Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown. America's First Gothic Novel (heavily spoiled)

[@LiminalSpaces03]

Sorry for responding late, I had to make time to watch this mammoth deep dive into Wieland, a book, I must admit, I didn't even know existed! I do love old gothic literature so I enjoyed your breakdown of this, America's first gothic!

[@literallybooks]

A view from Chris is never late, it arrives precisely when it needs to. 😆 I hadn't heard of this book either. I read a lot before I looked into the book at all and couldn't believe it was so important and forgotten. It took a while because I deleted hours of recording when I realized the book wasn't really a gothic look at Abraham; it was a gothic look at language. 🤯

[@LiminalSpaces03]

@@literallybooks Hahaha! Best response ever!

[@patreekotime4578]

That theme of madness relating to the woods reminds me of the book The Great God Pan. And it also reminds me of the movie The VVitch. The tension between 'civilization' represented here by Europe and Pyle verses the 'wilderness' or the 'savage' represented by the woods and the trampish character but also by America in general is an interesting theme.... especially how it contrasts against the other theme of the use of language to manipulate people vs intuition and knowing innately what is Right. Especially since we usually think of language as being a part of 'civilization' and intuition as a part of nature. Here it sounds like language is being used as a symbol of the forked tongue of the devil. That fits my (very vague) understanding of Quaker belief and the virtue of silence and all that. It sounds interesting, although probably not a 'fun' read!

[@literallybooks]

What I thought strange is Wieland doesn’t have any gothic imagery around nature. Brown seems to deliberately avoids capital “G” gothic symbols, words, and descriptions. Which I think is great but makes the book a hard sell. I didn’t think to look deeper into Quaker beliefs. That must have had an influence, though I don’t know that Brown was a devout Quaker (I believe I read something along those lines). To the book’s credit there is almost no finger pointing and crying “Satan”. It doesn’t even lean on prayer or redemption themes. It’s basically agnostic. It’s difficult to say how other people might feel about Wieland, but if I were to surgically remove chapter 19 from the book then it’s the most gothic thing I’ve read. Oh, I don’t think it made the cut but there’s definitely discussion about the Wieland family representing America and how “foreign” voices were influencing it against its own best interest. Thanks for watching. I think this was more of a passion project for me than anything else. 😄

[@patreekotime4578]

@literallybooks It sounds like you would *have* to be passionate about it to slog through it!

[@literallybooks]

@@patreekotime4578 😆You might be right.