by Steven Moore
348 In a letter dated 28 September 1814 to her niece Anna, who had drafted a novel, Austen says of one character: “I wish you would not let him plunge into a ‘vortex of dissipation.’ I do not object to the thing, but I cannot bear the expression; it is such thorough novel slang—so old that I daresay Adam met with it in the first novel he opened.”
349 Page 96 in Chapman’s edition of Austen’s Minor Works, where Love and Freindship occupies pp. 76–109.
350 The Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and The Mysterious Warning (1796) by Eliza Parsons, Clermont (1798) by Regina Maria Roche, The Necromancer (1792) by Karl Kahlert, The Midnight Bell (1798) by Francis Lathom, The Orphan of the Rhine (1798) by Eleanor Sleath, and Horrid Mysteries (1791–95) by Carl Grosse. See pp. 120–23 above for a discussion of the ones by Kahlert and Grosse. I haven’t shuddered through the others.
351 Tilney doesn’t realize—as Austen probably did—that the better Gothic novelists create symbolic, expressionistic representations of psychological states and unbalanced personalities. Catherine is wrong about General Tilney murdering or immuring his wife, but she’s not wrong to sense he’s an arrogant tyrant (that is, the type who would do that if pushed too far). She just needs to learn to read Gothic novels metaphorically rather than literally.
352 Jacques Roubaud makes a similar self-conscious reference to the materiality of his medium in his charming critifiction Hortense Is Abducted: “The denouement is fast approaching. You can sense it by various clues, not the least of which is the relatively few number of pages left to be read” (chap. 34).
CHAPTER 5
The American Novel
It did not begin well, and it isn’t ending well. The European invasion of the continent called “America” (on a mapmaker’s whim) brought religious nuts to the northeast and greedy profiteers to the south: Puritanism and greed, the Jekyll and Hyde of the American story. Around 1619, some Dutch human traffickers brought the first slaves to Virginia, and instead of turning them away in moral outrage, the English colonists put them in chains. Georgia became the dumping ground for European criminals, Louisiana a penalty box for prostitutes and other undesirables. By the time Swift published Gulliver’s Travels in 1726, the Yahoos outnumbered the Houyhnhnms, so to speak, and have dominated the guns-and-Bibles population ever since. (I understand they even have their own Web portal.) In the century following the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America didn’t attract a brain-drain from Europe but rather its poor, huddled masses, its wretched refuse, while the descendants of those first settlers continued their invasion westward with broken treaties, germ warfare, and some hype about “manifest destiny.” Yet from these reprehensible beginnings, from this unsavory melting pot, a minuscule minority of Americans each generation has devoted itself to writing literature, including some novels that, while imitative at first, would eventually match and occasionally surpass those of older nations.
It is difficult to identify the first American novel because it depends on what is meant by “American.” Does it mean a novel about or set in America? One written by an American? One first published in America? It also depends on what is meant by “a novel.” The distinctly American genre of the Indian captivity narrative has been called a precursor to the novel, even a kind of “female picaresque,” Christopher Castiglia suggests, “an adventure story set, unlike most early American women’s literature, outside the home” (4). The first and best known, A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), announces itself as a nonfiction account of the abduction of a minister’s wife from her Massachusetts home in 1676 by members of the Narragansett tribe, who were fed up with the “increasing European expansionism, discrimination, and enforced conversion to Christianity.”1 But Rowlandson (c. 1637–1711) fictionalizes her story not only by beribboning it with Bible verses to gussy it up as a Christian allegory, but by introducing an imaginary character as the protagonist: the work is not about her, she insists, but about “the works of the Lord and his wonderful power in carrying us along, preserving us in the wilderness while under the enemy’s hand, and returning of us in safety again” (24). In fact, she gave her hero top billing in the original title of the book, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. His goodness entails sending “heathens” (native Americans) to burn down her town, to slaughter or capture its inhabitants, and to mistreat Rowlandson as a prisoner of war for three months, to which she reacts not with resentment but with gratitude and admiration. She marvels at the rapidity with which he answers prayer: “My elder sister being yet in the house and seeing those woeful sights . . . said, ‘And Lord, let me die with them,’ which was no sooner said but she was struck with a bullet and fell down dead over the threshold” (13). Viewing her burnt house, she rejoices, “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolation he has made in the earth” (14).2 So Rowlandson’s work could be called fiction in that it features a fictitious protagonist who, like an abusive spouse, treats her badly for her own good (as she psychopathologically imagines), and a prejudiced narrator who unwittingly exposes the racism and religiosity that remain ugly facets of the American character to this day. But since Rowlandson and her handlers—the Puritan minister Increase Mather probably wrote the preface and perhaps edited the text—intended A True History to be a contribution to religion, not to literature, we should back away slowly from it, as you would from any religious nut. Most of the later captivity narratives are too short to be considered novels anyway.
