SOURCE: Petter, Henri. “Illegitimate Love.” In The Early American Novel, pp. 242-56. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971.

In the following essay, Petter compares themes of incest and moral instruction in The Power of Sympathy and Ira and Isabella, arguing that their similarities do not prove Brown's authorship of the former work.

In novels of the Monima type a happy ending is reached after the heroine has undergone many trials, including hair-breadth escapes from one form or another of a fate “worse than death.”¹ Margaretta, for one, just barely escapes marrying her own father. Her escape is as narrow as that of the heroine in The History of Albert and Eliza (1812):² had Eliza's marriage to Blake been consummated, she would have been the wife of a bigamist, and one married to his own half-sister. Eliza, too, after suffering various delays and anxieties, finally marries her true love, a happy...