SOURCE: Patrick, Marietta Stafford. “Romantic Iconography in Wieland.” South Atlantic Review 49, no. 4 (November 1984): 65-74.

[In the following essay, Patrick argues against critics who claim that Wieland is an unsophisticated novel dependent on the conventions of Gothic and sentimental novels. According to Patrick, the novel questions the process of transformation, perception, and personal identity, suggesting that it has far more in common with the later works of American literature than with earlier ones.]

Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland has been treated by older critics as a derivative novel. Pattee in an early introduction considers the novel in light of such popular eighteenth century literary forms as the sentimental, the Gothic, and the social novel in England.¹Wieland does illustrate certain motifs of the sentimental and Gothic forms, but as Herbert Ross Brown observes, these trappings, especially the use of the epistolary form, seem incidental rather than primary; in Wieland, as Brown notes, no effort is made to sustain an illusion of actual correspondence.² More to the point, it becomes obvious early in the novel that Brockden Brown is not concerned with the seduction theme. The Gothic properties, though remarkable in features of setting and atmosphere, are similarly played down. The most significant factor in considering Brown's use of the Gothic and the sentimental forms is that he manages to transcend their surface and limited concern with what will happen next by internalizing action.

Criticism, however, attempting to note a psychological complexity in Wieland has done so at the expense of the work's total thematic and aesthetic context. Leslie Fiedler, for example, pushes a theory of the novel as “a projection of Brown's distrust of religiosity and his obsession with the destructive aspects of the brother-sister relationship.”³ David Brion Davis' theory of the “underlying guilt of an incestuous wish” leads to a similar distortion of the novel's meaning.⁴ More recently David Lyttle has set forth a reductive theory of Carwin as “above all the rebellious son who seeks revenge against the father.”⁵ Lyttle, working within this framework, then concludes that Clara is not seduced by Carwin because she is an extension of his mother.⁶ Lyttle sees the writing of the novel as therapeutic.⁷ Paul Witherington similarly concludes that Brown was “purging himself rather than his heroes.”⁸ Sydney Krause explains the novel in terms of polarities which are projected from Brown's own divided personality.⁹

Richard Chase makes a less pretentious and more meaningful claim for the psychological experience in Wieland: “Brown's true forte was melodrama of a sort that allowed him to advance beyond the Gothic novel and to inaugurate that peculiar vision of things we often find in American fiction—a vision of things that might be described as a heightened and mysteriously portentous representation of abstract symbols on the one hand and on the other the involutions of the private psyche.”¹⁰ Chase acknowledges the depth of Brown's work by indicating the interior world of his characters, but he does not address himself to the question of how Brown expresses the “involutions of the private psyche.” One way to show how Brown does do so is to recognize that in Brown may be found the imagery of the collective unconscious. Thus Jung's theory of transformation or individuation¹¹ may provide a viable pattern for seeing development in Brown's characters. The subtitle of the novel, The Transformation, suggests that a change occurs not just for the female protagonist but for the male protagonists Wieland and Pleyel as well. Jung's theory of rebirth seems to provide a workable approach to the internal change that occurs in the major characters in the novel. In Jungian theory the transformation is characterized by an essential change in the nature of the ego through the encounter with the archetype of the shadow. This transformation is the beginning of the higher spiritual man. The interaction suggested above between ego and shadow involves another class of archetypes which Jung calls archetypes of transformation. “These are not personalities but rather typical situations, places, ways, animals, plants and so forth that symbolize the kind of change whatever it is.”¹² Archetypes of transformation featured in landscape and setting, such as the temple, Clara's house, and her summer house by the river, argue for a more carefully structured novel than most critics have acknowledged. As Jung indicates “knowledge of the symbols is indispensible for it is in them that the union of the conscious and unconscious contents is consummated.”¹³ The symbols of transformation signified here in the image of enclosure provide a viable approach to the significant level of action in the novel because they may be interpreted as mind symbols as well as isolation signs. A movement toward these enclosures or symbols of transformation initiates and defines the conflict in the novel as a journey inward. A circular movement of withdrawal and return develops in the novel around the symbols of transformation and dramatizes the theme of self-discovery.

