SOURCE: Davidson, Cathy N. “The Power of Sympathy Reconsidered: William Hill Brown as Literary Craftsman.” Early American Literature 10, no. 1 (spring 1975): 14-29.

[In the following essay, Davidson argues that Brown's The Power of Sympathy has been unfairly criticized, offering a more flattering assessment of what she perceives as Brown's sophisticated literary technique and moral ambiguity.]

William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy begins with a claim designed to counter the prevailing eighteenth-century idea that novels were morally suspect. His novel will teach, the author implies in his Preface and Dedication, a simple moral truth: “the dangerous Consequences of SEDUCTION are exposed, and the Advantages of FEMALE EDUCATION set forth and recommended.”¹ But, as Leslie A. Fiedler and Henri Petter observe, Brown gradually shifts his focus from the calculated transgressions of seducers to the more subtle psychological predicament of protagonists involved inadvertently in an incestuous relationship. While each of these critics illuminates aspects of The Power of Sympathy, Fiedler nevertheless implies that Brown's movement into weightier problems is barely conscious and hardly controlled, and Petter sees this progression as “superfluous” and perhaps even a flaw.² In contrast, I maintain that Brown (while admittedly moving with some awkwardness and even obviousness) designs the direction of his plot. By consistently undercutting proponents of easy moralities, by manipulating epistolary form for dramatic effect and symbolic import, and by constructing a primary plot-line around five interior stories of increasing ethical and psychological intricacy, Brown sets up the thematic and philosophical evolution that takes place in his novel. Our “first American novelist” thus shows himself to be something of a conscious and conscientious craftsman; The Power of Sympathy proves to be more than an example of “the first and worst” in American fiction.³

I

Probably the most pervasive criticism of this novel is that it is humorlessly didactic, sententious, and often pretentious. Of course, some of Brown's characters do exhibit a predilection for lengthy moral reflection, with Worthy and Mrs. Holmes being particularly adept at sermonizing. However, the pompous moralizing of such characters does not necessarily reflect the author's sentiments. Like Sterne, whose name is early and repeatedly invoked in The Power of Sympathy, Brown humorously undermines his often smug moralists and effectively exposes the shortcomings of their freely proffered advice. Always maintaining the artifice of epistolary exchange, Brown can still juxtapose, for comic purposes, a character's written (or reported) preaching with his somewhat disparate practice (as recorded by another character or by the doer himself in a subsequent letter). Also, at other times, the author will contrast a character's words with the particular critical situation these words address, and thus reveal certain advice to be inadequate, inept, or even inane.

Worthy's first letter, for example, establishes his self-assumed role as the cautious, sage guardian of poor Harrington's fluctuating morals. But in his initial letter to Harrington, as in his final one, Worthy prefers not to confront the specific problems which beset his friend. Instead, he enunciates, in sweeping terms, his own principles and simply asserts that they can be applied in any situation. In questions of seduction or suicide, Harrington need only “weigh matters maturely” and employ a “right judgment” (pp. 10 and 11). Such a procedure will allow him to perceive his situation in a happier light. Worthy's axioms—which clearly cannot lead Harrington out of any moral impasse—might still merit some consideration if derived from substantial experience in the real world. But the author, from the very start, pokes holes in Worthy's ballooning rhetoric. That young moralist writes: “I have seen many juvenile heroes, during my pilgrimage of two and twenty years, easily inflamed with new objects …” (p. 10, emphasis added). Worthy, often assumed to be Brown's spokesman, is, from the first, clearly sophomoric, a youth infatuated with his own wisdom and eloquence. It is difficult for the reader to take seriously any character who takes himself so seriously with so little justification.

Worthy's tumid advice is, at best, ineffectual; at worst, callously obtuse. He never perceives that Harrington's dilemma becomes increasingly complex, his own reiterated counsel increasingly inappropriate. In brief, this moralist cannot adequately appreciate another's predicament.⁴ His failure of sympathy is especially evident when, after Harriot's death, Harrington again turns in desperation to his only friend and expresses an intention to commit suicide. Worthy responds: “Let your mind be employed, and time will wear out these gloomy ideas” (p. 165). Similarly, he later writes: “Do not think I am preaching to you a mere sermon of morality—let me impress your mind with the folly of repining, and the blessing of a contented mind” (p. 169). Obviously, Worthy does what he denies even as he denies doing it—he delivers sermons which, ignoring Harrington's real dilemma, cannot save him from self-destruction. First, through the comedy of his exaggerated claims to personal wisdom, then, through the tragedy promoted by his lack of it, Worthy's self-assumed authority is disminished and his ostensible position as the moral center of the novel is called into question.