At least A True History makes for compelling reading, which can’t be said for The History of the Kingdom of Basaruah (1715), a tedious religious allegory by a third-generation Puritan minister named Joseph Morgan (1671–c. 1749). “If Pilgrim’s Progress is to be reckoned as one of the early examples of the English novel,” Richard Schlatter argues in the introduction to his modern edition, “then The History of the Kingdom of Basaruah may well be called the first American novel” (3). He’s got me there, for I do indeed reckon The Pilgrim’s Progress to be a novel. As Morgan hints at the end of chapter 9 of his short work, it’s closer to Bunyan’s Holy War: an English ambassador retells the history of a country that “lies toward the north of America” called Basaruah (a Hebrew compound meaning Flesh-Spirit), which is essentially the story of the Puritan god’s relationship with his people, from the Garden of Eden to the New Covenant to their transplantation to a “wilderness” (North America). It dramatizes Calvinist theology and doctrinal bickering by way of concepts rather than characters (as in The Pilgrim’s Progress), resulting in stilted passages like this: “Some who came from the county of Unjust Dealing went on freely in the river till they came to the Gulf of Restitution (which those who came from that county were required to go over, and no other but they), and when they came to this Gulf they would not be persuaded to go over it but sheered along the streams of Amendment for time to come, till they came to one of the islands, where they remained till Mr. Maveth [Death] carried them to the Lake of Fire” (chap. 15). Morgan’s novel may have some value as an aid to understanding 17th-century Puritan mentality – useful because, 300 years later, a sizable portion of the U.S. population still thinks that way – but it has little literary value, and like Rowlandson’s tale belongs more to theology than to literature.
Along with religious allegories, we should also sidestep quasifictional epistolary works like Benjamin Franklin’s Silence Dogood Letters (1726) and Jean de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1782). Even though the latter is technically an epistolary novel, it originated as a series of essays, and like Franklin’s squibs, it is more interesting for political/cultural reasons than for literary ones.3 Same goes for Peter Markoe’s Algerine Spy in Pennsylavania (1787), an example of the Turkish Spy genre warning Americans of unreal Islamic infiltrators and the very real kidnapping of Americans by pirates of the Barbary states (the young republic’s first major foreign policy challenge, which it bungled). Nor does space permit quasifictional memoirs like The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789), the first American slave narrative. Like the authors of Indian captivity narratives, Equiano did not deliberately set out to write a novel, and I’d prefer to stick with those who did.4
To return to the question of setting: in the early-modern period, “the Americas” referred to the entire western hemisphere, including the West Indies. For that reason, William Spengemann felt justified in calling Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) “the earliest American novel,” as I noted earlier, even though nowadays no one considers Surinam to be part of America per se. So first, we should limit “American” to North America, else we’d have to include such English novels as Robinson Crusoe, Roderick Random, and Zeluco that are partly set in “the Americas.” Like immigration officers guarding the borders of American fiction, we should also turn away novels like Moll Flanders, Prévost’s Cleveland, and Bage’s Hermsprong, for though they are partly set in North America, their authors never set foot there. And for that reason, we can also reject the many forgotten novels set in America that were written and published in England and Europe in the 18th century. No foreigners allowed.
