Talking Big

Firm ground is not available ground.

• AR Ammons, “Dunes”

A friend told me that Wieland was the poet Shelley’s favorite novel. It was published in 1798, the same year as Lyrical Ballads, the monumental (to Shelley, to me) volume of poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge that contains both “Tintern Abbey” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” These two books came at the beginning of the modern age. Or the tail end of the Age of Reason (Kant dies in 1804, recall). Events a decade on either side of this novel were wild with change. The French king lost his head. There was the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson sent off Lewis and Clark. There was the Haitian revolution. In 1798, the Alien and Sedition Acts shook the barely constituted USA. Something was being born, a new idea about social relations and power. Times of change are times of crisis for the perceptive storytelling mind. The vision of Charles Brockden Brown is a common American theme:

 Somebody is coming to destroy you.

 Who is that somebody? God? One of God’s angels? The story is set in rural Pennsylvania, along the Delaware River, surrounded by the dark woods, in the years before the American Revolution. A stranger comes to town. He is Carwin, the book’s great personality, and he has an amazing power. I’m not going to tell you what his power is. You’ll probably see it on the book’s cover. To tell any of the plot would spoil your joy of watching it unfold.

In Chapter 27, Carwin tells his story to Clara Wieland, the book’s narrator. He tells her how he was able to gain power over her entire family. It’s a great shift in voice, and the best part of the book. Poor Clara. She’s guided by her own inner reason and rationalism. She trusts. What comes for her has as little firm grounding as the wild times themselves. Carwin is helped in his imposture by Clara’s own household servant, Judith. This passage is the most revealing of social class in the novel, so I think it is worth quoting at length. Carwin is speaking.

“Deem me not capable of the iniquity of seduction. Your servant is not destitute of feminine and virtuous qualities; but she was taught that the best use of her charms consists in the sale of them. My nocturnal visits to Mettingen were now prompted by a double view, and my correspondence with your servant gave me, at all times, access to your house.

“The second night after our interview, so brief and so little foreseen by either of us, some daemon of mischief seized me. According to my companion’s report, your perfections were little less than divine. Her uncouth but copious narratives converted you into an object of worship. She chiefly dwelt upon your courage, because she herself was deficient in that quality. You held apparitions and goblins in contempt. You took no precautions against robbers. You were just as tranquil and secure in this lonely dwelling, as if you were in the midst of a crowd. Hence a vague project occurred to me, to put this courage to the test. 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. I was desirous of ascertaining whether you were such a one.”

Even from the mouth of the book’s antagonist: some daemon of mischief seized me. In a situation that might be understandably fraught with class resentment, we get this weird explanation instead. It’s the long monologue of an unmasked Scooby-Doo villain. Brown lets the social commentary stand there for the reader in the paragraph that leads into it. The sale of her charms. The book was read by Hawthorne and Melville. It launched American Gothic fiction. It deserves our close reading.

 In an endearing and relatable move, Brown mailed a copy of the novel, in late 1799, to Thomas Jefferson. Here are links to the letter and Jefferson’s reply.

 Letter to Thomas Jefferson:

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-31-02-0234

 Jefferson’s reply:

 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-31-02-0264