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Transactional Bond in the Novels of Charles Brockden Brown

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Transactional Bond in the Novels of Charles Brockden Brown University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 1998 Transactional bond in the novels of Charles Brockden Brown Gretchen Elspeth DiGeronimo University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation DiGeronimo, Gretchen Elspeth, "Transactional bond in the novels of Charles Brockden Brown" (1998). Doctoral Dissertations. 2009. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2009 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type o f computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zed) Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TRANSACTIONAL BOND IN THE NOVELS OF CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN BY GRETCHEN E. DIGERONIMO BA University of Lowell, 1980 MA Middlebury College, 1984 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English May, 1998 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9831941 Copyright 1998 by DiGeronimo, Gretchen Elspeth All rights reserved. UMI Microform 9831941 Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This dissertation has been examined and approved. Dissertation Director, David H. Watters Professor of English 1 .ACcrtttl ^ ' 1 r><CL<XtiV__________________ Brigigte G. Bailey, Associate Professor of English o . c J L i Charles E. Clark, Professor of History John R. Ernest, Associate Professor of English : ^ ____________ Lisa Watt MacFarlane, Associate Professor of English /fyrX sa f<)9k Dale Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THIS DISSERTATION IS DEDICATED TO My husband, Arthur P. (Jay) DiGeronimo, Jr. My mentor, Dr. William F. Coughlin, Jr. Ranger iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION............................................iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.................................... iv ABSTRACT............................................... v CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION...........................................1 I. "Til you are what I am": Mentors hip and Edgar Huntly........................ 13 II. "An honest front and a straight story": Arthur Mervyn..................................... 65 III. "A most precious relique": Mothers and Ormond............................... 135 WORKS CITED............................................ 212 iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT TRANSACTIONAL BOND IN THE NOVELS OF CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN by Gretchen E . DiGeronimo University of New Hampshire, May, 1998 The six novels and various other fiction pieces Charles Brockden Brown wrote between 1799 and 1801 coherently demonstrate the operation and effect of literary and artistic representation in early Republican America. In original close readings of Arthur M e r w n . Edgar Huntly. Ormond, and several other works, this dissertation identifies transactional bond and describes how Brown charted the establishment of the public and private individual self through transactional bond in three specific arenas: relationships between the developing self and written, visual, or reported representation; relationships between master/mentors and apprentices; relationships among women. Bonds that begin, operate, and dissolve between male characters are exercises in constructing young Republican manhood. Through individual young male's experiences, Brown describes a process for certifying male suffrage. Through the mentor/protege model, Brown makes explicit the questions that surround his society's structuring of that autonomous citizen- self. Female bonds work toward impressing a female self into the useful mold of the good Republican wife/mother. Transactional bonds in Brown's novels are explorations of gender, authority, v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. and autonomy, complicated by the influence of written or visual gesture. Brown actuates the competition among those forces by presenting explicitly visual "word portraits" in the narratives, employing techniques in text that parallel the directly visual techniques in paint of portraitists of the post-Revolutionary era. vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION "Every man is encompassed by numerous claims, and is the subject of intricate relations," Charles Brockden Brown wrote in 1799, "[and mjany of these may be comprised in a copious narrative."1 Brown (1771-1810) explored the permutations of those "intricate relations" in his fiction and essays, most completely in the six novels he wrote and published in one productive spurt between 1798 and 1801. He also wrote for and edited several of America's earliest magazines and, late in his career, wrote political pamphlets. Yet Charles Brockden Brown's membership in the American literary canon has always been uncertain. If a claim is a statement, then Brown the writer himself is "encompassed by numerous claims," no single one of which seems stronger or more valid than another, though statements about him come easily enough. He was the first writer to transplant the European Gothic novel successfully to American scenes; he was an influential antecedent to Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville; he was one of the first American writers to attempt— deliberately, self-consciously, and, unfortunately, unsuccessfully— to make a living solely as a writer. All such statements "encompass" and define Brown, 1 Charles Brockden Brown, "Walstein's School of History," The Monthly Magazine and American Review August-September 1799, reprinted in Harry Warfel, ed. The Rhapsodist and Other Uncollected Writings by Charles Brockden Brown (New York: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1943) 152. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. so far as such definition is possible. Brown uses the word "claim" in the passage above, however, in the sense of "demand," a demand that establishes encompassing relational definitions. It is the purpose of this dissertation to explore how Brown created and employed a specific variety of "intricate relation" in his work. Like Charles Willson Peale in pictorial art, William Dunlap in theater, and Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Latrobe in architecture, Brown was part of the post-Revolution cultural quest for a distinctly American art, an art that would reflect and advance worthy Republican ideals.2 In the outlets provided by the new magazines, in all of the possibilities hinted at by the growing print medium of a mercantile society, Brown saw the writer's opportunity to influence and direct the fresh construction of a nation.3 He did not merely recognize the opportunity; with his novels, "sketches," and essays, he took it. In the creation of American nationhood, fictional art, in addition to painting or architecture, was considered a potent tool for articulating and advancing the Republican ideals that would 2 See Kenneth Silverman, A Cultural History of the American Revolution (New York: Columbia UP, 1987); Joseph J. Ellis, After the Revolution (New York: Norton, 1979). 3 Steven Watts, The
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