Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810)

Sources

Novelist

Forging a New National Literature. Often described as the father of the American novel, Charles Brockden Brown is credited with answering the call for distinctively American fiction by transferring the horror and supernatural atmosphere of the Gothic novel from the moldering castles of Europe to New World settings. While his novels today seem derivative from his British models, in his time critics on both sides of the Atlantic praised Brown’s fictional treatment of American themes and settings as the beginning of a truly American literary tradition of which his countrymen could be proud.

Background. Brown was born in 1771 to a Quaker family in Philadelphia. After a brief foray into law he turned to literature as an occupation. Brown’s reputation as one of the nation’s first major novelists rests on four novels: Wieland (1798), Ormond (1799), Arthur Mervyn (1799, 1800), and Edgar Huntly (1799).

Gothic Horror. Like most Gothic fiction, Brown’s novels are notable for their sensationalism and violence. As Brown once wrote, “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 tale of lofty crime rather than of honest folly.” Brown’s fascination with the darker side of human nature reflects, in part, his own psychological makeup. Yet he was also expressing fundamental social concerns and tensions.

Wieland. Set on a pleasant country estate outside Philadelphia, Brown’s first-published and best-known novel is the story of Theodore and Clara Wieland, a brother and sister orphaned from youth by the mysterious death of their father. The arrival of a stranger named Francis Carwin disrupts their peaceful existence, and the characters begin hearing mysterious voices. Theodore goes insane and kills his wife and children, believing that the voices are divine and that he is doing as they have commanded. He next attempts to murder Clara, who is saved only by Carwin’s intervention. Realizing the enormity of his crime, Theodore kills himself. By emphasizing the inexplicable and the irrational, Brown reveals his belief in the limits of reason. The novel has also been interpreted as a warning not to abandon one’s moral principles for the purely emotional appeal of what seems to be divine inspiration.

Yellow Fever. Both Ormond and Arthur Mervyn draw on Brown’s experiences during the yellow-fever epidemics that plagued Philadelphia and New York in the 1790s. The more successful of the two books described the adventures of Arthur Mervyn, a young man left to make his own way in the world. Leaving his rural home for Philadelphia, he becomes caught up in the schemes of the unscrupulous Welbeck in the nightmarish but still alluring setting of the plague-ridden city. Arthur ultimately establishes himself financially by marrying a wealthy woman. The embodiment of the self-made individual at the heart of liberal capitalist society, Arthur is ambiguously characterized as both a virtuous innocent and an opportunistic man on the make, revealing Brown’s own ambivalence about the individualistic values so cherished by his countrymen.

Later Life. Although these novels achieved critical acclaim, they enjoyed little popular success, and Brown’s hopes of becoming a self-supporting author foundered. After the publication of two more novels, Clara Howard and Jane Talbot, in 1801 and the magazine serialization of “Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist” in 1803–1805, Brown supported himself as a magazine editor, a partner in his family’s mercantile business, and finally as an independent retailer before his death in 1810.

Sources

Charles Brockden Brown, The Novels and Related Works of Charles Brockden Brown, Bicentennial Edition, 6 volumes, edited by Sidney J. Krause, Alexander Cowie, and S. W. Reid (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1977–1987);

Emory Elliott, Revolutionary Writers: Literature and Authority in the New Republic, 1725–1810 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982);

Elliott, ed., American Writers of the Early Republic, Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume 37 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1985);

Donald Ringe, Charles Brockden Brown (New Haven: College & University Press, 1966);

Steven Watts, The Romance of Real Life: Charles Brockden Brown and the Origins of American Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).