Mrs. Holmes, another dedicated upholder of chastity and clean reading, fares only slightly better, for the author also compromises her supposed moral superiority. Early in the novel, Brown juxtaposes two of her letters to have her condemn herself from her own pen. Her first letter to Myra concludes with an implicit claim to the title of moral spokesman. She describes herself as superior to the “tumult of the town” and distinct from the “misjudging race” whose misjudgments are guided by their own “conduct and prejudices” (Letter VII, p. 22). This claim, however immodest, would still have to stand if subsequent exchanges served to demonstrate its actual (not its asserted) validity. Just the opposite occurs. Brown has Mrs. Holmes' next letter to Myra (Letter XI) open with the precise kind of petty misjudging from which she had sought to absolve herself in the conclusion of her previous letter. Before providing her protégé with any “mentor-like lessons of instruction” (p. 15), she launches into a lengthy condemnation of Mrs. Bourn and her daughter. Mrs. Holmes, apparently prompted by Mrs. Bourn's recent “good fortune” and subsequent rise in social status, deprecates, with little basis, the other's mental accomplishments and deportment. Mrs. Bourn is, for example, too eager to please, which “is sometimes disgusting, for one cannot feast heartily upon honey” (p. 26). Then, flattering only herself, Mrs. Holmes immediately admits such a failure “is an errour which a candid mind easily forgives” (p. 26). Similarly, while pretending to praise Miss Bourn, Mrs. Holmes ends every observation with a catty criticism of the daughter's beauty, dress, manners, or morals: “Miss Bourn is about the age of fourteen—genteel, with a tolerable share of beauty, but not striking—her dress was elegant, but might have been adjusted to more advantage—not altogether awkward in her manners, nor yet can she be called graceful—she has a peculiar air of drollery which takes her by fits, and for this reason, perhaps, does not avail herself of every opportunity of displaying the modesty of her sex …” (pp. 26-27). By contrasting the two letters, Brown illustrates some hypocrisy on the part of this woman and so suggests that the reader look critically at the platitudes she goes on to present.

In Mrs. Holmes' second letter, Brown also begins to undermine the moral authority of still another spokesman for rectitude and propriety. After she condemns the Bourns, Mrs. Holmes proceeds to describe a discussion on problems of novel reading and the education of women, a discussion in which her father-in-law, the elderly Reverend Holmes, played a prominent part. As described, this discussion soon metamorphosed into a philosophical monologue in which Reverend Holmes expounds at considerable length certain theories on what constitutes a proper education for young ladies. Since this topic is the supposed subject for Brown's entire book and since Mr. Holmes' observations parallel and amplify the novel's prefatory material, his remarks should, seemingly, be taken seriously. Brown, moreover, has him voice all of the contemporary justifications for novel reading as well as the precautionary advice that young women not trust all they read.⁵ Mr. Holmes even bolsters this last advice with an allusion to the current story of Miss Whitman, at which point the author (or perhaps “Mrs. Holmes”) appends a long footnote to explain to the reader the tragedy of that too gullible young woman. The monologue (and the letter in which it is reported) then concludes by prescribing satire: “I will drop this piece of morality, with a charge to the fair reader, that whenever she discovers a satire, ridiculing or recriminating the follies or crimes of mankind, that she look into her own heart, and compare the strictures on the conduct of others with her own feelings” (Letter XI, pp. 40-41).

But Letter XII, which begins “In Continuation,” provides a broader perspective on Mr. Holmes and his wisdom. His topic has been female education; his monologue, incorporated into the novel, is presumably intended to edify all women. Furthermore, the immediate audience of Mr. Holmes' disquisition consists of Mrs. Bourn and her daughter, both of whom, according to Mrs. Holmes, need precisely the kind of instruction here provided. Yet no moral reformation occurs. Mrs. Holmes, in Letter XII, describes the scene: “My good father-in-law being so strenuous in proving the eligibility of reading satire, had spun out, what he called his new idea, to such a metaphysical nicety, that he unhappily diminished the number of his hearers; for Mrs. Bourn, to whom he directed his discourse, had taken down a book and was reading to herself, and Miss was diverting herself with the cuts in Gay's Fables” (p. 41). Brown here satirizes the lecturer on satire and thus undercuts the longest didactic digression in his novel. Even if valid, Mr. Holmes' remarks (as reported by Eliza) prove ineffectual, and the discussion in the garden becomes a burlesque on the whole process of moral edification. The ladies are uninterested. More to the point, the lecture is uninteresting. Reverend Holmes, aspiring to “metaphysical nicet[ies],” is not primarily concerned with aiding others. Like Worthy, the Reverend is too infatuated with his own speechifying to deal directly with the problems that confront a Miss Whitman, a Miss Bourn, or a typical eighteenth-century reader of fiction. The effect of the scene is comic, not moralistic. Moreover, Brown's tongue-in-cheek attitude towards a moral spokesman who merely expands the morality proposed in the novel's Preface and Dedication suggests that the author perhaps gently mocks the very conventions in which he seems to work and thus undermines even his own didactic statement of intention, hinting that all moral pronouncements need not be taken as solemn truth.

