The Gothic Uncanny

Abstract

Like Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland (1798)¹ is supposedly a manuscript compiled by a woman threatened by apparently occult phenomena which have sexual implications. It is similarly a woman’s story written by a man and so we must expect the mediations of female experience in the text to be controlled by male rather than female expectations. Such first person narratives have a peculiar invisibility in that the ‘I’ of the telling can be best seen, like the self, not in direct statements but in the reflections of the self in others and its embodiment in action. Although this point has been well taken in the case of James’s governess — perhaps too well taken, in that nothing she says is trusted by readers — the situation of Clara Wieland has usually been understood at the value she puts on it, rather than attention given to her possible forms of reading and writing Clara’s story takes the form of letters to her friends, which suggests that her version is likely to be processed with a specific audience in mind: ‘you are a stranger to the depth of my distresses… how will your wonder, and that of your companions, be excited by my story!’ or, ‘Every sentiment has perished in my bosom. Even friendship is extinct. Your love for me has prompted me to this task.’ This is not to say that we should necessarily refuse to believe what Clara tells us, simply that we must always bear in mind that the narrative is her narrative and necessarily therefore represents events from her perspective, with her artistry of literary production.