Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Charlotte Temple by Cathy N. Davidson, Susanna Hoswell Rowson, Susanna Haswell Rowson, Cathy N. Davedson ISBN: 0-19-504238-7 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: March, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An intriguing landmark from American literary history
Comment: "Charlotte Temple" is a sentimental, moralistic 18th century novel by Susanna Rowson, an English-born author who lived much of her life in the United States. According to Cathy N. Davidson (who wrote the introduction to the Oxford edition), "Charlotte" was "America's first best-selling novel in the early years of the Republic." According to the book's bibliographic notes, it was first published in 1791, with the first American edition appearing in 1794.
The book tells the story of an innocent young English schoolgirl who becomes involved in romantic intrigue. She eventually winds up in the vicinity of New York City; thus, the novel has an interesting theme of a foreigner coming to America. The book's plot reminds me of a contemporary soap opera, but with a much more judgmental and religious tone. The characters are, on the whole, cardboard stereotypes. The book is full of female hysterics, male villainy, cruelty, dangerous passion, and heartbreak.
Rowson fills her book with asides to the reader, and, ironically, I found this ongoing conversation to be more interesting than the melodramatic plot. Many of the asides are preachy, such as this example: "Oh my dear girls [...] listen not to the voice of love, unless sanctioned by parental approbriation" (chapter VI). But as the book goes on, Rowson begins to anticipate objections from possible readers, and some of her asides are witty and quite entertaining.
Ultimately, "Charlotte" is not a great piece of literature as a novel, but as a sort of metafictional exercise, it's quite intriguing. It's especially interesting when read in comparison with such self-referent 20th century novels as Ernest Hemingway's "The Torrents of Spring" or Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions." Also, the book's presentation of 18th century femininity and sexuality is an interesting precursor to 19th century books like Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." "Charlotte" may try the patience of contemporary readers on certain levels, but I believe it to be a literary milestone that is still oddly relevant.
Rating: 4
Summary: Naivety leads to ruin
Comment: "Charlotte Temple" is about a young British girl who runs away from her family and country because of a lieutenant named Montraville and her promiscuous French teacher, Miss La Rue. When Charlotte is fifteen, La Rue convinces her to run away to America with Montraville, La Rue and La Rue's temporary companion, Belcour. Once in America, La Rue marries a wealthy colonel and moves to the city. Montraville purchases a house for Charlotte outside the city and she becomes pregnant. She is left alone day and night with only her worries to give her company. Soon, Montraville abandons Charlotte for another woman and leaves for the Revolutionary War. He plans to send her rent money but his evil friend, Belcour, deceives him, keeps the money and leaves Charlotte to ruin. Charlotte is desperately poor and far along in her pregnancy and wishes to return home to her loving parents. She sends them a letter but must wait a long time for their reply. When Charlotte is eventually evicted for failing to pay rent, she goes out in a terrible storm to the city in search of La Rue, only to find that La Rue has disowned her. She is alone but La Rue's servant takes her in as she is going into labor. Although the novel was written in the late 1700s, the theme is applicable today. Charlotte suffers an illigitimate teenage pregnancy, her boyfriend abandons her, she is unable to contact her parents and feels they no longer care about her, and she falls into poverty and ultimate destruction. Rowson's novel is a must read for all young women, because it functions as a guide of what not to do with one's life.