The Power of Sympathy is not so unremittingly moralistic as it at first might appear. And just as Brown undercuts his seeming didacticism, so too does he temper his seeming sentimentality. Mrs. Holmes describes how the ladies, after ignoring Mr. Holmes' lecture, go on to deprecate sensibility: “Sentiment is out of date” (p. 42). Such a statement questions the enduring value of the sentimental novel.⁶ The merits of the genre are not reestablished by the account of how Worthy immediately comes to its defense. Here again the true believer comically compromises his own cause in the very act of attempting to champion it. In upholding the sentimental, Worthy speaks the language of sentiment, hyperbolic and extravagant. No longer his usual sententious self, he now becomes a parodic version of a “man of feeling.” Addressing a copy of Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, Worthy, “in the same Shandean tone,” exclaims: “These antisentimentalists would banish thee from the society of all books! Unto what a pitiful size are the race of readers dwindled! Surely these antis have no more to do with thee, than the gods of the Canaanites—In character and understanding they are alike—eyes have they, but they see not—ears have they, but they hear not, neither is there any knowledge to be found in them” (p. 42). While Worthy continues such Wertherian gushings on sentiment, the company simply walks away. Sentimental proclamations, like reverential pronouncements, are comically ineffectual. They do not speak to those who presumably need to hear. Worthy, unconvincing as a moralist, is equally unpersuasive when he propounds the virtues of sensibility. There is, moreover, an obvious irony in the fact that it is Worthy who defends sentiment. His endless sermons to Harrington, especially near the climax of the novel, amply demonstrate that Worthy is not a man of feeling. Invariably, these sermons mimic, in manner and content, the advice given to Werther by Albert, the great anti-sentimentalist in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther.⁷ Undercut and ignored, Worthy, Eliza Holmes, and the Rev. Mr. Holmes stand, at the end of the scene, foolishly alone in the placid garden of Belleview. In the increasingly turbid world of the novel, they finally stand equally foolish and equally alone.

II

The author of The Power of Sympathy shapes a novel from sixty-five letters which pass between characters removed from one another in time as well as place. But Brown does not, as Herbert Ross Brown maintains, simply utilize the “mere mechanics of the letter form.”⁸ William S. Kable, criticizing the novel, observes that “there is no give and take with letter answering letter.”⁹ Yet Brown's technique of transcending any mechanical one-to-one relationship between a letter and its reply is the precise reason why he can “preserve the illusion” that he is presenting “actual correspondence.”¹⁰ Brown takes into account the time that must pass between the sending and the receiving of a given letter. He is also cognizant of how a character's nature will be expressed in even the most mundane aspects of his correspondence. Harrington, for example, is consistently a prolific writer, Worthy a rather sluggish one. Brown, furthermore, perpetuates several different but interconnected lines of correspondence. He develops these lines in a sophisticated and realistic manner by showing how a character can respond in completely different fashions depending on the person addressed. Obviously, the author understands the advantages and limitations of the epistolary form and utilizes both in his novel.

One device Brown regularly employs is to have one character write to another regarding a letter recently received from some third character. The reader must fill in missing or misrepresented details. More importantly, this device allows the author to demonstrate the way in which a particular character interprets a previous letter. Brown is also calculating enough to have interpretations vary at different times in the novel. The recipient, replying to the original letter writer, can react differently than he does when he writes to some third party who is assumed (sometimes erroneously) to be uninvolved in the original exchange. We thereby see the interesting phenomenon of how one character governs his expression according to his anticipated audience and can be perceived differently by different audiences. For example, Harriot is seen by Harrington as a worshipping sweetheart but she is the coy coquette when she writes to Myra about having “bewitched a new lover” (p. 13).

