Response Paper: “Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland, or the Transformation: An American Tale” Essay
Updated: May 13th, 2019
Theodore Wieland’s sister, Clara and who is also the narrator of the novel describes their preoccupation with the death of her father. The narrator links this with the voice that Wieland begins to hear. Wieland wallows deeper into solitude that his dad suffered. He feels like he is torn between two voices: that of the deity and that of reason, with the later making him go mad.
The staunch faith of Wieland drives him into irrational violence. Clara finds it hard and more so lacks the courage to describe the turbulent sensations of the man. At the beginning of the chapter, the narrator comes out as a flirtatious and a playful lady. Theodore and his wife Catherine live near the narrator.
Theodore Wieland and her sister Clara settle in one family estate house with Clara occupying the ground floor. When they were having a chat regarding philosophy and religion, they were interrupted by a voice and the voice claims that a relative had died in Europe; though the voice is not their social equivalent, they later realize that it was a divine voice.
After acquiring enough courage to go on narrating, she gives an illustration of a man with poor attitudes and untidily dressed who got her attention one afternoon.
The striking part of the story happens when the same man comes to the narrator’s house, feeling thirsty he requests for a cup of water or milk. Judith, the house girl of the narrator refuses to give the man some water and the man instead requests to be given a cup so that he could go out and look for some water.
Although she does not see the man, from the dialogue with the house girl, the voice looks familiar to her and there is a feeling that she has had experience with the voice. The narrator is moved by the courteous and humble nature of the man.
There is an inspiration in the novel that is actualized through the mysterious voices. Though this voice is not explained in the novel, the voice that commands Wieland to slaughter his wife is a mysteries one. Pleyel, Theodore’s brother in-law had just returned from Europe but he also begins to hear similar voices.
Carwin appears in the scene, though in a mysterious circumstance, his interpretation of the voice is that it is just caused by mimicry. At the course of their interaction, Clara falls in love with Pleyel which marks a beginning of a budding romance and she makes an undertaking to inform him about it.
This plan is aborted when the narrator finds Carwin hiding in her closet; Carwin admits that he had been having an intention of raping her and confesses that the narrator is under supernatural protection. This story backfires when Pleyel accused her of having an affair with Carwin and disappears immediately without telling her the other side of the story.
Wieland strolls outside, and abruptly the serene atmosphere is interrupted when he begins to hear a disembodied and an errand voice calling him and informing him that there is danger in his path, at first he thinks that the voice belongs to his wife Catherine but later realizes it is not when he returns to the house. After a while, he hears voices, strange voices everywhere.
Carwin turns out to being a villain since he has been mistaken for a mischievous man in the estate. The voices mark a beginning of new twists proliferating from this event. Pleyel next hears the voice of his sister in the woods when he is in the company of Theodore.
At first these voices appear fanatical and creations of the mind but it dawns on them that realistically that they are supernatural voices but they treat them skeptically and casually. This is preceded by another voice that the narrator hears in her bedroom, but this time the voice is that of a man.
It is later learned that voices are a creation of Carwin. Carwin who arrived from Spain is admitted into the group, he has a double-edged character which makes him subject of discussion even when he is unavailable.
After leaving the narrator’s house, Carwin uses his voice within the earshot of Pleyel, these false revelators leads Pleyel to believe that the narrator and Carwin were having an affair. Carwin who was a ventriloquist had an inherent ability to mimic the voices of other people; this suspicion drives him mad and damages their relationships with the narrator. At one moment he marvels at the narrator who is terrified.
When the narrator seeks to establish where the two, Pleyel and Carwin had met, Pleyel admits having met Carwin in Spain and he colors their meeting with an innovative ingredient of how they had been faring on with Carwin during that period.
The narrator being extremely upright and chaste faces intrigues and challenges from Carwin but she is truly in love with Pleyel. One night when she was anticipating Pleyel to propose, she was attacked in her bedroom, though Pleyel arrives, he does not console her and instead leveled accusations against her. Clara through her brother tries her best to retrieve her name but in vain.
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