SOURCE: Pribek, Thomas. “A Note on ‘Depravity’ in Wieland.” Philological Quarterly 64, no. 2 (spring 1985): 273-79.

In the following essay, Pribek refutes the notion that the characters of Wieland are inherently evil, suggesting instead that they should be read as rational characters who are undone by the villainy of an outsider.

The reading of Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland as a rationalist tract has been questioned thoroughly by recent critics. For example, the narrator Clara Wieland's capacity for accurate perception, judgment, and narration has been called into doubt so far as to accuse her of unknowingly murdering her brother.¹ Even more critics read the novel with a kind of Calvinist approach: Brown suspects, they say, some form of original sin because of which human beings, Theodore Wieland being the most emphatic example, are inherently incapable of fully rational thought and deliberate action.²

Perhaps the most influential of the Calvinist readings (if...