Jennifer Matus

Supplement on Edgar Huntly

After spending what felt like hours trying to get the story of Edgar Huntly to work with one of my two mentioned objctives, it just did not happen. I have to admit I am not a huge fan of the gothic novel or even the gothic genre so this reading was quite the challenge for me. I am going to explain how Charles Brockden Brown’s “Edgar Huntly” effectively constructs the gothic novel.

          The gothic novel is a dark story involving magical and mystery characteristics. The gothic toys with the light and dark through shadows, architecture, death, memories, dreams, etc. When thinking of the gothic genre my mind always goes straight to Edgar Allen Poe and “The Raven”. He is the most recognizable of the genre; however, Charles Brockden Brown was the lesser known first American gothic writer. In his preface to “Edgar Huntly” he states, “Puerile superstition and exploded manners, Gothic castles and chimeras, are the materials usually employed for this end” however, considering America did not have the castles Europe had, he took his own twist more appropriate for his location. He introduced to his audience the “gothic wilderness”.  “The incidents of Indian hostility, and the perils of the Western wilderness, are far more suitable” to an American gothic novel. The negative view of the Indians by the early settlers plays into this as they sometimes referred to the Indians as devils. The settlers took over the land of the devil which in itself can set up haunted scenery. Brown takes all of this into mind while writing “Edgar Huntly”.

          Since I am going to keep this short, I am only going to note the more significant gothic attributes of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Huntly mentions the scenery while walking to his uncle’s house. It was dark and reminded him of his friend’s murder. He describes the elm tree with its outstretched branches, creating shadows and how the moon “illuminated” the sky. His descriptions on the scene set an eerie tone for the reader. Without such a description, I feel the story would not have lived up to its placing in the gothic genre.

          Another characteristic of the gothic novel is twinning. Twinning could be an alter ego or ghostly double, sometimes even refers to an “evil twin”. Brown uses twinning in his novel “Edgar Huntly” between the characters of Edgar and Clithero. In the novel, it is sometimes difficult to decipher who they are speaking of, for example, “The incapacity of sound sleep denotes a mind sorely wounded.” While Edgar could be speaking of Clithero’s sleep walking, he could very well be explaining his own state of mind. Just as Clithero is sleep walking in the middle of the night, Edgar is up at night also; both lacking sound sleep.  I would also like to think that Brown played on the twinning by having Clithero and Edgar trade off narrating. When Edgar was at Inglefield’s home he slept in the same bed that Waldegrave died in.  “The bed before me was that on which my friend breathed his last. To rest my head upon the same pillow, to lie on that pallet which sustained his cold and motionless limbs” he described. This could be another example of twinning, this time between Edgar and Waldegrave.

          I have gone over just a few of the examples in Charles Bowden Brown’s “Edgar Huntly” of what classifies it as a gothic novel. The scene sets up the new gothic wilderness and twinning comes into play to represent the doppelgangers. “Edgar Huntly” fit right into its time period and Brown effectively introduced the new American gothic genre.