A Literary Analysis Of Wieland By Charles Brockden Brown

Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland is a novel that was written as a reaction to the author’s thoughts and observations of the political climate of the time, says Emory Elliot in his introduction to the work. He also notes that Brown asserted “the nation’s leaders were the ones who most needed to read fiction because the best novels most effectively portray the realities of the human condition” and that “serious novels would challenge the most intelligent readers and demand their full intellectual engagement and reflection” (Elliot, ix). This was in opposition to the general consensus that novel reading was “an idle and even dangerous pastime” (Elliot, ix). Brown’s goal in writing novels was to develop a literary style that was clearly “’American’”

Brown’s perspective on the European fiction that, while gothic and therefore focusing on “superstition and exploded manners, gothic castles and chimeras”, merely appealed to popular taste and as such held the consensus that reading fiction was an idle pastime (Elliot, ix). Brown’s aim was to change the general consensus of fiction reading and create a genre that challenged readers to use their full intellectual capacity. He did this in Wieland through not only the dialectic, but also through allusions to the climate of the world he was living in. If we are to take Wieland as a representative for the American gothic, then the genre must achieve that goal. The gothic often presents dangling characters and plot lines, which contribute to the main point of the gothic: suspense. Brown’s works depend on the use of suspense as a literary technique and is evident in Wieland within Clara’s first person point of view narrative. Her constant reflections on how difficult it is for her to continue on with the series of events. Such actions, although they may seem trivial, persuade the reader to continue on to find out what happens

The purpose of pulling from the enlightenment is to rationalize what is happening in the novel. The gothic often contains aspects of the sublime and occurrences that seem irrational or as if something is missing, such as Clara’s dream which foreshadowed her brother’s attempts to murder her, which adds to the feeling of suspense. Mainly, though, gothic novels are didactic and aim to teach us something. Wieland, as stated previously, aims to show the reader that everyone is responsible for their actions and in control of their