, Charles Brockden

17 January 1771 - 21 February 1810

Generally regarded as the first American novelist, Brown is a key figure in the tradition of Gothic fiction, for some of his novels--Edgar Huntly, Wieland, Arthur Mervyn--are responsible for "Americanizing" the Gothic, which in its European incarnation featured imagery (ruined castles, etc) that was simply non-existent, and hence symbolically inert, in America. Brown shifted the settings of his worksto American locales--forests, towns, caves, outlying estates -- and relocated the sources of terror, yet retained a Gothic mood of emotional and psychological extremity. (1)

BROWN, Charles Brockden, author, born in Philadelphia, 17 January, 1771 ; died 22 February, 1810. His ancestors were Quakers, who came over in the same ship with William Penn. Before he was ten years old he was thoroughly acquainted withgeography, his favorite study, and had read every book he could obtain. From his eleventh tilt his sixteenth year he was at the school of Robert Proud, the historian, then a noted teacher, and studied so assiduously that he was often obliged to leave his books for a walking trip through the country. He was always physically weak, and, in a letter written just before his death, said that he never had been inperfect health for more than half an hour at a time. On

leaving school, Brown took to verse writing, and planned three epics on subjects connected with American history, but no fragments of these remain. At this time he sent to a periodical a poetical "Address to Franklin," throughout whichthe editor substituted the name of Washington for that of thephilosopher, without regard to the context. Brown began with his usual ardor the study of law, but determined to abandon it for literature. Although this change was contrary to the wishes of his family, it was the result of careful thought. He had tested his powers as a writer by contributing to the "Columbus Magazine," by a carefully kept diary, and by numerous essays read before a "Belles-Lettres Club," of whichhe had been the leader. He was the first American to adopt literature as a profession. Soon after making this decision he visited his friend, Dr. Smith, of New York, and, becoming acquainted with many literary and scientific men of that City, virtually made it his residence after that time. In 1797 he wrote a work entitled "The Dialogue of Alcuin," discussing with some boldness the topic of divorce, but it attracted little attention. Soon after this he projected a new magazine, which never appeared, and in 1798 he contributed to the "Weekly Magazine" a series of reflections on men and society, entitled "The Man at Home." In this year he also began the publication of his novels, which are his best-known works. He had already made two abortive attempts at novel writing. The first was never finished, and the deathof his printer put a stop to the publication of the second. This was entitled "Sky Walk; or, the Man Unknown to Himself,"and portions of it were incorporated in "Edgar Huntley," a later work.

Between 1798 and 1801 he published six novels, which attainedimmediate success, and were the finest American fictions until the appearance of Cooper's novels. In April, 1799, Mr. Brown established, in New York, the "Monthly Magazine and American Review," but it lasted only until the close of 1800.In 1803 he made a second attempt, issuing, in Philadelphia, the "Literary Magazine and American Register," which continued about five years. In 1806 he began publishing semi-annually "The American Register," the first, publication of the kind in the country, and it was brought to a close only by his-death. In person, Mr. Brown was tall, thin, and pale, had black hair, and a melancholy expression of countenance,

He intensely enjoyed the society of intimate friends, but wasreserved with all others. His death was caused by consumption, against which he had been struggling from early boyhood, His novels are " Wieland, or the Transformation," animprobable though fascinating tale of a ventriloquist, who, by personating a supernatural being, persuades the hero to kill his wife and children (1798; London, 1811); "Ormund, or the Secret Witness" (New York, 1799; London, 1811); "Arthur Mervyn," containing a graphic description of Philadelphia as it was during the yellow-fever plague of 1793 (Philadelphia, 1799-'80 ; London, 1803); "Jane Talbot" (1801); "Edgar Huntley, or the Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker" (1801; London, 1804); and "Clara Howard" (1801), republished as "Philip Stanley" (London, 1806). These were published collectively (7vols., Boston, 1827; new ed., 6 vols., Philadelphia, 1857). Mr. Brown also published several political pamphlets (1803-'9), including an "Address to Congress on the Utility and Justice of Restrictions on Foreign Commerce"; a translation of Volney's "Travels in the United States" (1804); a memoir of his brother-in-law, Dr. John born Linn, prefixed to the latter's poem "Valerian" (1805); " Memoirs ofStephen Calvert," and edited, with a life, C. H. Wilson's "Beauties of Tom Brown." At the time of his death he had nearly completed a system of general geography, which has notbeen published; and he also left an unfinished work on " Romeduring the Age of the Antonines," and several elaborate "architectural drawings, made as a recreation in the midst ofhis literary labors. His life has been written by William Dunlap (Philadelphia, 1815" also prefixed to the 1827 editionof his novels), and by William H. Prescott, in the first series of Sparks's "American Biographies" (1834 ; reprinted in Prescott's "Miscellanies," 1855); and a new life by Charles I. Stevenson, of New York, is in preparation (1886).