As observed earlier, Brown emphasizes the fact that time must elapse between the writing and the reading of particular letters. He can keep the reader in suspense regarding a portentous, as yet unreceived letter by switching to the correspondence which presumably takes place while the first pair wait for one to answer the other. Or, one character will send an urgent message to a friend. The next letter in the novel might be from this friend, but written with no awareness of the as yet unreceived epistle, a technique which usually foreshadows tragedy. The reader knows, while the second writer does not, that the rapture he feels or the sentiments he expresses will soon be terminated by the arrival of an already posted letter. Brown's technique of delayed response is not, moreover, a gratuitous trick or pointless device. He utilizes necessary concomitants of the epistolary form to suggest something of the cumbersome nature of all human communication, especially when it must cope with the more disturbing contingencies of life. Significantly, imperfect communication becomes partly responsible for Harrington's suicide. His inability to elicit an immediate answer to his last urgent letters magnifies his deadening sense of isolation. Characters cannot aid or even console one another in a crisis, which suggests that sympathy itself is, finally, largely futile.

Such capable control of the novel's mode is best seen in the crucial correspondence between Myra and Harriot which ultimately reveals that a seemingly happy coincidence is really a most disastrous one. In this exchange, Brown carefully controls the process of slowly developing awareness, counterpointing expectation and revelation. Initially, the author withholds all information regarding the real impediment to a marriage between Harriot and Harrington but foreshadows the final outcome with an account of the incestuous Ophelia incident. Brown further fosters suspense (sustained until Mrs. Holmes reveals Harriot's true identity) with Worthy's tale of Fidelia, a story in which an act of seduction culminates in a suicide and a death. But, despite such forebodings, the reader's expectations are not fulfilled until Myra receives Mrs. Holmes' long postponed letter of explanation. Furthermore, even when Eliza Holmes finally does write to Myra, Brown cultivates a new source of tension. The principal characters remain unaware of their real relationship. Consequently, the possibility exists that they have proceeded with their planned secret marriage. Only after an exchange of approximately twenty letters, occupying almost one-third of the novel, do Harriot and Harrington learn that they are brother and sister.

The process of discovery begins in Letter XXIV when Harriot writes Myra telling of her as yet unnamed lover. His identity is revealed by the verses he has written which Harriot encloses in her letter. Letter XXV, written by Myra to Harriot, is posted before Myra receives Harriot's letter. Myra also encloses one of Harrington's poems. Comedy arises from each girl's different perceptions of the merits—as person and poet—of Harrington. Myra is proud of her brother's apologue defending the chastity of women. Harriot is equally pleased with her lover's “passionate and sentimental strains.” Each correspondent is initially unaware of the other's relationship to Harrington. Both interpret him according to their own expectations: one as brother, one as lover.

However, when Myra recognizes her brother's handwriting in the love poem to Harriot, she does not write to Harriot but to her mentor, Eliza Holmes, a person seemingly uninvolved in these young people's affairs. With unsuspected irony, Myra now anticipates that her friend will soon become her sister-in-law: “Certain it is … that whom I admire as a friend, I could love as a SISTER” (p. 78). Myra cannot foresee that the coincidental unmasking of Harriot's lover as her brother in this early exchange of letters will lead to the tragic unmasking of Harriot as her (and thus Harrington's) sister. The epistolary lag temporarily and comically obscures identities. But the comic uncovering leads to a revelation that no one expected, a fact that cannot be denied or rationalized.

Brown thus uses epistolary form for symbolic effect. A minor breakdown of communication mirrors the greatest such failure portrayed in the novel. Much later, after Harriot's death (which itself resulted from an awareness of the impossibility of her situation), Harrington mourns: “Had I known her to have been my sister, my love would have been regular—I should have loved her as a sister—I should have marked her beauty—I should have delighted in protecting it. I should have observed her growing virtues—I should have been happy in cherishing their growth. But alas! …” (p. 161). Brown's strategy here, his unique manipulation of a traditional form, perfectly reflects one central issue of the novel. Communication is less than perfect while correspondents wait for already posted letters; it has completely collapsed when brother and sister do not know in what sense they are related.