That the enclosure of the temple is a mind symbol or symbol of transformation for both Wieland men has been suggested by Donald A. Ringe in his chapter on Brown in Major American Writers.¹⁴ The dramatic encounters that occur within the temple lend credence to such an interpretation. The temple, furnished with a bust of Cicero, is primarily associated with the mind of Wieland rather than that of Clara. The problem of perception that Brown suggests in the symbolic withdrawal of the elder Wieland into the temple is explored dramatically as a search for identity in the character of the younger Wieland, who experiences a withdrawal that becomes thematically significant. The action of the novel is primarily concerned with this cycle of withdrawal and return because it is this movement that brings about the transformation in Wieland and the other major characters in the novel. The temple as a symbol of transformation is essential in this process of self-discovery because it is here that Wieland first hears the “voices” projected by Carwin that lead to his moral awareness.

Carwin appears in the novel as the Jungian archetype of the shadow. The shadow contains all those qualities which the ego condemns as “negative values.” But the shadow “only half belongs to the ego, since it is part of the personal unconscious and as such part of the collective. Its effect on the personality as a whole lies in compensating the ego.”¹⁵ This image of Carwin is inviting because it explains his character and his function in relation to the female protagonist. In fact his presence in the world of the novel can be justified by viewing him in archetypal terms as the shadow figure in relation to all the main characters who appear as developing egos.

The characterization of Carwin suggests this interpretation. He is presented from several perspectives as a shadowy criminal figure, anticipating in this respect his more modern counterparts in world literature such as Dostoevsky's Svidrigailov and Conrad's Secret Sharer.

The shadow is, like all the archetypes, ambivalent. Thus Carwin is “on the one side regrettable and reprehensible weakness, on the other side healthy instinctivity and the prerequisite for higher consciousness.”¹⁶ Because of this ambivalence, he is, in Erich Neumann's phrase, not just the hostile brother, but the companion and friend: “The way to the self lies through him … only by making friends with the shadow do we gain the friendship of the self.”¹⁷ Significantly Carwin's dramatic function is limited to his night conferences with Wieland and Clara and Pleyel. He figures as an active presence in those areas in the novel that might be described as mind symbols or symbols of transformation, such as the temple, Clara's closet, and her summer house. Carwin's appearances occur primarily at night in darkness except for Clara's first meeting with him which precipitates internal storm and darkness in her and the others. Moreover Carwin's actions in the novel are not guided by reason. Instead he lets his passions dominate and control his behavior. His “amorous contagion” for the servant girl is an affair controlled neither by moral nor rational restraints. His careless intervention in the lives of others is irrational and perverse. A curious combination of typical trickster or shadow motifs can be found in the character of Carwin; for instance his fondness for sly jokes and malicious pranks, his powers as a shape shifter, his dual nature.¹⁸ As trickster or shadow figure, his ability to change his shape seems to be one of his chief characteristics.

A transformation occurs in the novel through the agency of Carwin in the character of Clara Wieland. Though affinities exist between Clara and the sentimental and Gothic heroines, more significant parallels might be considered between the psychological complexities of Clara and the mythic hero. She too experiences a spiritual transformation that brings a qualitative change. The hero myth develops into the myth of self-transformation which can only be realized through the union of the ego with the self.¹⁹ At the beginning of the narrative Clara seems to fluctuate between the ego qualities of frivolity and self-assurance. The action of the novel, which involves a series of withdrawals, works toward a stripping away of her frivolity and self-assurance.

Through Clara Wieland, Brown explores the problem of perception and identity with a depth and intensity that is not sustained in his treatment of Pleyel and the Wieland men. The reader becomes actively engaged in the psychological exploration of Clara Wieland's character for several reasons. Her first-person narration adds dramatic force to her transformation. This point of view creates a distance between the reader and Wieland. Though the multiple point-of-view technique has been noted by critics, Wieland is in fact the narrator for only one chapter. The reader views the cycle of his development from Clara's angle of vision. Furthermore, Wieland's errors, though involving the same problems of perception and understanding as Clara's, are the errors of a madman and thus seem remote and abstract from the experience of the reader. More significant here, however, is the fact that Brown uses the symbol of transformation more successfully in exploring Clara's withdrawal and return. The pattern of her development gives form to the novel. The symbol of transformation seems to be most clearly a structural and thematic device in the characterization of Clara. The problems of perception and identity are most fully realized as Brown taps Clara's psychic level of experience through this archetypal symbol.