His Novels

During the novelistic phase that lasts from 1798 until late 1801, Brown published the Wollstonecraftian-feminist dialog Alcuin (1798), and seven subsequent novels. An additional novel was written, but was lost by a series of mishaps and consequently never saw publication.

In addition to his output of novels, Brown also became an editor during this period and, along with his friends in New York published and wrote many short articles and reviews for The Monthly Magazine and American Review from April 1799 to December1800, as well as its short-lived successor, The American Review and Literary Journal (1801–1802). Finally, besides these two New York periodicals, Brown also published numerous fictional pieces, including the only surviving fragment of his first novel Sky-Walk, in the Philadelphia-based Weekly Magazine of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting Intelligence (1798–1799).

Brown's novels are often characterized simply as gothic fiction, although the model he develops is far from the Gothic romancemode of writers such as Ann Radcliffe. Brown's novels combineseveral revolutionary-era fiction subgenres with other types of late-Enlightenment scientific and medical knowledges. Mostnotably, they develop the British radical-democratic models of Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Holcroft and combine these with elements of German "Schauer-romantik" gothic from Friedrich Schiller, the enlightened sentimental fictions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Laurence Sterne, women's domestic novels by writers such as Fanny Burney or Hannah Webster Foster, and other genres such as captivity narrative. Brown builds plots around particular motifs such as sleepwalking and religious mania, drawing on Enlightenment-era medical writings by people such as Erasmus Darwin.

Of the seven novels extant, the first four to be published inbook form (Wieland, Ormond, Edgar Huntly, and Arthur Mervyn) have received the lion's share of commentary and attention. Because of their sensational violence, dramatic intensity, and intellectual complexity, these four novels are often referred to as the "gothic" or "Godwinian" novels. Stephen Calvert, which appeared only in serialized form and in the posthumous 1815 biography, remained little-read until the endof the 20th century, but is notable as the first US novel to thematize same-sex sexuality. Clara Howard and Jane Talbot have been regarded sometimes as relatively conventional works distinct from the earlier novels because they have classic epistolary form and concern domestic issues that seem very different from the violence and sensationalism of the first four novels. Recent scholarship (since the 1980s), however, has largely revised this view and emphasizes the continuities

and overall coherence of all seven novels understood as a loosely unified ensemble. ( 2 )

Charles Brockden Brown ” Brief biographical note " Already mentioned as the first professional American writer, Charles Brockden Brown was inspired by the English writers Mrs. Radcliffe and English William Godwin. (Radcliffe was known for herterrifying Gothic novels; a novelist and social reformer, Godwin was the father of Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein and married English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.)

Driven by poverty, Brown hastily penned four haunting novels in two years: Wieland (1798), Arthur Mervyn (1799), Ormond (1799), and Edgar Huntley (1799). In them, he developed the genre of American Gothic. The Gothic novel was a popular genre of the day featuring exotic and wild settings, disturbing psychological depth, and muchsuspense. Trappings included ruined castles or abbeys, ghosts, mysterious secrets, threatening figures, and solitary maidens who survive by their wits and spiritual strength. At their best, such novels offer tremendous suspense and hints of magic, along with profound explorations of the human soul in extremity. Critics suggest that Brown's Gothic sensibility expresses deep anxieties about the inadequate social institutions of the new nation.

Brown used distinctively American settings. A man of ideas, he dramatized scientific theories, developed a personal theory of fiction, and championed high literary standards despite personal poverty. Though flawed, his works are darkly powerful. Increasingly, he is seen as the precursor of romantic writers likeEdgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. He expresses subconscious fears that the outwardly optimistic Enlightenment period drove underground ( 3 )

Charles Brockden Brown's Wielnd or Fiction as an instrument of Salvation in Post-Revolutionary America.

Charles Brockden Brown was the first American writer of fiction "to use melodrama significantly and he was thus a genuine precursor of the later romance-novelists", manifestedRichard Chase in his classic The American Novel and Its Tradition. Yet, according to an article published in July 1824 in The North American Review, Brown had not "produced an

American novel. So far from exhibiting anything of our nativecharacter and manners, his agents are not beings of this world: but those dark monsters of the imagination, which the will of the master may conjure up with an equal horror in theshadows of an American forest, or amidst the gloom of long galleries and vaulted aisles. His works have nothing Americanbut American topography about them". The essay then elaborated its idea of the mission of the American novel, which was to present "fac simiües of the peculiarities of thecountry, and consist in strong graphic delineations of its bold and beautiful scenery, and of its men and manners, as they really exist" (quoted in Baym, 1987: 225, 244).

