SOURCE: Russo, James R. “‘The Chimeras of the Brain’: Clara's Narrative in Wieland.” Early American Literature 16, no. 1 (spring 1981): 60-88.

In the following essay, Russo disputes common theories that attribute the perceived incoherence of Wieland's plot to Brown's incompetence as a writer, claiming that it is not Brown, but his narrator, who is responsible for the incoherence.

Modern criticism has found one major fault with Wieland: its loose and unbalanced structure.¹ The alleged incoherence of its plot is attributed to Charles Brockden Brown's carelessness as a writer, a notion so firmly entrenched in Brown criticism that it persists all but unchallenged despite much evidence to the contrary.² A better explanation for the seeming incoherence of Wieland is possible only if we set aside the a priori reasoning that Brown was an inferior artist. Clara Wieland herself provides us with the key when she makes the following damaging admission...