If we add residency as a requirement, the first American novel might be The Life of Harriot Stuart (1750) by Charlotte Lennox, the author of The Female Quixote. Born apparently in Gibraltar, Lennox moved with her family to upstate New York in 1739 and spent her tweens there before returning to England in 1742. Harriot is a precocious girl, both intellectually and sexually: by age 11, she has already read heroic French romances by Scudéry and La Calprenède and fancies herself “nothing less than a Clelia or Statira” (66) as she prematurely launches her career in coquetry. She’s only 13 when she sails to New York with her family, flirting with almost every adult male on the ship and creating all sorts of problems for them and herself later on. About a quarter of Harriot Stuart is set in America, beginning with what Gustavus Maynadier in his booklet The First American Novelist? calls “the first notice in English fiction of ‘the New York skyline’ ” (24). A shameless flirt by English standards, Harriot is surprised by the forwardness of New York City gals: “There is no place in the world where the women labour so much to attract the eyes of the men” (106), but all eyes are on Harriot when she arrives at the fort in Albany where her military father is stationed. There she encounters her first black slave (though born in New York, not imported from Africa), views an encampment of Mohawk Indians outside Schenectady, and is even abducted by some of them during a kind of captivity narrative—though it turns out the group is led by one of her smitten suitors disguised as an Indian. (In an ironic twist, Lennox’s Englishman is more barbaric than the supposedly barbaric Indians, most of whom are Christian and speak Dutch.) This colonial Lolita exhibits some of the qualities later associated with the American girl—confidence, independence, resourcefulness—qualities she takes back with her to England at the age of 14. (En route, she is captured by pirates, rescued by English sailors, and stabs a would-be rapist with his own sword, an act the crew wants to revenge with a gangbang.) The remainder of Harriot Stuart is set in England and France: “Her search for her rich aunt is disappointed and she is left without protection in London,” her modern editor summarizes.5 “She is befriended by members of the aristocracy who promise her patronage but soon abandon her. She then experiences a variety of sensational adventures, most of them prompted by her romantic involvements, and ends by marrying the man she loves”—whom she met on her first transatlantic voyage, a man entranced by what he calls her “almost infant beauties” (133). Since only a quarter of Harriot Stuart is set in America, and since Lennox spent only three years there, we shouldn’t make too great a claim for it as an American novel, but for English readers in 1750s it was the most American novel on the market.
By virtue of its title alone, The Female American (1767) seems to stake a greater claim, though the unknown nationality of the author muddies the issue. The author’s name on the title page, Unca Eliza Winkfield, is obviously a pseudonym, and it’s uncertain whether the author was British or American, a man or a woman.6 But what is certain is that The Female American is a fascinating, entertaining work, set mostly in and around Virginia in the 1640s. The author/narrator is the daughter of an English colonist and an Indian princess, a couple whose backstory closely resembles that of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Unca Eliza—a hybrid name reflecting her biracial background—travels to England at age seven to be educated by her father’s religious relations, where she experiences some prejudice because of her tawny skin, black hair, and quirky fashion sense (half Indian, half European). She returns to Virginia at age 18, but after her father dies six years later, she sets off for England again, only to be abandoned on a deserted island off the coast of Virginia by a treacherous sea captain. There the narrative turns into a female version of Robinson Crusoe, as the author metafictionally winks: not only does the castaway come across a manuscript by a former inhabitant explaining how to survive on the island—which she uses just as the author used Defoe’s novel—but the 17th-century narrator hopes “that some future bold adventurer’s imagination, lighted up by my torch, will form a fictitious story of one of his own sex, the solitary inhabitant of a desolate island” (2.2). How cheeky of the author to suggest that the novel that obviously inspired The Female American actually inspired it!