Yet, when in 1798 Brown finished writing Wieland or, the Transformation, an American Tale, he sent a copy of the book to Thomas Jefferson, who was then Vice President of the United States. The fact that Brown intended his text to be read for the first time by such an outstanding figure of the nation shows that he had written the novel with a clear aim in mind. He had a target audience that far from abstract focused on a specific type of reader —a politician, a man of state. Retaking Jane Tompkins's reading of the novel as a work useful in "the área of national politics", as "an attempt to influence public policy", I will discuss that thiswork is firmly rooted in the historical background of post Revolutionary America and that as such, it is a desperate warning note on the dangers lurking within the optimistic dream of a new society. From this point of view, I read Wieland neither as an expression of Brown's preoccupation with art and artífice, ñor as a symbolic representation of the universal dark side of human consciousness, ñor as a battle between Calvinist pessimism and the merits of Enlightenment idealism1 Neither do I read it as a political tract (Tompkins, 1985: 44), but as a post-revolutionary jeremiad which encapsulates a passionate analysis on some aspects of eighteenth-century American thought and culture. Consequently, the two different sets of components —Gothic elements and explorations of social, political and phílosophical questions— are made to serve one main objective: the dissection of the American mission and of the happy assurances of national self-fulfillment endorsed by theRepublican ideology. In the "Advertisement" which prefaces the novel, we read that its author aims at "the illustration

of some important branches of the moral constitution of man"2. Tompkins says that the novel is directed toward "solving the problems of post-Revolutionary society" and thatit "presents a shocking and uncharacteristically negative view of what it meant to survive the War of Independence" (1985: 44). Brown did not share Thomas Paine's and Thomas Jefferson's enthusiasm towards the glories of independence, but was deeply concerned not only, as Tompkins states, with warning people of "its horrifying consequences", but with a profound disquiet towards the loss of the trae role of America, with the desperate awareness that corruption burrowed behind the sanguine proclamations of liberty and equality. Sacvan Bercovitch defines the American jeremiad as "a ritual designed to join social criticism to spiritual renewal, public to private identity, the shifting 'signs of the times' to certain traditional metaphors, themes, and symbols" (1978: xi). The Revolutionary War had contributed toward broadening the scope of the jeremiad. The mobilizationthe Protestant patriots implied an intímate fusión of the religious with the political in a wholly secular sense. "If the Puritans Jeremiahs had justified the errand by reference to the Israelite exodus, the eighteenth-century Jeremiahs justified both the Israelite exodus and the Puritans by reference to their own progress". Yet, as soon as peace was declared jeremiads resumed their lament. The confrontation had not solved the crisis, and as thepre-revolutionary Jeremiahs, ministers saw "evidence wherever they looked of degeneracy —'delicacies and luxuries' abounding, 'unsubdued lusts permitted to range and riot at large among the temptingsweets of a fertile peaceful country' — an ungrateful people that gave every sign of seeking a captain to lead them back to Egypt. The thunder of their moral complaint against popery, corruption, and backsliding, self-love and self-interest, dissipation, extravagance, gaming, idleness and intemperance' continued into the Revolutionary era". Bercovitch underscores the malleability of the jeremiad and its widespread and effective use to mobilize the country in the period to such a degree that "never did the voice of Jeremiah sound more loudly in the land than in the springtimeof the republic". Danger as saving providence, disaster leading to renewal were strategies of the colonial jeremiad .Thus, if "the jeremiad played a central role in the war of independence", "the warin turn confirmed the jeremiad as a

national ritual (1978: 117-119, 132). On the other hand, in 1790s literary discourse was used as a vehicle for political claims. National politics, in the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary decades, was the dominant theme of American writing. Bercovitch explains how "the overthrow of imperial power set loóse a libertarian spirit that terrified modérate and propertied democrats. Their terror is evident everywhere in the literature: in nervous satires of an egalitarian worldturned-upside-down; in Gothic novéis and tales of violated taboos (parricide, incest, idolatry); and most explicitly, in the Federalist jeremiads, warning against unbridled ambition and denouncing a long series of local insurrections, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Antirent War" (1978: 134). Yet, it is necessary to remember, as RobertBain observes, that "though Federalists and Antifederalists disagreed on many points, they also shared common assumptions". In 1787 most American political thinkers agreedthat the Articles needed revising to prevent a crisis, that some form of unión was necessary for the states, that a republican government best suited the aspirations of Americansociety, that government should rest on the consent of the people, that government power should be limited, that men maybe capable of reason but are more often ruled by their passions, and that power can corrupt (1977: 258). The motif of these Federalist Jeremiahs is transparent in the momentouschoice they posed, "on one side, apocalyptic disaster; on theother side, millennial glory earned through aprocess oítaming, binding, curbing, restraint. Like their predecessors, they were berating the present generation for deviating from the past in order to prod it forward toward their visión of the future. In ritual terms, they were asserting consensus through anxiety, using promise and threatalike to inspire (or enforce) generational rededication" (Bercovitch, 1978: 135-136). Fiction becomes in Wieland a wayof regeneration as well as a way to expose delusion.