The difficulty of communication (and the futility of sympathy) seems to be a pervasive theme of The Power of Sympathy, a theme emphasized by Brown's handling of the letter form. Interrupted letter sequences and delayed responses formalistically represent a more general inadequacy demonstrated throughout the novel. Brown presents this theme comically at first. Harrington's cavalier seduction strategy, as outlined in a letter to Worthy (Letter III), fails miserably when put to the test. A romantic “language of eyes” must take over where sophistical arguments fail. Harrington writes: “My heart had the courage to dictate, but my rebellious tongue refused to utter a word—it faultered—stammered—hesitated” (Letter VI, p. 17). A similar inarticulateness, in slightly different forms and experienced by different characters, occurs at least seven more times in The Power of Sympathy.¹¹

A variation of the same situation recurs throughout the novel when attempts at dialogue degenerate into long, often ignored monologues. At other times, the give and take of dialogue is unnecessarily replaced by an even more imperfect method of communication, the letter. The older Harrington cannot inform Maria of his change of heart, yet he can ramble on for several pages to a third party about his reasons for rejecting her and about his inability to explain these same reasons to her. Even the crucial task of forestalling his son's marriage by informing him that it will be incestuous cannot be directly accomplished. The father writes Reverend Holmes of the “twenty times” in which he tried (and failed) to tell his son of the relationship. Finally, a third party must inform Harrington—by letter. But even then communication remains circuitous. Harrington does not ask questions about this startling revelation. Instead, he must read Mrs. Holmes' “The History of Maria,” a story to which he responds only: “It is a pitiful tale” (p. 137).

Spontaneous communication is replaced by letters, letters often directed to the wrong people. Myra tells Mrs. Holmes—not Harriot—when she discovers her brother is her friend's lover. The older Harrington tells Mr. Holmes—not Maria—of his motivations; he tells Mr. Holmes—not his son—of the potentially incestuous union. But the final letters between Worthy and Harrington epitomize the inadequacy of all these missives. The one cannot comfort or console the other. Even when Worthy eventually comes in person to counsel his friend, he is told by the family not to disturb him and leaves without seeing Harrington. At about the same time, Harrington writes Worthy a last, futile letter. This unsealed message becomes a suicide note—symbol of all the interrupted, ineffectual communications that together comprise The Power of Sympathy.

III

Imperfect communication is not the only problem examined in The Power of Sympathy. Individuals misunderstand each other but they also misunderstand themselves. They are frequently in conflict with their own desires and caught in personal moral dilemmas. For example, the book opens with Harrington's quandary regarding Harriot: should he seduce or marry her? It ends with his debate as to whether he should or should not commit suicide. Brown thus moves away from the problem of seduction to confront much more basic moral issues. The Power of Sympathy is not limited to what the Dedication implies, for the author does not merely “represent the specious Causes” and “expose the fatal Consequences of SEDUCTION” (p. 3). The structural pattern of the novel also suggests a larger intention. Each of the major characters has a story to tell. These interior stories, all of which end unhappily, are increasingly morally problematic. Like Chinese boxes, they fit into one another with the Maria tale—which reveals the relationship between Harriot and Harrington—gathering together the issues and implications of the four which precede it.

Reverend Holmes mentions the first story of the novel, the tale of Miss Whitman. Here, fiction and a gullible reader make for disaster. Miss Whitman, influenced by bad novels, is the active authoress of her own decline and fall. The footnote, in which the story is recounted, emphasizes that “in her youth she was admired for … good sense” (p. 32n). Brown thus implies that she is mainly responsible for her fate. She should have monitored what she read. Instead, she succumbs to the “Fairy hope” promised by injudicious reading. She is first “vain and coquetish,” soon a “fallen” woman. Typically, her fatherless child is stillborn. She dies “alone and friendless.” The story is simple; the moral clear.

The second interior story is narrated by Harriot who witnesses firsthand the aftermath of Ophelia's fall. This story also seems, at first, consistent with the earlier expressed didactic purpose of the novel. Ophelia's crime consisted of too willingly listening to “the flattery of her own fancy” (p. 62). Yet Ophelia's story, as recounted by Harriot, shows that some impersonal, absolute standard of conduct cannot be mechanically applied. Ophelia was seduced. She is subsequently fully punished, comes to recognize the error of her ways, and wishes only to retire from the world to a life of humble repentance. She is forced, however, by a vengeful father obsessed with a perverted idea of “family honor,” to acknowledge publicly the circumstances of her incestuous relationship. Rather than face this additional shame, she ends her own life: “Thus was a straying, but penitent child, driven to despair and suicide by a severe use of paternal power” (pp. 69-70). Ironically, it is Martin, her seducer brother-in-law, who rightly condemns the father's actions. Still, as Harriot observes, Martin too is responsible for Ophelia's death. Three people have offended against morality, yet only one, Ophelia, is punished—punished most severely. Harriot sympathizes, and her reaction also prompts the reader to sympathize. But there is another reason why Brown has Harriot narrate this particular story. Thinking herself an orphan, she is particularly sensitive to Mr. Shepherd's cruel treatment of his daughter and spends more time discussing his behavior than condemning the incestuous and illicit match. Within a matter of days, Harriot too will die from a sequence of events that represents a curious inversion of the events leading to Ophelia's death. Harriot's father finally comes forward to acknowledge, not reject her. His response prevents an incestuous union. Both “moral” and “fathered,” Harriot nevertheless suffers the same fate as the heroine in her tale. And therefore the simplistic moral code implicit in the first story does not work in the second. Seducers can go free. The seduced, as well as those who are not seduced—Harriot, for example—die.

