AML 4213: Journeys to America
Spring 2012

Brown

This lecture will be a bit more complex than the previous ones, because it pulls a lot of cultural cross-currents “into” the text or, rather, the novel Wieland exemplifies lots of cultural cross-currents although it seems at first glance a “gothic” potboiler.  Please also read the long introduction to our edition, but it will only make sense once you conclude the novel.

Before You Begin, Ponder Below Four Key Features of the Emergent U.S.:

1. GEOGRAPHY—The Puritan escape from Old World corruption (Bradford) + exemplary purity (Winthrop) + push westward thru the frontier (into “virgin” territory: western Pennsylvania, Ohio, etc.) = Manifest Destiny, that is, the ideology of righteous imperialism, uncontaminated by the sins of history = collective identity defined by the innocence of open/uncontaminated space.  Gradually, the “wilderness” becomes less a negative space of no-civility (demon Indians) than a rugged, pastoral space that highlights unique American virtue and an optimistic/boundless future.  The U.S., even today, prides itself on its “heartland” as being more virtuous and authentic than citified being.  Note that the Wieland family live in a seemingly safe rural retreat.

2. PSYCHOLOGY—Keep in mind the points made in the Franklin lecture about a post-Lockean self: mobile, malleable, and subject to outside “impressions.”

3. NATION/AUTHORITY/VOICE—In the hierarchical world of the Great Chain of Being (The Tempest), you are supposed to care mainly about the sovereign’s voice (Prospero=the master); in a more democratical social world, we begin to become more concerned about “Caliban” voices, that might subvert authority.  BUT: if we enfranchise and give autonomy to “individual” voices, anarchy might ensue; we might have, for instance, unruly wives such as E. Ashbridge.  The classic tension in a democracy is that between individual voices and what might be called a coherent national voice (versus the higher authority, previously, of the sovereign’s voice).  In the U.S., even today, politicians typically don’t say “I believe this; this is what I want.”  They say this is what the “American people” want (which is of course, a fiction, or an abstraction, or a statistical average of viewpoints). Or, in terms of action, say the American Revolution (!), they use a passive construction: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary…” (Jefferson: Declaration of Independence).  So, somewhat paradoxically, in the U.S., we are into “individualism” but also typical defer our “voice” to some collective “we, the people,” in political terms that is. Issues of voice and persuasion are deeply anxious motifs in the period, right when the nation is still young: is the “enthused” voice amendable to sociality/dialogue/public opinion? In a democracy does the republican orator sway the populace or give voice to “the people”? Once the Great-Chain-of-Being/hierarchical vision of control (the King’s dictate) is replaced by the public sphere, there is always a huge question of who represents who.

4. PARANOIA—Americans like to think they are a “can do” culture with lots of gumption; Americans are also prone to anxieties about big government, conspiracies, and so on (outsiders that might pollute American purity).  The tension between self-agency and conspiracy (some unknown force being the unknown cause of known effects) is, for instance, why TV shows such as “Lost” are so popular: macho guys/brave heroines fighting hard against…..?  Brown’s Wieland is a very paranoid-thematic novel.

Right Before you Embark on the Novel, or as You Get a Few Chapters in, Ponder:

1. Yes, the prose style is at times compelling and at other times quite sludge-like, with endless circling about an episode, or psychological reactions to an episode. However, therein we can see perhaps the first U.S. gothic novel, with the emphasis on scenes of ruination and the mind’s excessive rumination on such scenes (think of Poe’s stories).

2. Brown's Wieland stands--with its emphasis on irrational behavior, murky motives, unclear cause/effect sequences--as a critique of Franklin’s sunny optimism, rationality, and calculated effort to control cause and effect sequences.  Franklin, in his virtue grid, even thinks our interiors can be reshaped! If you engage--even mechanically--in proper habits, they will become habitual; and so by nurture you can change nature.  Franklin and Brown both are post-Lockeans and believe in the power of appearance/sensory impressions, but whereas Franklin shrewdly creates impressions (or eventually sees through those who create false impressions), Brown’s characters are disastrously seduced by impressions (Pleyel’s mistaken impression of Clara).

3. Brown suggests a much more paranoid world than Franklin. Franklin believes he can be an agent in his own destiny, and exert his will to affect outcomes.  In Brown’s depicted world, wills are inexplicable, darkly Freudian, or subject to influences outside of the self: why does Carwin, ultimately, want to test Clara? Where does the voice come from that instructs Wieland to slay his family? (Keep these questions in mind as you read the novel).

4. Here is an example of a very typical “passive” moment in the novel, at the bottom of page 8, pertaining to Wieland’s father’s religious enthusiasm: “One Sunday afternoon, being induced to retire for a few minutes to his garret, his eye was attracted by a page of this book, which, by some accident, had been opened and placed full in his view…. His eyes were not confined to his work, but occasionally wandering, lighted at length upon the page….”  He does not will his eyes to fall on the page; such is sheer accident, yet the influence is profound. Brown perhaps does not believe that the world or ourselves are irrational; he believes, rather, that cause-and-effect sequences often cannot be adequately explained because of the ease with which the means of gaining knowledge can be corrupted/biased. Here is another curious example, top of page 31 “He was motionless with surprise. He was unable to conceal his feelings, but sat silently gazing at the spectacle before him.” Here we have that odd conjunction of turbulence/stasis that occurs frequently in the novel; this comes from the collision between cognition and the shock to the senses in a post-Lockean (tabula rasa, where spectacle is all) world.