Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810)

A most peculiar book, 'Wieland' (1798) has rightly been positioned as America's first Gothick novel. It emerges from within the fashionable English tradition. Indeed, what strikes one straight away is that the America of Brockden Brown's novel is just the old world on the other side of an ocean.

America is not yet the United States (the story is set in the late colonial period). Characters move freely between New England (and the South) and both England and Europe. The German references are show more probably a nod to the German uncanny.

The style at its best has all the dignity of Augustan classicism but at its worst is circumlocutory and posturing. One of its fascinating features is the tension between an affectation of rational discourse and what amounts to high emotional hysteria in the plot and its telling.

There is nothing supernatural yet a form of proto-transcendentalist religiosity drives the narrative. Madness comes from abandoning sense and classical moderation and allowing the passions and imagination to let loose horrors. The story is absurd but, it implies, no more absurd than 'enthusiasm'

These horrors are psychological and physical. Behaviours become violent and criminal because of madness and of misunderstandings that might be comical in the hands of Moliere but become tragic in the hands of Brockden Brown. A lot of very good people die including two small children.

It has been noted that Brockden Brown is interested in the effect of 'what appears to be' in the minds of people rather than of rationally assessed sense impressions so that the story can be seen as a precursor to the interest in the unconscious and in suggestion of a century later.

The story is bleak. The heroine Clara is a repressed romantic girl who can (unfairly) blame herself for lacking 'ordinary equanimity and foresight'. The blissful world of the Wieland-Pleyel household collapses from misadventure and the malignity of others.

The villains and the irresponsible seem to get away with their crimes with no judgement from God or man although they may not profit from them. If one destroys himself, another survives to live a quiet life as a farmer and another, Maxwell the seducer, kills and is not killed.

The greatest horrors (the murder of a happy family) come from an insane belief in an angelic voice but there are also examples of sociopathy unavenged ranging from intent to rape to the cowardly murder of a gentleman and on through to the seductions of the weak by the manipulative.

Yes, there is eventually a happy ending of sorts but only after a very long run of bad Job-like experiences for Clara in particular. The book is also notable for its portrayal of psychological states like religious mania, guilt and black depressive grief.

As a novel of ideas (despite the inherent implausibility of the way that the action is moved forward through a form of ventriloquism), 'Wieland' is interesting but the style certainly becomes truly leaden at times and its hysteria makes it hard to make it relevant to our century.

An important literary curiosity, it can be read as an American way station between the English Gothick and the more effective horror tale created by Edgar Allan Poe although (in the late 1790s) 'Wieland' is still far more European than it is obviously American other than in its location.

Perhaps what is truly American is the interest in emotional religion. By this time, despite popular Methodism, English culture had fully rationalised itself into Anglicanism and a gentle scepticism but 'Puritan' and 'new religious' sensibilities had escaped to the New World and still flourished.

We might also see a similarity between Lovecraft's Anglocentric ideal of American eighteenth century culture and the world of 'Wieland'. It is as if a rearguard action, both rational and unhinged, against weird religion defines some American weird fiction - for Reason in 1798 and for Science in the 1920s.

In England, over this and the subsequent decades, weird religion as source of horror was seen in terms of Catholicism and the Inquisition ('The Monk' (1796), 'Melmoth the Wanderer' (1820)) so it is interesting that contesting enthusiastic religion and superstition can be so central to the Gothick.

All in all, a book worth struggling through for those interested in the Gothick and in early American literature but probably not one for the modern general reader. It is more a case of 'if you liked Ann Radcliffe, you might like this'. show less

Our ancestors sought different pleasures in their reading than we do. Realism? That's what daily life is for. Authentic dialogue? Contrived eloquence is more pleasing. Plausibility? Thrills and towering passions are better. One should not merely "read" this book; one should "earnestly betake oneself to perusal" of it. There's one thing it has in common with modern-day thrillers: The protagonists are all superbly gifted, resourceful, and good-looking. Make that two things: The author seeks to show more spice up the tale with borrowings from the latest science. The book appeared in 1798, so that means the latest dope on spontaneous combustion, mania, and the obscure but powerful art of "ventrilocution."

N.B. The title character is a fictional cousin of a real German Romantic author (often forgotten today) named Christoph Martin Wieland. You might look him up. show less

Though the title character is very significant and well delineated, the heroine of this brilliant and touching novel is Constance Dudley - as told by her friend Sophia Westwyn. Set in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia of the 1790's and published in 1799, this recounts the fall into penury of the Dudley family victimized by a trusted employee who embezzles huge sums and leaves them with unpayable debts. Moving to Philadelphia, they endure the loss of their mother, a yellow fever epidemic, show more rigors of winter and the exactions of landlords - kept afloat by the efforts and intelligence of their daughter Constance. Their fortunes abruptly change when Ormond, a wealthy military projector and conscientious atheist, falls in love with Constance and helps them obtain a measure of justice from Thomas Craig, who had victimized them. Unfortunately for Ormond, who has given up his mistress and hopes Constance will take her place, all his formidable talents and devious efforts are insufficient to sway Constance from her virtuous life. His self-centred morality leads to his destruction. My favorite so far from the great CBB.
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Resulta curioso que la primera novela norteamericana, se encuadre dentro del gótico americano, y además pertenezca a la corriente del Psycho Killer, la literatura de psicópatas, que ha llegado hasta nuestros días. Escrita en 1798, ‘Wieland, o la Transformación’ (Wieland; or, The Transformation), está escrita por Charles Brockden Brown, considerado el primer escritor profesional americano, y fue la precursora de una corriente que va a llevar a Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, show more Henry James, y todo lo que vino después, con Stephen King, Thomas Ligotti, etc.

En ‘Wieland’, nos encontramos fanatismo religioso, la América puritana, la psique escindida, el oír voces que impulsan a matar, el germen de todo eso que posteriormente nos vamos a encontrar en tantas novelas y películas. Frente al gótico europeo, el gótico americano cambia de escenario: pasamos del castillo y la abadía, a las mansiones y los caserones, que marcarán a tantos escritores posteriormente. ‘Wieland’ es la raíz hacia un contexto diferente al que se había conocido hasta ese momento. Un fanatismo religioso que desemboca en crimen, en masacre; el psicópata que actúa en función de unas voces que se lo ordenan.

La historia está contada por Clara Wieland de forma epistolar y, si bien tiene un comienzo algo lento, narrando los orígenes de la familia Wieland, más adelante tienen lugar una serie de sucesos extraños y misteriosos que alterarán la vida de Clara y sus allegados de forma terrible.

El libro se cierra con un relato, ‘Memorias de Carwin, el Biloquista’, que sirve al lector para completar lo leído en ‘Wieland’.

En resumen, se trata de un gran novela, excelentemente escrita (o traducida). show less