It can be argued that Clara Wieland shares the egotism of her brother. In Neumann's terms she appears in the novel as ego-hero. There is a strain of personal pride in her self-assurance, her self-sufficiency. Independent of all institutions of authority, Clara relies completely on her own personal perceptions. The tension in the novel might be described on one level as the inevitable intrusion of the Absolute on such a relative and thus limited point of view.

Clara Wieland is quite clearly isolated from the realities of life. In the opening chapters she seems to exist outside of time: “In the midst of present enjoyment no thought was bestowed on the future.”²⁰ “… time had no other effect than to augment our impatience in the absence of each other …” (p. 21). Clara is detached, it seems, from the realities of suffering and death that time involves. As ego, her interest in war, for example, is a rational intellectual kind of curiosity, remarkable because of a lack of emotional and moral consciousness.

Clara's description of her family's religious rituals indicates a similar emotional and moral vacuity: “Our devotion was a mixed and casual sentiment, seldom verbally expressed, or solicitously sought, or carefully retained.” (p. 22). As ego, Clara responds to the first “problem” that confronts her serene world, the voices heard by Wieland and Pleyel, with intellectual detachment and self-assurance. Her attempts at rational interpretations are ironically undercut by the actual circumstances. The authoritative tone in which Clara asserts her speculation and theorizing about the voices smacks of egotism in light of her error and the awful consequences that ensue.

It is when Carwin impinges on the world of Clara that her rational ego views are exposed to question and her self-assurance and frivolity give way. Carwin is characterized as belonging to the non-ego by the fact that he is a stranger.²¹ Clara's first encounter with Carwin is highly charged with symbolic meaning. Her fascination with Carwin's image is thematically relevant because it suggests the process of active imagination, “a certain way of meditating imaginatively by which one may deliberately enter into contact with the unconscious and make conscious connection with psychic phenomena.”²²

Clara's alternate view of the storm and Carwin is significant because the symbolic shadow properties of Carwin are suggested by the blackness and violence of the storm. With the appearance of Carwin the sunny afternoon gives way to an “uproar of the elements.” Fascination with Carwin's image activates a similar “uproar of the elements” in the mind of Clara. Storm and blackness, that is, the dark realities of time and change, death, anxiety, and guilt, are internalized, as it were, in Clara's mind during the period of her withdrawal after seeing Carwin.

By gazing so intensely at the image of Carwin, Clara seems to have activated his dark imager in herself. To borrow a Hopkins coinage Carwin “selves” that in Clara which is “altogether involuntary and uncontrollable” (p. 52). As Jung explains, “such irruptions are uncanny because they are irrational and inexplicable to the individual concerned. They signify a momentous alteration of the personality in that they immediately constitute a painful personal secret that estranges the human being from his environment and isolates him from it.”²³ Clara's symbolic meeting with Carwin precipitates her withdrawal and thus her interior dialogue with herself. That Carwin is essential to Clara's self-discovery is signalled in a variety of ways. The ladder which Carwin uses to first gain entry into Clara's closet establishes an essential link between Clara and Carwin or between the two halves of Clara's self: “… I found a ladder and mounted to your closet window” (p. 202). As Jung suggests, the ladder is a typical symbol in the individuation process: “… the steps and ladder theme points to the process of psychic transformation with all of its ups and downs.”²⁴ The closet or the inner recess of Clara's bedchamber to which she is drawn has symbolic value as a mind symbol or symbol of transformation not merely because Clara's books and papers rather than household implements or clothes are deposited there, but because the privacy of the enclosure and the intricacies involved in reaching it suggest the remote recesses of the mind. Significantly, the link between Clara and Carwin is established through this enclosure. This link to Carwin exposes Clara to the first of a series of severe tests that will finally lead to self-discovery. The test involves Clara's response to evil or guilt in the form of the murderous dialogue in the closet. The effect of Clara's encounter with evil is to challenge her as ego, that is, to challenge her veneer of self-assured prim repose and to bring forth the irrational shadow qualities of fear and anxiety and cowardice that center around her knowledge of evil. It is essential to note that Clara sees evil as an external threat. The burden of the novel and Carwin's symbolic relationship to Clara is to make her morally and emotionally aware of this dark force as a threat from within.