Rating: 2
Summary: Fall, Fall, Charlotte
Comment: Susanna Rowson's "Charlotte Temple" is not the first novel and certainly not the last to deal with the topic of the morally fallen woman. Poor, pitiful Charlotte finds herself in the midst of an immoral and unforgiving world where one transgression sends her on the road to permanent ruin. Rowson encases her heroine Charlotte Temple within a world of virtue and vengeance. Charlotte has no possible means of escaping her inevitable fate because the author/narrator makes it clear from the onset that she has written this story as a lesson to young woman. She has no real interest in Charlotte as a dimensional character. Charlotte simply serves as a symbol of lost virtue and symbols do not have real emotions or feelings. "Charlotte Temple" was written in 1794 and became one of the first best sellers of the newly formed America. A morally abhorrent woman who pays for her sins almost always guaranteed a best seller in the eighteenth century and now "Charlotte Temple" has been rediscovered and published in a Scholarly Press edition. Was this reclamation of Charlotte really necessary? In the past twenty years, feminist scholars have rediscovered authors and texts that have gone out of print or been totally ignored by the literati. Authors such as Anne Plumptre, Frances Burney, Aphra Behn, Sarah Fielding and Charlotte Lennox have been dusted off and given new literary lives. Feminist scholar Cathy Davidson has taken Charlotte Temple in hand and aims to join Rowson to the above list of rediscoveries. Unfortunately, Rowson does not warrant such treatment. Rowson has a flat, humorless approach to the fallen woman story. Unlike Burney's "Evelina" or "Camilla," Rowson does not imbue her narrative with needed levity. Her pedantic iron-fisted preaching smothers the modern reader in a moral morass that confounds rather than illuminates. In many of the fallen women stories, authors would use the genre as a subversive technique to criticize the patriarchal structures. Rowson does engage in such subversion within the novel. She seeks to preach to the young women who may fall victim to the unscrupulous man -- in England and America, it was not considered altogether lady-like to read a novel, so Rowson would be preaching to young women who had already transgressed. Rowson does not criticize men within the novel. She does not censure Montraville for taking Charlotte as his mistress, impregnating her and abandoning her for a wealthier woman. When he believes that Charlotte has becomes his best friend's mistress, he does not believe that she would soil her reputation even though she has ruined her life by engaging in an illicit affair with him. He aims to enact revenge upon the friend for acting "dishonorable" against her. Yet if he had not acted dishonorably towards her, she would not have been reduced to a penniless, pregnant ex-mistress scrounging the streets for food and shelter. He never takes responsibility for his role in Charlotte's downfall. Rowson had the perfect opportunity for savage criticism of the patriarchy with Montraville but she fails to take it. Instead, Rowson places the blame for Charlotte's ruin on the women within the novel. When Charlotte leaves the safe bosom of her morally upstanding family, she enters into the deviant world of the female who fail to protect her from licentious men. Madame Du Pont errs in judgment by hiring the morally loose Miss La Rue. Madame Du Pont sets Charlotte's downfall in action. Rowson does not punish the ignorant Madame Du Pont by killing her, she ends up an hysterical mess after the Montraville/Charlotte "elopement." Miss La Rue, the woman who pushes Charlotte into the arms of Montraville, must be punished for being a promiscuous woman. She ends up poor and begs for her last scrap of food. She ends up dying painfully as Rowson takes the opportunity to lecture her readers on the improper behavior of loose women. Why would modern readers want to read this? I do not think any intelligent would reader would want to subject themselves to the depressing experience of reading this novel. At 125 pages, it seemed to progress at such an excruciating pace. No character has any shadings. There are no subplots to divert the attention from the static Charlotte. Rowson does nothing to keep our interest. Unfortunately Rowson has become a heroine to feminist scholars for her feat as the first American woman to have a best-selling novel. That accomplishment is noteworthy as literary trivia, but it does not make for engaging reading.
 |
Title: Hope Leslie, Or, Early Times in the Massachusetts (Penguin Classics) by Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Carolyn L. Karcher ISBN: 0140436766 Publisher: Penguin USA Pub. Date: November, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: The Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner, Jane Tompkins ISBN: 0935312668 Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster, Cathy N. Davidson ISBN: 0195042395 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: March, 1987 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
 |
Title: Popular American Literature of the 19th Century by Paul C. Gutjahr ISBN: 0195141407 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 2001 List Price(USD): $44.95 |
 |
Title: Ruth Hall and Other Writings (American Woman Writers Series) by Fanny Fern, Joyce W. Warren ISBN: 0813511682 Publisher: Rutgers University Press Pub. Date: August, 1986 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