Brown's third interior story, Worthy's tale of Fidelia, is still more complicated. The heroine is abducted; her lover, thinking she has willingly abandoned him, commits suicide. Fidelia is “saved” from her would-be seducer only to find her would-be husband dead. She goes mad. Her mother dies. The old father, trying to understand such unmerited punishment, can only remonstrate against some undefined source of evil: “They have taken away my staff … they have taken away my staff in my old age” (p. 87). Even the comforting rod of the 23rd Psalm, to which he alludes, is denied him. No solace is allowed in a world so capricious. Although Worthy dismisses this story with a characteristically pat moral, the reader should recognize a qualitative difference between this tale and the preceding ones. Fidelia is abducted, not seduced by either fiction or false promises. Yet she succumbs to insanity. Fidelia's father, unlike Mr. Shepherd, has always been good and kind. Yet he too suffers. Obviously “fatal consequences” are not reserved, as the Preface implies, only for those who have offended against an accepted moral code.

The next tale, Harrington's, is no less morally problematic. He tells of a child who breaks a glass tumbler. Because the child is a slave, he is to be beaten. But his mother courageously takes the blame and thus receives herself “the mark of the whip” (p. 103). And here too we hardly have a representation of the “specious Causes” or the “fatal Consequences” of seduction. Again, no seduction has taken place. The slave woman is strong, brave, and virtuous. She should be rewarded. She is whipped.

Through the progression of the interior tales, the novel becomes increasingly intricate, technically and thematically. But the subtlety of Brown's evolving moral perspective is especially suggested by the way he places Harrington's narrative of the brave slave woman immediately before Mrs. Holmes' letter warning Myra that “HARRIOT IS YOUR SISTER!” (p. 106). There is a significant connection. Harrington, when he meets the slave woman, is still very much the man of feeling. Paraphrasing Sterne, he describes this encounter: “I feel that I have a soul—and every man of sensibility feels it within himself. … I was always susceptible of touches of nature” (p. 103). “Sensibility” here means an apprehension of the distress of others—a self-gratifying, vicarious participation in another's sorrows. Furthermore, Harrington, at this stage in his life, equates sentimental feeling with virtue. He can write: “I felt my heart glow with feelings of exquisite delight, as I anticipated the happy time when the sighs of the slave shall no longer expire in the air of freedom” (p. 104). And that is enough. He need do nothing himself to alleviate the slave woman's condition. Brown effectively contrasts such complacent empathy with Harrington's final recognition (as demonstrated by his suicide) that, for him, “the air of freedom” is stifling.

The juxtaposition of these two letters (Letters XXXVI and XXVII) also provides perhaps the finest evidence of Brown's artistry. His timing is precise; his irony perfect. Harrington's letter concludes with another sentimental extravaganza. He takes his reaction to one slave's virtue as proof that a benevolent power rules the universe: “From thee! Author of Nature! from thee, thou inexhaustible spring of love supreme, floweth this tide of affection and SYMPATHY—thou whose tender care extendeth to the least of thy creation—and whose eye is not inattentive even though a sparrow fall to the ground” (Letter XXVI, p. 105). Ironically, the very next letter reveals that Harrington is the sparrow that falls. No “Author of Nature” saves him. The story of Maria, the longest and bleakest of the interior stories, also demonstrates that Harrington is himself the protagonist in another sentiment-provoking tale. But he no longer finds his former sensitivity so pleasing. Sensibility no longer reveals a soul. Instead, it makes him question the validity of such things as souls and the existence of their creator. The letter which most reveals him as a man of feeling precedes the revelation which makes him regret feeling, sensibility, and, most of all, the “power of sympathy” which first attracted him to his sister.

