Krause, Sydney J. "Ormond: Seduction in a New Key." American Literature 44.4 (1973), 570-584.

Krause opposes Donald Ringe’s point that Charles Brockden Brown’s Ormond is an artistic failure. He cites the book’s unusually complex seduction story and the “ironic variation on the stock situation of a master seducer being mastered” (571). The seduction, writes Krause, is more protracted and subtle than in many works of gothic and sentimental literature, and the growing resistance of the heroine and boldness of the hero create a heightened tension within known moral prohibitions.

Krause moves into a study of the explicitness of seduction scenes in sentimental literature and gothic novels of the late eighteenth century. The muted or implied seductions in Ormond, Richardson’s Clarissa, William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy and Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple are expanded into more explicit scenes in gothinc novels like The Castle of Otranto, Vathek, The Monk, and The Italian. Krause points out that these novels are concerned mainly with the practical implications of seduction, whereas Brockden Brown delved into the psychological implications.

The rest of Krause’s article is an analysis of the text of Ormond. Constantia is a sympathetic heroine who is actually attracted to her seducer and Ormond is a highly rational and enlightened man, not a “single-minded gothic villain” (578). Krause summarizes the novel’s plot at length. The end of the novel, in which Constantia stabs Ormond, gaining physical mastery over him, and in which Ormond’s argument for sex free from moral disgrace stands unrefuted, supports Krause’s point that Ormond is a seduction story of outstanding irony and complexity.

Entered by Sarah on 28 July 2004 at 10:45 AM.