According to Elliot, Clara and Carwin "introduce aspects of intellectual scepticism, analogous to what postmodern theorists cali indeterminism. The words of Clara and the actions of Carwin suggest the strong possibility that every narrative, every experience, every human judgment is always and necessarily based upon quite uncertain premises and assumptions" (1994: xxii). Clara presents herself to the

reader as an unreliable narrator: "My narrative may be invaded by inaccuracy and confusión; but, if I live no longer, I will, at least, live to complete it. What but ambiguities, abruptness, and dark transitions, can be expected from the historian who is, at the same time, the sufferer of these disasters?" (169). But as Elliot thinks, Clara's observation goes beyond her merely personal renderingof her story. What Clara I believe is actually pointing at isthe fact that firstly reality is an abstraction impossible torender truthfully, secondly that that rendering is directly dependant on the experience of the renderer, and thirdly thatthe verbal cast limits that same rendering. That reality is an abstraction impossible to render truthfully is an idea that cuts across the novel's narrative technique. Reality is duplicitious and through its impenetrable veil nothing can bediscerned as appearances are misleading and knowledge to discover it is "sparingly conferred" upon man (119). The key scene in the novel —since it unchains all catastrophic eventsfor the Wieland— is that of Clara in her bedroom and the voices she hears and later, the attack by Carwin. The episodeis narrated firstly by Clara, secondly by

Pleyel and thirdly by Carwin. Pleyel —a defender of intellectual liberty who rejects all guidance but that of reason— is convinced of the veracity of what he has witnessedby the testimony of his "eyes" and "ears" (121). Clara is bewildered by his accusations as he has drawn the most improbable and unjust conclusions from dubious appearances. What might be labelled as Pleyel's conception of a "virtual reality" leads him into palpable errors, because his imagination has transformed shadows into monsters (157). Pleyel, thus, becomes the most awesome character in the wholenovel as he is presented as an example of how even the most rigid champion of rationality can be overthrown by manipulation of evidence, of the senses. In fact, for Carwin,Pleyel "was a man of cold resolves and exquisite sagacity. Todeceive him would be the sweetest triumph I had ever enjoyed"(237-238). And what it seems unbelievable for this double-tongued deceiver is that Pleyel was indeed deceived. The question Clara asks continuously is in a nutshell —how can wesolve a problem of perception? How can we reach at the truth by individual testimony? The question remains answered and isfurther complicated when Carwin gives a third rendering of

the scene of the closet. Henee, the transformation alluded toin the subtitle endorses a triple reference as Pleyel, Wieland and Clara have each been transformed from "rational and human into a creature of nameless and fearful attributes"(205). The problem of how to "unravel the maze" (162) is leftunsolved and the perception of reality is distorted and entangled by the passions subsumed in the characters of the performance. Benjamin Rush, revolutionary physician and patriot, in "An Address to the People of the United States", published in the January 1787 American Museum, expressed whathad become for many citizens a commonplace: "There is nothingmore common than to confound the terms of the American revolution with those of the late American war. The war is over: but this is far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of thegreat drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government; and to prepare the principies, moráis, and manners of our citizens, for these forms of government, after they are established and brought to perfection." Rush concluded by reminding readers that THE REVOLUTION ISNOTOVER!' (quoted in Emerson, 1977:254). Wielandas a jeremiad fashions themyth of America in literary canonical terms. Wieland is not a study in individual dementia, but a profound research in collective flaws, an allegory of the corruption of the republican faith in the virtues of its citizenry, a shocking discovery of inner disorder that mirrors outer turbulence and chaos, a disturbing mindscape of the errand. Brown may be what Leslie A. Fiedler thinks —"a writer careless to the point of shamelessness" (1960: 155), but two hundred years after its composition and near the end of the second millenium, Wielandis still a novel which continúes to tap readers' interest in a society marketed as utopian, though lived everyday as delusive. ( 5 )

Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American GothicPeter Kafer

This is the most interesting book that I have read on Charles Brockden Brown. It has a lively style, a nice

touch, and an engaging perspective on the man and his work."—Thomas P. Slaughter, author of The Natures of John and William Bartram

"This excellent biography of unique and challenging American writer provides a solid historical analysis of the American Revolution and the development of Brown's 'Gothic' tales."—Choice

In 1798, a decade after the Founding Fathers created anation based on the principles of liberty and equality, Charles Brockden Brown, then an unknown Philadelphia writer, invented the American Gothic novel. His first book, Wieland, is the story of a religious fanatic haunted by demonic voices instructing him to murder his wife and children; in subsequent works, a young country bumpkin confronts the depravities of city existence, an impecunious daughter becomes the erotic obsession of an insane egomaniacal rationalist, and a sleepwalker awakes to—and participates in—the extremes of frontier savagery.How could a glorious age of American history also giverise to the darkest of literary traditions, one that would inspire Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, and many other best-selling American writers?

In Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic, Peter Kafer carefully unravels the mystery of what compelled this pious Philadelphia Quaker to become fascinated with a peculiar form of dark European imagery and transform it into something wholly American. In the new nation, Kafer notes, therewere no ancient monasteries, no haunted castles, no hierarchies of nobility to draw upon. Taking inspiration instead from his pacifist family's persecution at the hands of the American Revolutionaries, including the likes of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, as well as from perverse expressions of European-American Protestantism and the

suppressed histories of his native Pennsylvania, Brockden Brown wrote of the horrors that lurked below the triumphant veneer of the young American republic. In doing so, he became the literary conscience of his generation.

Written with a witty and acutely critical eye, Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic illuminates the social and political influences on the nation's first professional novelist and reveals the surprising origins of one of American literature's most popular and enduring genres.(6 )

Charles Brockden Brown

Three Gothic Novels

Wieland • Arthur Mervyn • Edgar Huntly

his volume contains three novels of Charles Brockden Brown that were first published from 1798 to 1800: Wieland: or the Transformation, An American Tale; Arthur Mervyn: or, Memoirs of the Year 1793, First and Second Parts ; and Edgar Huntly: or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker.

The texts of the three novels printed here are those established for Kent State University's Bicentennial Edition of the Novels and Related Works of Charles Brockden Brown under the general editorship of Sydney J. Krause, with S. W. Reid as textual editor, and published by Kent State University Press in, respectively, 1977, 1980, and 1984. These texts were prepared according to the standards established by, and have received the approval of, the Center for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association of America (see The Center for Scholarly Editions: An Introductory Statement, 1977).

Brown's manuscripts and prepublication materials, suchas page proofs, for the novels printed here are not known to be extant. Brown did not always read proofs for his novels; when he did, he often missed errors, including those introduced by the printers. In order to establish texts that represent, as nearly as possible, Brown's final intentions, the editors of theKent State Edition studied the extant documents pertaining to each work and based their texts on the original printings that could be considered most authoritative, making corrections where necessary.

Brown began writing Wieland: or the Transformation, An American Tale by early 1798; an undated outline survives that mayhave been written as early as 1796. During an extendedstay in New York in July 1798, he delivered a manuscript containing most of the novel to Thomas and James Swords, the printers for Brown's publisher, Hocquet Caritat. While it was being set in type, Brownread excerpts of the novel to his friends William Dunlap, Elihu Hubbard Smith, and William Johnson, who made suggestions about the ending of the novel; Smith,in particular, helped Brown with proofreading. Brown completed the novel in New York in August 1798; William Dunlap records in his diary that Brown read final proofs for the book. It was published on September 14, 1798, the only edition of Wieland published during Brown's lifetime. This volume prints the text of the first 1977 Kent State printing, which is based on Caritat's 1798 printing.

The first nine chapters of Arthur Mervyn: or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 originally appeared in installments in James Watters' Weekly Magazine , June 16-August 25, 1798. In December 1798, Brown accepted Hugh Maxwell's proposal to publish the first part of the novel; he completed it in early 1799, and it was published as Arthur Mervyn: or, Memoirs of the Year 1793, First Part in the spring of that year. Because Brown's manuscript of the first nine

chapters was lost when the Weekly Magazine was suspended after Watters' death in August 1798, Maxwell based hisprinting of them on the magazine publication. Brown was in New York when the book was being published and did not read proofs for it. Arthur Mervyn: or, Memoirs of the Year 1793, Second Part was published in the summer of 1800 by George Folliot Hopkins, a New York printer. This volume prints the text of the first 1980 Kent State printing of Arthur Mervyn: or, Memoirs of the Year 1793, First and Second Parts, which is based on the Weekly Magazine printing of the first nine chapters of the novel; the 1799 Maxwell printing for the remainder of the first part of the novel; and the 1800 Hopkins printing for the second part of the novel.