In the novel's last story, the interior tales and the primary plot line coalesce. Because of a moral “slip” on the part of an otherwise good man and the naiveté of a fundamentally decent woman, a woman dies; her child is orphaned; that child finally dies because of the father's errors; and the legitimate son (her half-brother) kills himself. As in the tale of Miss Whitman, a seduced woman dies. As in the tale of Ophelia, a guilty father survives. As in the tale of Fidelia, a lover commits suicide. As in the tale of the slave woman, an innocent woman (Harriot) suffers for the misdeed of another. But, even though they have narrated similar tales, Harriot and Harrington cannot comfortably accept the story in which they are principal actors. Sorrow is much more pleasing when experienced second hand. Brown shows that the power of sympathy, as it was imagined to exist in persons of sensibility, is largely naive or hypocritical. Even those closest to the protagonists in the final story cannot truly sympathize.¹² They react according to the dictates of shallow sensibility, and, as Worthy observes, “a few weeks begin to spread a calm over our passions” (p. 180). Ultimately, one person does not have the power to empathize with another's misfortunes and cannot even learn from another's disaster. For all the tales and philosophies and moral pronouncements set forth in the novel, Harrington and Harriot confront their fate alone.

The two lovers are especially isolated in that they do not completely subscribe to basic social codes. Brown does not compel his protagonists to conform to the mores which inform the typical fiction of the time. Thus, the novel can violate the structural formula of the sentimental novel as defined by Herbert Ross Brown. No “final solution” emerges in “the last chapter”; we do not see that “the punishment was made to fit the crime and the reward to equal the virtue.”¹³ The conclusion of The Power of Sympathy is not so morally simple. Brown, in the interior stories, progressively abandons the easy, formulaic ethical view implicit in his prefatory material. With the final Maria tale, we see the virtuous punished for the vices of others. By then, even the basic term “virtue” has become difficult to define. The older Mr. Harrington is clearly wrong when he seduces Maria. But neither is he right when he realizes the error of his ways and returns to his faithful Amelia, since he then allows his former mistress to bear in friendless poverty his illegitimate child.

The moral problems his children face are even more complicated. If Harriot and Harrington could automatically accept society's opinions and view incest as totally unthinkable, a death and a suicide would have been prevented. But Harriot cannot completely dismiss Harrington as a prospective lover even after she learns of their real relationship. In Letter L she admits how readily she can “relapse into weakness and tenderness, and become a prey to warring passions” (p. 153). Moreover, nothing in the novel demonstrates that society's rules embody inviolable truths. Certainly, one main implication of Harrington's story of the slave woman is that they do not. There is, therefore, some justification for Harriot and Harrington who, unlike the protagonists of Brown's later novel, Ira and Isabella, do not readily submit to common morality.¹⁴ Brown's treatment of incest in The Power of Sympathy is, indeed, unique. He does not hedge; he describes such love as real love. In this context, his first novel might well be compared to M. G. Lewis' The Monk, in which the incest motif serves to reveal the extent of Ambrosio's wickedness. Incest, in that novel, is treated as one of the worst of all possible transgressions. The most depraved cannot live with the guilt it engenders. In contrast, Brown introduces the theme of incest to emphasize the extent of his protagonists' love and not the depth of their depravity. Harrington commits suicide because he loses Harriot, not because he almost married her.

The primary plot line of The Power of Sympathy shows Harrington's development from rake and would-be seducer to faithful, devoted lover. He thus follows a pattern established in earlier English novels. Consider, for example, Tom Jones or even Squire B. But such a progression, in Brown's novel, is not rewarded. Had Harrington remained simply a rake, the revelation that Harriot was his sister would have had little effect. Society's dictates would have been easy to follow. As a lover, however, he is destroyed by the discovery. The protagonists, as earlier noted, are not relieved when an illicit marriage is prevented. Their tragedy derives from their enforced separation. Parted, they desire only death, for they hope they might then enjoy eternal union: “I will fly to the place where she is gone—our love will there by refined—it will be freed from all criminality” (p. 163). Herbert Ross Brown defines the “sentimental formula” as “a simple equation resting upon a belief in the spontaneous goodness and benevolence of man's original instincts.”¹⁵ William Hill Brown dramatically violates any such formula. The novel ends with Harrington's “Monumental Inscription” in which one “instinct” still prevails—the instinctive “sympathy” which united the two lovers.

