SOURCE: Ridgely, J. V. “The Empty World of Wieland.” In Individual and Community: Variations on a Theme in American Fiction, edited by Kenneth H. Baldwin and David K. Kirby, pp. 3-16. Durham: Duke University Press, 1975.

In the following essay, Ridgely studies the various transformations of Brown's characters in Wieland.

Wieland is a nocturnal tale, a nervous melodrama played out in the uncertain illumination of candle, lamp, fire, moon, stars. To a degree, of course, Brown's darkened stage set is a literary convention; in folk tale as well as in the contemporary Gothic novel of terror, night is the time when creatures of mystery and danger are expected to walk abroad. But Charles Brockden Brown was a self-proclaimed novelist of purpose, and the titillating shudder, though he employed it as a time-tested lure for readership, he condemned as an end in itself. In his preface he announced that he...