Excerpts from Edgar Huntly: or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker, corresponding roughly to Chapters 17-20, appeared in April 1799 number of Brown's Monthly Magazine. Brown finished the novel in the summer of 1799, and it was printed by Hugh Maxwell in Philadelphia later that year. Brown, who was living in New York during this period and occupied with his duties on the Monthly Magazine, did not read proofs. This volume prints the text of the first 1984 Kent State printing, which is based on the 1799 Maxwell printing and incorporates corrections from the Monthly Magazine text at points where the Maxwell text appears to be erroneous.

The Kent State Edition does not impose a uniform styleon the texts or modernize or normalize spelling, punctuation, or grammatical constructions; but it doescorrect spellings and punctuation that were positivelyerroneous in Brown's time, restores Brown's habitual usages in instances where the text obviously represents a printer's attempt at styling, and emends printers' errors, such as turned letters or misplaced type. It does not attempt to reproduce features of 18th-century typography, such as the long letter "s." This volume presents the texts of the Kent State

printings chosen for inclusion here, but it does not attempt to reproduce features of their typographic design, such as the display capitalization of chapter openings. The texts are presented without change, except for the correction of two typographical errors.( 7 )

Wieland Summary

Wieland is an American gothic novel set in the years after the French and Indian War (1754-1763) and before the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). It is structured as a first person narrative in the form of two letters by Clara Wieland.

In the first letter, Clara begins her narrative by informing her readers that her tale concerns the horrors that befell her family and she hopes that its telling will impart a moral lesson. Her father was an extremely religious man whose Calvinist beliefs were filtered through the lens of an apocalyptic French Protestant sect, the Camissards. His character was inclined to sobriety, melancholy, and religious ecstasy. Believing he hada missionary calling, he moved to the rural outskirts of Philadelphia from Saxony to proselytize the Indians; he soon married and had two children, Clara and Theodore (referred to later in the novel as Wieland).One evening when his children were young, he suffered an inexplicable death at the temple overlooking the river that he had built to worship his God. A strange cloud, bright light, and loud boom augured his death. Clara and her brother never truly knew what happened to their father, butClara believed its cause was either spontaneous human combustion or the work of a divine, supernatural force.

The main events of the novel occurred many years later. Wieland and Clara’s mother died not long after their father, and the two of them inherited his property. Clara lived in a small house on the edge of the Wieland estate. Wieland married Catharine Pleyel, Clara’s closest friend,and had four children. Their circle was complete when Catharine’s brotherHenry (referred to as Pleyel) returned from years abroad to live in America. Clara’s education was secular, and while she was not irreligious, she was more inclined to find fundamental truths in nature. Her brother, by contrast, inherited his father’s reserved and melancholy demeanor as well as his heightened religiosity, although it was tempered with the study of science and literature.

The Wielands and Pleyels enjoyed a close-knit, insular intimacy filled with happiness and ease. The first sign of something unexplainable and disconcerting was when Wieland returned to the temple one evening to retrieve a letter he left there; on his return he thought he heard his wife’s voice but it turned out she had never left the house. Wieland was apt to believe in more supernatural explanations, but Pleyel encouraged him to conclude that his senses had deceived him. Some time later both Pleyel and Wieland heard Catharine’s voice and another that communicated

information about the death of Pleyel’s beloved who lived in Europe. Clara herself began hearing voices; she heard two men within her closet plotting her death and another warning her away from her summer-house, a secluded outdoor spot she particularly enjoyed.

At this time another individual was introduced into the Wieland circle - Francis Carwin, an intelligent and well-mannered but mysterious man recently returned from traveling throughout Spain. Clara found herself strongly enthralled by his voice and physiognomy. Carwin became a regularfixture in Wieland’s home, although the four never could quite decide whether or not he was good or evil.

One evening Clara returned to her abode from her brother’s home, where she, Wieland, and Catharine were waiting for Pleyel to arrive. Pleyel never came and Clara was overcome with depression and anxiety. She had recently discovered that she was in love with Pleyel and had hoped to inform him of her feelings that evening. When she was alone in her chamber, consumed by morose thoughts, she suddenly felt that there was someone within her closet. To her surprise, a voice warned her not to open it, but when she persisted and finally flung the doors wide, Carwin was hiding inside. He told her the divine voice protected her from his designs upon her purity. Upon relaying this information, he fled.

The next day Clara was shocked when Pleyel, returned after his absence, accused her being in love with Carwin and relinquishing her virginity to him. His evidence was that he saw Clara writing in her diary one evening about Carwin, and that he heard her voice and Carwin’s voice in the woodsnear her house discussing their lascivious and immoral deeds. Clara was heartbroken at these false allegations but Pleyel persisted, claiming hissenses could not be deceived. In his travels in town Pleyel also discovered that Carwin was wanted abroad for murder and robbery. He refused to listen to Clara’s explanation and claimed that he was going toembark upon a long journey.