If Brown's book finally means anything, promotes any ultimate moral vision, it is one which derives from the structure and conclusion of his novel. Life is too complex for didactic lessons, too painful for self-flattering sensitivity. Neither suffices. Brown, furthermore, does not provide any comforting vision of an after-life in which moral and ethical quandaries are all happily resolved. The Dantesque dream of the older Harrington depicts a retributive hell in which suicides, such as his son, would be perpetually punished. Young Harrington anticipates an after-life free from all societal rules. He envisions a God who can condone incestuous relationships and forgive suicides. These two views are irreconcilable. Moreover, because of the epistolary mode, no authorial voice intrudes to indicate which, if either, is correct. Brown poses but provides no answers to these moral and theological questions. Instead, he portrays a situation in which the stock responses of moralists and sentimentalists do not apply, and nowhere in The Power of Sympathy does he prove that virtue is rewarded—in this life or the next. The moral lesson promised by the Preface does not govern the main plot of the novel. Instead of an obviously didactic fiction, we have a work that is surprisingly sophisticated in technique, structure, and theme, a book which demonstrates that William Hill Brown, “the first American novelist,” is hardly the worst.

Notes

1. William Hill Brown, The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature, ed. William S. Kable (Athens, Ohio, 1969), p. 5. Subsequent page references to this edition will be noted parenthetically within the text, and, when appropriate, the letter from which a quotation is taken will also be indicated parenthetically.

2. Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel, rev. ed. (New York, 1966), pp. 116-25; and Henri Petter, The Early American Novel (Athens, Ohio, 1971), p. 244.

3. Although Isaiah Thomas and Company of Boston advertised The Power of Sympathy as “the first American novel,” other novels have also been accorded this honor. See Edith Franklin Wyatt, “The First American Novel,” Atlantic Monthly, 144 (1929), 466-75; M. R. Small, Charlotte Ramsay Lennox: An Eighteenth-Century Lady of Letters (New Haven, Conn., 1935); and Robert H. Elias, “The First American Novel,” American Literature, 12 (1940-41), 419-34. William S. Kable presents a concise summary of William H. Brown's claim to the distinction in the introduction to his edition of The Power of Sympathy, pp. xi-xv.

   Herbert Ross Brown, in his edition of The Power of Sympathy (Boston, 1961), p. iii, provides one example of the common judgment that the novel is one of the “first and worst.”

4. See Petter, p. 246.

5. Herbert Ross Brown, in The Sentimental Novel in America 1789-1860 (Durham, North Carolina, 1940), ch. I, provides an extended assessment of the status of the novel in early American society.

6. H. R. Brown observes, in the introduction to his edition of The Power of Sympathy (p. x), that the meanings of “sensibility,” “sentiment,” and “sentimentality” overlap throughout the novel and that W. H. Brown uses these terms almost interchangeably. Thus, in my own discussion of the book, I have not attempted to make fine distinctions or to propose exact definitions which the novel will not sustain.

7. This is not the only place in the novel where an attempt to defend sensibility has an opposite effect. Later in the novel, Brown has Mr. Harrington praise the ennobling virtues of sympathetic sensitivity. But such an encomium is compromised when the older Harrington tries to justify his cruel abandonment of Maria, his inability to tell her his reasons for leaving, and his failure to support their illegitimate child by attributing these actions to his “sensibility” and “feelings” (pp. 118-24).

8. Introduction to The Power of Sympathy, p. viii.

9. Kable, p. xxxiii.

10. Ibid.

11. For other situations in which inarticulateness prevails, see pp. 107, 121-22, 135, 137, 138, 152-53, and 175. Most of Harrington's final letters also reveal an inability to communicate real emotions except by dashes and exclamation marks, an attempt to imply what cannot be said. And Letter LVI communicates his mental state largely by what it leaves unsaid.

12. Tremaine McDowell, in “Sensibility in the Eighteenth-Century American Novel,” Studies in Philology, 24 (1927), remarks that, although sensibility “gushes from every mouth,” sympathy is “utterly impotent” (401).

13. The Sentimental Novel in America, p. 176.

14. The protagonists of Ira and Isabella (who actually go through the marriage ceremony before they are told they are brother and sister) never regret that they cannot consummate their marriage. They do not question the morality which forbids their union even though they do lament their ill-fortune. Brown, however, arranges that the two are not really related after all. Thus, Ira and Isabella: or, The Natural Children (“A Novel, Founded in Fiction”) ends happily with a sentimental reunion of lovers.

15. The Sentimental Novel in America, p. 176.