Forcey, Blythe. "Charlotte Temple and the End of Epistolarity." American Literature 63 (1991), 225-241.

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This article examines why the epistolary form, though universally considered the root of the British and the American novel, actually enjoyed only a very brief life of influence. Drawing parallels between epistolarity and the "typically benighted heroines" of novels, Forcey hypothesizes that the "polygot [speaking,writing, written in, or composed of several languages] world of eighteent-century Anglo-America" silenced the form. Secifically, Forcey uses Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple as the paradigm of what was silenced, as a work with the once "traditional Richardsonian plot and ... an authoritive, unifying narrative voice" (225).

Forcey first examines the social and ethnic changes that brought a flux of new languages and new groups of people to America during the first five years of the last eighteenth-century decade. She narrates the social mood, one of "anonymity and volatility." She notes that "most potential readers, even those seemingly least likely to identify with Charlotte Temple--battle-scarred old soldiers, jaded prostitutes, sophisticated society matrons, successful merchants, or ambitious young entrepreneurs--would still have been affected by the pervasive sense of 'homelessness'" (226). Forcey also discusses how Charlotte Temple allowed readers to experience their worst fears and yet emerge unscathed, noting the motherly tone of the narrator and how this motherly role filled a void in a lonely, individualistic society. And, Forcey concludes, "lacking the support of such narrative guidance, the epistolary novel could not make the successful crossing to the New World" (228).

Forcey then examines the lack of boundaries in epistolary novels and the break in reader-author trust that led to the fall of the form: "knowing that they [authors] were writing in a time of rapid transition and for many possible audiences (rural/urban, British/American, naive/wordly, male/female, moral/amoral), they could no longer trust readers to interpret on their own" (229). Rowson, Forcey argues, must narratively intervene in order for Charlotte's story to be understood: a warm, motherly presence, this narrator acts as an editor, moralizer, translator, and guide for her young readers. Rowson eschewed the role of mere passive compiler of letters and, in the process, ensured that Charlotte Temple's voice was not misconstrued or erased" (230).

Next Forcey examines the presence of letters and letter-writing within the novel itself and the 'motherly' way in which Rowson guides the reader to avoid epistolary influence. Specifically, Forcey notes several key instances in which Rowson replaces the text of letters "with an interpretive passage that neutralizes [their] potentially negative effect" (231). The methods by which Rowson shifts narrative attention are highlighted, and Foley examines every in-text letter.

Forcey concludes that "taken together, Rowson's narrative incursions provide an authoritative unifying voice which gives structure and guidance to the reader. An epistolary novel can have no such unifying voice; inherently multi-vocal, its linguistic duplicity resists the explicit direction and control possible in the narrated form" (236). She then adds a discussion of Francophobia in the time period's English and American literature, explaining that this strain "rested not only on the horror of the French Revolution but also on the idea that the French, through their vaunted verbal arts, could seduce even the sane into hysterical behavior" (237).

Entered by Elisa on 30 July 2004 at 11:49 AM.