Clara, profoundly depressed, was shocked to receive a letter from Carwin that afternoon asking her to meet him at her house at eleven o’clock thatevening so he could repair his misconduct from the previous evening. After meditating on the wisdom of accepting this invitation, she decided she would hear what he had to say. When she got to her house at the appointed hour she was surprised to see a light in her chamber. As she headed up the stairs she heard a shrill voice warning her away and saw a strange, frightening face in the hallway. When she finally made it upstairs to her room she discovered Catharine’s dead body upon her bed; Carwin was not there but had left a note, wondering why she did not come and warning her that she was about to see a horrible sight. Her brother appeared, discombobulated and frenzied, but ran out when a crowd of neighbors and townspeople rushed in. Clara was then told her brother and Catharine’s four children and ward Louisa Conway were also murdered. Thisinformation was so distressing to Clara that she fainted and became ill.

When Clara’s health was restored, her maternal uncle Thomas Cambridge, arrived from Ireland and presented her with a written account of the trial of the man who was convicted of the murders - Wieland! In his testimony, he states he committed the murders because he was absolutely

convinced that he was commanded to do so by God as a test of faith. Clarawas horrified, especially as she believed Carwin must have played a role in the crimes. She agreed to leave America and travel throughout Europe with her uncle at his request. When she asked permission to visit her brother - who received a life sentence and not execution on the basis of insanity - her uncle warned her that her brother had tried to escape and murder her as well, believing it God’s will.

Before she left for Europe, Clara returned to her house to retrieve her diary that she had left there. To her astonishment, Carwin appeared in her room and confessed that he was responsible for almost all of the voices she and the family heard, although he did not explicitly admit to perpetrating the voices encouraging Wieland to murder his family. He had the gift of biloquism, which meant he could mimic the voices of others and project them from whatever distance he chose. He admitted to using this gift in the past for personal gain and amusement, but expressed extreme regret at the events that befell the Wielands. He also explained that he was not a murderer and a thief but was framed by an enemy. Clara found his confession unsatisfactory and blamed him for her family’s deaths.

At the close of Carwin’s confession Wieland appeared, escaped from prison. He attempted to murder Clara but Carwin, who fled the room, used his voice to stop Wieland. When Wieland heard the voice telling him that he had murdered his family in error, he became profoundly anguished and fatally stabbed himself in the neck. Following this tragedy, Clara descended into madness and could barely go on. This torpor finally broke when her house, which she refused to leave and wanted to die in, caught fire and burned down. She was restored to sanity and finally agreed to accompany her uncle to Europe as they had planned earlier.

The final chapter of the novel consists of a second letter written by Clara three years after the events surrounding Wieland's death. She explained how she finally married Pleyel, who learned she did not lose her purity. Carwin was never heard from again, and she assumed he was retired to some farm, eluding his enemy. The lesson she wished to impart was that she and her brother could possibly have avoided the tragedy thatbefell their family if he had “framed juster notions of moral duty, and of the divine attributes” (181) or if she had “been gifted with ordinary equanimity or foresight” (181). ( 8 )Wieland Charles Brockden BrownThe following entry presents criticism of Brown's novel Wieland; or, The Transformation (1798). See also, Charles Brockden Brown Criticism.Charles Brockden Brown's most highly-regarded novel, Wieland, is widelyconsidered the first gothic novel produced by an American. Written in epistolary form, the work draws on the traditions of both Gothic and sentimental novels, and includes such narrative elements as murder, suicide, seduction, and insanity. Although Wieland has often been interpreted as an indictment of Puritanism, some scholars maintain that the novel is an historical parable or even a self-referential allegory of the writing process itself.