The author seems intent on outdoing Crusoe’s “strange, surprizing adventures.” Unca Eliza discovers that the abandoned building she inhabits is part of a vast necropolis filled with mummies and coffins of virgin sacrifices, an extension of a temple to the sun-god that includes a giant, hollow statue used by duplicitous priests to deliver oracles to the credulous Indians who visit the island once a year. Deciding to convert these heathens to Christianity, she hides in the giant head (which amplifies voices like a megaphone) and scares the bejesus out of them when they make their annual visit. She begins preaching to them, and eventually tells them she is sending a woman to continue the conversion process; determined to make a spectacular entrance, Unca Eliza dolls herself up with abandoned priestly raiments and even belts out a hymn on the temple steps. (Like other religious hucksters, she’s unconcerned about pulling a Wizard of Oz-type con job on the Indians in the name of religion.) Moving to their nearby island, she continues her missionary work for two years, “very happy among these plain, illiterate, honest people” (2.5), then returns to her own island one day to discover that her English cousin is there with a search party. Instead of running into his arms, she decides to have some fun; sneaking into the giant amplifying head, she belts out another hymn, then taunts her cousin before arranging some music for her big entrance (again dressed up like a priestess): she places her homemade Æolian harp in the head, which creates loud, ambient music that must have sounded like the Orb at Glastonbury in ’93. The English sailors are terrified by the sight-and-sound spectacular and run back to their ship: “One of them said that Mr. Lock came on board in a terrible fright, and said he had seen a monster as tall as the moon, that it talked and sung louder than thunder, and that if he had not run away, a she-devil would have run away with him; and as one of our men was rowing them back, they said they saw a hundred devils fly away with you all into the air whilst they saw a great devil playing upon the bagpipes, and he said that for that matter he played much better than ever he heard a Scotchman in his life” (2.7). Like Lennox exposing the barbarity of Englishmen, the author reveals that the “civilized” English are even more superstitious than the heathen Indians. Eventually the English cousin decides to remain there on the big island to help Unca Eliza with her missionary work, persuades her to marry him (which she does only for propriety’s sake, not for love), and the novel concludes with the shipment of these memoirs to England, where (it is earlier implied) Daniel Defoe will discover them 70 years later.
The Female American raises a host of issues: biracial relationships, gender roles, intertextuality, and especially colonization, both political and religious. Early on, an Englishman admits “We have no right to invade the country of
another, and I fear invaders will always meet a curse,” and a page later an Indian chief tells Unca Eliza’s English father, “the evil being who made you has sent you into our land to kill us; we know you not, and have never offended you; why then have you taken possession of our lands, ate our fruits, and made our countrymen prisoners? Had you no lands of your own? Why did you not ask? we would have given you some” (1.1). However, this pro-Indian attitude is undercut by Unca Eliza’s missionary efforts: forsaking her heliocentric Indian religion for Christianity, she seems unaware that she is a traitor to her people, an enemy collaborator, utterly convinced their silly religion is inferior to her silly religion—they worship the sun, the visible sustainer of life; she worships an invisible, tripartite judge—and she goes so far as to destroy the temple of the sun and its oracle at the end, making her a destructive, imperialistic colonizer of the worst sort.
As I said, it’s unclear whether the author was British or American; although there are detailed descriptions of the Virginia colony and Indian customs, they all could have come from books, as Burnham shows in her edition, which includes selections from such documents in the appendix. But the novel is certainly American in spirit: as Burnham writes in her introduction, “the author of The Female American articulated for readers on both sides of the Atlantic an often radical vision of race and gender through an account of a biracial heroine who is able to indulge in a kind of ‘rambling’ mobility and ‘extraordinary’ adventure precisely because she is, as the title declares, an American female. . . . The Female American is, finally, a book about the potentially extraordinary possibilities of being both female and American” (24)—for better and for worse. She’s a clever, independent woman, but also a colonial Elmer Gantry who proselytizes for “the evil being” who decimated her maternal heritage, and a sexless woman who marries only for social propriety. She writes on the first page that she decided to write about her early life because “the remembrance of it is burdensome to my memory, [and] I thought I might in some degree exonerate myself . . .” (1.1), which carries an intriguing and appropriate sense of guilt, the same guilty conscience over the mistreatment of Indians and slaves that haunts American literature to this day.