Through Carwin, Clara is exposed to a series of severe tests as she moves inward. Carwin himself finally comments on the purpose of his visits to Clara's closet as a challenge or test to her control and mastery of herself: “… a vague project occurred to me, to put this courage to the test. A woman capable of recollection in danger, of warding off groundless panics, of discerning the true mode of proceeding, and profiting by her best resources, is a prodigy. I was desirous of ascertaining whether you were such an one” (p. 202). Clara's pattern of withdrawal seems to clearly involve a test or challenge that finally leads to self-discovery as each withdrawal augments her progress toward self-knowledge.

A necessary step in Clara Wieland's understanding of herself is a transformation of the ego which involves a recognition of affinity with Carwin, that he is in a symbolic sense part of her. This is achieved by a final visit to the inner recesses of the closet in the bedchamber at Mettingen. Clara visits the closet in order to retrieve her personal journal before leaving the country with her uncle. Clara's final visit to Mettingen activates a pattern similar to previous patterns of withdrawal. Images of enclosure and darkness mark this solitary journey as a movement inward intellectually as well as physically. Darkness, silence, isolation, and enclosure signal a climactic journey into the interior of Clara's mind.

This journey inward marks Clara's most severe test. The risk involved is the disintegration of Clara's own mind. The scene dramatizes a temporary loss of ego qualities. Her hatred transforms her into that which she has feared: “… my soul was bursting with detestation and revenge” (p. 217), and: “I thirsted for his blood and was tormented with an insatiable appetite for his destruction …” (p. 221). Significantly the blackness that pervades the scene comes not from Carwin, but from within Clara and Wieland. Activated here is the evil which Clara herself is capable of. This evil includes the blasphemous damnation of her invocation to heaven, her attempts to take her own life, her readiness to take the lives of Carwin and her brother.

The effect of this scene is to bring Clara face to face with her own shadow qualities. This necessitates the presence of Carwin, her shadow self, and the symbolic exchange of their roles. It is of importance that Clara herself seems responsible for the advent of Carwin. She seems to invoke his presence as if he were a disembodied spirit, by her curses: “The name of Carwin was uttered, and eternal woes, woes like that which his malice had entailed on us, were heaped upon him. I invoked all-seeing heaven to draw to light and punish the betrayer …” (p. 193).

Carwin's function is to save Clara literally and symbolically. He intervenes twice to save her life: his presence checks her preparation for suicide and the projection of his voice saves her from the maniacal homicide of Wieland. Symbolically, he assures the unity of the self by forcing her recognition of evil as a threat from within rather than without. Clara is no longer obsessed with Carwin when she perceives her own shadow qualities, that is, when she understands her own complicity in what has happened: “… my heart was black enough to meditate the stabbing of a brother … my hands were sprinkled with his blood as he fell. …” (p. 232). When Clara is able to see herself and her brother as active agents in the course of events, Carwin is no longer an enigma. She can place him, assimilate him, and finally let him go: “… thenceforth he was nothing to me. …” (p. 232). The scene in the enclosure has worked toward a stripping away of Clara's pride (consciousness) by making her aware of her own dark nature. The peculiar freedom that Carwin comes to enjoy in Clara's “house” signifies that he is indeed her secret sharer. He explains to Clara in their last interview: “… my knowledge of you was of that kind which conjugal intimacies can give, and in some respects more accurate” (p. 205).

Clara insists on remaining at Mettingen after Wieland dies. She betakes herself to her bed in the belief that her career in this world is on the point of ending. This final withdrawal into the chamber, that is, the inner recesses of Clara's mind, marks the change in Clara from passive to active suffering which prepares for her transformation. The scene complements the preceding ones because it marks the fruition of Clara's journey inward. There is no relief here because Clara suffers the agony of awareness of her own guilt. This final withdrawal dramatizes the psychological hell which self-knowledge brings. The images signify the deep anguish Clara suffers as she comes to grips morally and emotionally with her own capacity for evil and error.

Though Clara has discovered essential truths about herself, integration cannot be achieved until she breaks out of the trap of her own mind. Return is essential to wholeness and integration. The self-absorption implicit in her decision to remain isolated in the bedchamber of her house, that is, locked up inside her own mind, suggests her father's obsession. Clara does finally struggle to “break the spell,” but her own efforts are not sufficient to awaken her, that is, bring her back into the world of time and moral responsibility. Her release is finally effected by something physical and external to herself, “… someone shaking me with violence put an end to my reverie. My eyes were unsealed and I started from my pillow. …” (p. 236). She is awakened from a delirious dream²⁵ by a loud voice and smoke in her chamber. Fire expresses an intense transformation process.²⁶ The fire forcing Clara outside brings transformation and thus purgation and release. Clara's physical and spiritual awakening leads to integration and the identity imaged in seeking a new habitation, a new form of being. Clara's transformation involves a movement from an ego-centered subjective attitude to objective awareness of the limitations of the ego and of the existence of the greater psyche which Jung designates as the self.

