82 The Colonial and Revolutionary Periodsmore specifically, The Power of Sympathy shares the same currency as the books by
Rowson and Webster in the sense that it places a young woman and her fate at the
center of the narrative, and addresses other young women as the intended recipients
of its message. This reflected an economic reality: in the new, vastly expanded literary
marketplace of America, as in Europe, women constituted the main readership for
fiction. It also, perhaps, had an ideological dimension: the novel was where women,
and especially young women, could go to find a dramatic reflection of their problems,
economic, social, and moral – some sense, and appreciation, of the way they lived,
or had to live, now.
This further dimension is more noticeable, inevitably perhaps, in novels actually
written by women. Susanna Haswell Rowson’s Charlotte Temple was published in
London in 1791 and then in the United States three years later, where it became the
first American bestseller. By 1933 it had gone through 161 editions; and it has been
estimated that it has been read by a quarter to a half million people. In the preface to
her novel, Rowson explains that the circumstances in which she founded the novel
were related to her by “an old lady who had personally known Charlotte.” “I have
thrown over the whole a slight veil of fiction,” she adds, “and substituted names and
places according to my own fancy.” And what she has written, she insists, has a fun-
damentally moral purpose. “For the perusal of the young and thoughtless of the fair
sex, this Tale of Truth is designed,” Rowson declares. Charlotte Temple is “not merely
the effusion of Fancy, but ... a reality” because it is grounded in fact and because it
is intended as a manual of conduct, a guide to young women as they negotiate their
way through life. “If the following tale should save one hapless fair one from the
errors that ruined poor Charlotte,” Rowson tells the reader, “then she will pronounce
herself happy.” The tale that follows this is essentially a simple one. Charlotte, a girl
of 15 in a school for young ladies, is seduced by an army officer called Montraville.
Montraville is aided by an unscrupulous teacher whom Charlotte trusts, Mlle La
Rue. After considerable hesitation, Charlotte elopes with Montraville from England
to New York. There, she is deserted by both Montraville and Mlle La Rue, gives birth
to a daughter, Lucy, and dies in poverty. What adds force, and a measure of complex-
ity, to the tale are two things: Rowson’s consistent habit of addressing the reader and
her subtle pointers to the fact that, while Charlotte thinks she is in control of her
fate, she fundamentally is not – she is at the mercy of male power and the machina-
tions of others.
“Oh my dear girls – for to such only I am writing,” Rowson declares early on in
Charlotte Temple. That is characteristic: the narrator turns constantly from her
young woman character to the young women who are reading her story. As she does
so, she underlines Charlotte’s innocence, her ignorance. “A young woman is never
more in danger than when attempted by a young soldier,” she points out; “the mind
of youth eagerly catches at promised pleasure,” she says elsewhere, “pure and inno-
cent by nature, it thinks not of the dangers lurking beneath ... till too late.” Charlotte
believes in the best intentions of both her teacher and her lover. She is ready to
confide in the one, unaware that she is intriguing against her pupil; and she believes
she can rely on the goodwill and affection of the other when, as it turns out, he isGGray_c01.indd 82ray_c 01 .indd 82 8 8/1/2011 7:54:57 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 57 AM