Plot and Major CharactersThe title character of the novel is Theodore Wieland, whose sister Clara narrates the family's story, beginning with the arrival of theirfather from England. Believing it his duty to spread Christianity among the Indians, Theodore and Clara's father is at first distracted by worldly pursuits, and later, when he has achieved sufficient wealthto pursue his calling, his efforts are thwarted by the Indians themselves. Believing he has failed, he retreats to his temple at midnight for private worship and dies following a flash of light and an explosion. The event is described as a case of spontaneous combustion. The children's mother dies soon after, but Theodore and Clara are raised in material comfort with enlightened attitudes on religion and human nature.When the children reach adulthood, Theodore marries Catherine Pleyel, a family friend, and the couple settles into a life of privilege on the family estate, where Clara lives in her own house on the grounds. Catherine's brother Henry visits from Europe, and the two men affably debate about philosophy and religion, with Pleyel's rationalism in opposition to Wieland's belief in religion and the supernatural. Theircontentment is soon disturbed, however, by a mysterious disembodied voice and by the appearance of a stranger named Carwin, who joins their intellectual circle although he is not their social equal. The voice claims that Pleyel's betrothed has died in Europe, and when thisis later confirmed, Wieland becomes convinced the voice is divine in nature.In time, Clara falls in love with Pleyel, but he has overheard a conversation between Clara and Carwin that suggests her virtue has been compromised and he rejects her. Wieland, meanwhile, determines that the voice is God's, and that God is commanding him to murder his wife and children. He obeys but then believes he must also murder his sister and Pleyel as further proof of his devotion and obedience. Clara is saved by the intervention of neighbors and her brother is taken to prison. Carwin confesses that he is a ventriloquist and is responsible for the mysterious voices the family has heard. Because ofhis own attraction to Clara, he was determined to turn Pleyel against her—he orchestrated the conversation Pleyel overheard that implicated Clara. Carwin denies, however, any involvement with the voice Wieland heard commanding him to murder his family. When Wieland escapes from prison and returns to kill his sister, Carwin saves her by speaking toWieland as God—this time telling Theodore that he has been deceived. Wieland realizes the enormity of his crimes and commits suicide.The novel concludes three years later, when Clara has fled to Europe and has married Pleyel. At this time Clara feels that she has recovered from the effects of the events and is able to begin writing

her account of the family's tragedy. Carwin has retreated to the countryside and has become a farmer.Major ThemesMost critics and scholars interpret Wieland as a cautionary tale on thedangers of religious fervor or as an indictment of patriarchal institutions. The actions of the two Wieland men, father and son, represent for some critics a study in madness; others read the pair asembodiments of the Faustian theme, or more specifically, as American versions of Faust. Issues of interpretation and the dangers of reaching conclusions based on insufficient knowledge are also prominent themes. Since the novel leaves questions unanswered and problems unresolved, some have argued that Brown may have been pointing out the inability of humans to know the truth with any degreeof certainty.Critical ReceptionMany early critics assessed Wieland as a flawed novel filled with inconsistencies and ambiguities caused by Brown's lack of skill as a writer. The work was considered unsophisticated and too dependent on the conventions of the Gothic novel and the sentimental novel of seduction. More recently, however, Wieland has been reevaluated and itsambiguities are now often regarded as deliberate strategies by the author. James R. Russo refutes the common notion that Brown was an inferior writer and suggests that readers must separate the author from his narrator: “Wieland is told by a confessed madwoman, Clara Wieland, and her narrative seems incoherent at times because she is confused, not because Brown is.”Joseph A. Soldati maintains that the work is highly complex: “Innovatively employing the myths of Icarus and Narcissus in its exploration of the Faustian hero's dark psyche, Wieland is the precursor of the psychological tales of Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Faulkner, and others.” But Soldati points out that there is a difference between the American Faust and his European predecessors; the level of violence and destruction associated with Theodore Wielandis much more extreme and “reflects the New World's violent temper.” Other critics have also considered Wieland's tragic events as an indictment of American ideology. Roberta F. Weldon claims that the family's isolation and self-involvement led to a “dangerous myopia,” and she suggests that Brown was predicting a similar fate for the emerging nation as a whole if its ideals were allowed to promote the rights of the individual to the detriment of the common good. According to Weldon: “By focusing on the error of the Wieland family, the novel examines the flawed design underlying the American ideal. The Wielands believe with Emerson that ‘the individual is the world’ but experience the danger of self-absorption and are destroyed by it.”Edwin Sill Fussell suggests that Wieland is concerned with its author's

struggle to break with the literary conventions of the past and to create a new, uniquely American, literature. According to Fussell, “in Wieland Charles Brockden Brown was writing about writing … about that American literature not yet in existence but coming into existence as he confronted and incorporated the stiffest resistance imaginable, his own impossibility.”Much scholarly interest has centered around possible source material for Wieland. Critics have suggested the Old Testament story of Abraham as an obvious inspiration for the slaying of Wieland's family by God'scommand. Other critics suggestions for possible sources include Milton's Paradise Lost, several of Shakespeare's plays—among Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Much Ado about Nothing—and most commonly, two contemporary accounts of New England men who murdered their families claiming they had been ordered by God to do so.

Charles Brown 1 -http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/cbbrown.html

2 .http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Brockden_Brown

3 .http://www.famousamericans.net/charlesbrockdenbrown/4 -http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/literature-1991/authors/charles-

brockden-brown.php

5 .http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/5956/1/RAEI_12_07.pdf

6 -http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=1246 -7 -http://www.loa.org/volume.jsp?RequestID=124&section=notes

8 -http://www.gradesaver.com/wieland/study-guide/short-summary

9 -http://www.enotes.com/topics/wieland/critical-essays/wieland-charles-brockden-brown