Hi.
It’s Dr. Bernstein.
Welcome to the second part of my video series on Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland.
In this video, we going to focus on a few key issues that emerge in Chapters 1 -5 of
the novel—so basically the first fifty or so pages.
One of the first things that you might notice is that Brown’s novel is told using the
first-person point
of view.
It’s Clara, Wieland’s sister, who tells us the story.
We are seeing the story through her lense.
As Kelley Griffith points out, with this point of view, “one of the characters tells the
story, eliminating the author as narrator” and “the narration is restricted to what
one character says he or she observes (51).
As I noted in the first video in the series, Brown’s novel is very much about epistemological
seduction and raises questions about our ability to know—about the range and limits of our
ability to know.
So when you’re reading, you should think about who this narrator is and what limits
there might be to her knowledge.
What evidence does she use to ground her knowledge?
How does she know what she knows?
In fact, these are issues you should consider in relation to all the characters.
What is their perspective on what is going on?
What types of evidence do they trust?
And, just as importantly, where do YOU stand in relation to what’s going on?
How are you making sense of the information being presented to you?
Which character or characters do you find yourself aligned with?
What evidence do you trust?
As you might recall from the first video in the series, Susanna Rowson, another 18th-century
novelist, intervened in the preface to her book to tell readers how they should interpret
the events in her heroine’s life.
Brown does something different.
As Michael Gilmore points out, Brown—through his narrator Clara-- seems to “authorize
the subjective judgment of the reader” (645).
On
the page 5, Clara tells us readers that she “acknowledge[s]” our “right to be informed
of the events that have lately happened” in her family and encourages us to “Make
what use of the tale you shall think proper.”
If you’ve read The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 19th-century American
novel, this line will resonate with you.
In the conclusion to Hawthorne’s novel, after a number of interpretations regarding
the events are given, the limited omniscient narrator tells us that “the reader may choose
among these theories” (223).
But with Brown’s novel, we’re implicated in the interpretation of evidence right from
the start and need to think of what use we should make of the tale.
While we’re speaking of Hawthorne, I want to point out another parallel.
As you remember, a great deal of the The Scarlet Letter was centered on the interpretation
of a past event—an event that occurred before the novel starts.
To a certain extent, the same is true for Brown’s
novel.
It’s a narrative that centers around the mysterious death of Clara and Wieland’s
father and the strange and terrifying events that ensued later in their lives.
But at the time of the writing, these events are in
the past and Clara is trying to make sense of them.
So while you’re reading, I also want you to think about that issue I raised in the
first video.
What were the early impressions imprinted in the mind of their father?
What was his life like?
What did he believe?
How did he come to believe?
What were the early impressions imprinted in the minds of Clara and Wieland?
What were their lives like?
What did they believe?
How did they come to believe?
When reading the first 50 pages, I challenge you to find and analyze at least four passages
that address the issues I’ve raised in this video.
Develop your analysis as fully as you can and we will discuss them in class.
Create your own interpretation.
That’s it for now, and if you like this video, please “like” it, or leave a comment
or subscribe to my channel.