71 pages • 2 hours read
Wieland
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Ventriloquism
Brown was heavily criticized for the use of ventriloquism as a plot device. It fails on two accounts. First, it is not clearly foreshadowed. In a mystery, which this story is at least in part, it is considered good form for the writer to provide the reader with all the major pieces of information they might need to solve the mystery, such that when the solution is revealed, the reader has a cathartic sense that the solution is inevitable. When the author appears to withhold crucial information, the reader feels disappointment or even irritation, as if the author has cheated. The only hint at an explanation for the phenomenon of the disembodied voices is when Carwin tells the Wielands about a variety of ways that one might produce effects similar to the voices in the temple and in Clara’s closet, but ventriloquism itself is never hinted at.
Second, the strained device of ventriloquism might have passed muster if Carwin had presented himself as a more sinister character in his confession. Instead, his confession to Clara seems more self-serving and pitiable than dreadful. Carwin is revealed as a childlike character, a bumbler, and an “imp of mischief,” as Henry calls him, and all the grief, death, and disaster is brought about by a puerile trick.
Whatever its weakness as a plot device, the very paltriness of the revelation underscores the fragile foundation of all the Wielands’ beliefs. Their judgment, reason, and very understanding of reality is so frail as to be overturned by a gimmick that is hardly more than a joke played by a clown.
The Immolation of Weiland Senior
The immolation or spontaneous combustion of Clara’s father sets the stage for the author’s investigation of religious extremism and for Clara’s struggle to distinguish between the real and the supernatural. She has never been able to decide whether her father’s death was a supernatural event or if there was some scientific explanation. The available evidence seems to point both ways. First, lightning could have explained the entire incident, given that lightning strikes can have a variety of effects, but the sky was clear, and no one saw any sign of lightning at the time. Her father claims to have seen something like an angel, which would indicate a supernatural influence, but he was in shock and might simply have imagined it. Even Clara’s “scientific” explanation has something of the supernatural in it. She imagines that her father’s obsessive thoughts might have overheated his blood to such an extent that he burst into flames.
Metaphorically, the implication is that Wieland Sr. was burned out by his own religious obsession; he was undergoing an episode of depression stemming from a sense that he failed to serve God by converting the Indigenous Americans to his personal brand of Protestantism. He was on his way to his temple to pray as he was wont to do twice a day, which was itself an extreme, even obsessive religious observance by Protestant standards. Clara seems to have taken the incident as a warning against extremism. Her brother longs for the same kind of religious devotion that apparently destroyed his father. When he achieves it, however, it destroys not him but his family.
The Temple and the Summerhouse
The temple and the summerhouse symbolize the conflicting forces of heaven and earth, and spiritual and primal emotion. The temple is associated with air and fire. It stands high on a promontory, invoking images of heaven and proximity to God. For Wieland Sr., this was a place of pure spirit where he sought direct connection with God. There, he was burned alive because, like Icarus flying too close to the sun, he lost his balanced relationship between mind and body.
Fire also represents intellect and the sciences. When the children reach adulthood, they repurpose the temple, making it a place of enlightened repose. Its classical lines suggest pastoral idealism, and Wieland’s addition of the bust of Cicero consolidates the symbolism of the setting as classical and rational.
The summerhouse lies in a hollow on the bank on the other side of the river where it symbolizes earth and water. These elements are associated with fertility and sexuality. It is Clara’s particular retreat. While she and Catherine are welcome in the arguably more masculine realm of the temple, the men never enter the summerhouse—apart from Carwin, who is outside their insular community. There, Carwin goes to meet with the maid Judith for a sexual encounter, and there he plays his trick on Henry in which he represents Clara as a wanton, unvirtuous woman, resulting in Henry’s condemnation of Clara.
Henry never enters the summerhouse. When he first encounters Clara there, he stands above on the bank with a light guiding her out. When he next encounters the summerhouse, on the occasion when he is deceived by Carwin, he again avoids entering. If he had done so, he would have learned that Clara was not there. While the summerhouse is associated with femininity, fertility requires that the male enter into the female realm. The fact that Henry refuses to do so is a rejection of Clara’s femininity and sexuality. It is also evidence that Henry never considered Clara as a potential partner, nor was he worthy of her.
In addition, the summerhouse is where Clara has her dream in which her brother beckons her toward a yawning pit, suggesting that her brother is her enemy. The implication is that she has recognized subconsciously that her brother is losing his balance and becoming a threat to her.
Of all the characters, Clara comes the closest to maintaining an imperfect balance between the two extremes. It is not easy for her. After her brother’s death, she retreats to the womb of her own house where, after a time, she dreams of a tempest of earth, air, fire, and water and wakes to be forced by fire out into the world where she creates a balanced and happy life for herself.
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