Journeys to America

Wieland: 10 points

1. Wieland, stylistically, is at times compelling and other times quite sludge-like, with endless circling about an episode, or psychological reactions to an episode.

2. However, therein we can see perhaps the first U.S. gothic novel (it’s the progenitor of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!). It would take a theoretical/cultural/psychological detour to fully unpack, but the gothic impulse (a movement inward to the ruined caverns of the mind, domestic scene, or body--Poe and Faulkner) has a certain ecstatic intensity that is not unlike more transcendental, metaphysical (or pastoral sublime) epiphanies. There are, as it were, mysteries both beyond and thru/within the body.

3. And we can also see an incipient form of Henry James’ psychological nuance.

4. And we can see it as meditating on crucial issues of representation, Lockean epistemology, authority/liberty, and so on. The intro. will pull together links from Equiano, to Franklin, onto B. Brown, in the context of the politics of the early National period, a context--since it’s all about the emergence and dangers of democracy--that is still very much with us. The editor’s introduction is very insightful, linking the aesthetics/narrative issues in the novel to the contemporary political issues of the early U.S., but also (implicitly) to our contemporary moment. Note the parallel between the odd passivity/will in the first sentence of the novel “I feel little reluctance in complying with your request” and the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence, “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary …”

5. It might even stand--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 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). 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?

6. Eighteenth-century thinkers continually attempted to figure out how volition /sensory impressions interact. Here is Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, a friend of Brown’s, in a letter to a medical student, 1796:

“The principle [of hallucinations] I endeavored to establish was this: ‘that conditions of a body occur, in which organs of sense do from internal causes and without the aid of external agents, take upon themselves a configuration or impression, similar to that which is usually induced by the action of material objects and occurrences from without’....A third case is where the images presented to the sensorium by morbid sensation are not only not present, but where they are wholly different from anything which exists...Wicked persons and such as are highly superstitious and enthusiastic, whose minds are under deep concern, or are violently agitated, and whose organs of sense are irritable, are often the subjects of this illusion. They see invisible things, they hear sounds not audible. The irritable condition of the eyes suggests to them inward light beaming with celestial influence upon them, and giving a foretaste of Heaven: or impresses them with the notions of fires and flames threatening them with infernal torture and anticipating the pains of Hell.”

7. Here is an example of a very typical 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.

8. 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.

9. Wieland fits handsomely with all sorts of contemporary literary theory: as a critique of rhetoric or as foregrounding of speech/writing in various ways: i.e., Clara’s closet, ventriloquy, etc. If you know Derrida, this texts begs for a deconstruction of voice/writing.

10. Sermon oratory-- J. Edwards “Divine and Supernatural Light”--is about the power of voice (either the minister’s voice or God speaking thru, as it were, the conduit of the minister. Voice/persuasion are deeply anxious motifs in this period: 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.