Fullness of being is achieved when Clara can extend herself beyond the past into the present and future: “A new train of images disconnected with the fate of my family, forced itself on my attention …” (p. 237). The writing of the story becomes another means of Clara's release and integration into the world. Like the Ancient Mariner, she seems compelled to narrate her story and from the very telling of it, she experiences a community with the world outside herself. A communion between her private world and the public world is established by the telling of the tale. As Neumann explains, the creative act signifies an ordering of the self.²⁷ Clara, then, having travelled through the depths of the self, finally achieves a kind of tranquility and stillness through the catharsis of fire which has forced her to construct a new “house” and the creative act of telling the story. She has come full circle, however, when she is able to extend herself by loving Pleyel again.

The symbolic value of the archetype of the enclosed space is complex in Brockden Brown for it leads to an analysis of the process of transformation and finally relates to the problem of perception and identity, projecting Wieland beyond the limited range of Gothic and sentimental prototypes. This technical device which becomes Brown's method of figuring “the involutions of the private psyche,” links Wieland to later significant American fiction and indicates sophistication of technique and structural unity in a novel which has been denigrated for a lack of these qualities.

Notes

1. Fred Lewis Pattee, Intro. Wieland: or the Transformation, by Charles Brockden Brown (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962), pp. xxv-xli.

2. Herbert Ross Brown, The Sentimental Novel in America, 1789-1860 (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1940), pp. 69-70.

3. Leslie Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel (New York: Criterion Books, 1960), p. 150.

4. David Brion Davis, Homicide in American Fiction, 1798-1860: A Study in Social Values (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1957), pp. 88-94. Carl Bredahl, Jr., “Transformation in Wieland,” Early American Literature, 12 (1977), 182, echoes Fiedler and Davis in assuming the theme of incest in Wieland.

5. David Lyttle, “The Case Against Carwin,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, 26 (Dec. 1971), 267.

6. Lyttle, p. 268.

7. Lyttle, p. 258.

8. Paul Witherington, “Benevolence and the Utmost Stretch,” Criticism, 14 (1972), 191.

9. Sydney J. Krause, “Romanticism in Wieland: Brown and the Reconciliation of Opposites,” Artful Thunder, eds. Robert J. DeMott and Stanford E. Marovitz (Kent, OH: Kent State Univ. Press, 1975), p. 18.

10. Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition (New York: Doubleday, 1959), p. 30.

11. Carl G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (New York: Random House, 1959), p. 130.

12. Carl G. Jung, Integration of the Personality (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939), p. 89.

13. Jung, Archetypes, p. 289.

14. Donald A. Ringe, “Charles Brockden Brown,” Major Writers of Early American Literature, ed. Everett Emerson (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1972), pp. 273-94.

15. Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1954), p. 353.

16. Carl G. Jung, Aion (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1959), p. 255.

17. Neumann, The Origins, p. 353.

18. Jung, The Archetypes, p. 255.

19. Neumann, The Origins, p. 252.

20. Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland: or the Transformation, ed. with an introduction by Sydney J. Krause and S. W. Reid (Kent, OH: Kent State Univ. Press, 1978), p. 22. All subsequent references to Wieland are to this text.

21. Carl G. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1953), p. 108; see also Jolande Jacobi, Man and His Symbols, ed. Carl G. Jung (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 279.

22. Marie-Louise von Franz, Man and His Symbols, ed. Carl G. Jung (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 206.

23. Jung, Integration of the Personality, p. 103.

24. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 60.

25. James R. Russo, “The Chimeras of the Brain: Clara's Narrative in Wieland,” Early American Literature, 16 (1981), 60-80, begs the question in arguing that Clara imparts an inconsistent narrative throughout the novel because of her insanity.

26. Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, p. 382.

27. “… creativity in all its forms is always the product of a meeting between the masculine world of ego consciousness and of the feminine world of the soul.” Neumann, Origins, p. 355.