Sentiment and Sensibility: The Role of Emotion and William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy

SENTIMENT AND SENSIBILITY: THE ROLE OF EMOTION AND WILLIAM HILL BROWN'S THE POWER OF SYMPATHY Robert D. Arner* As the author of one of the earliest American novels— ifnot, indeed, the very earliest1—William Hill Brown inherited two strains of European sentimentality which he attempted to unite in one work, The Power of Sympathy. The first of these strains derived from Richardson and made sentiment virtually synonomous with strong moral feeling.2 Philosophically, it rested heavily upon Shaftesbury's doctrine of benevolence, the theory that man was endowed with an innate moral sense which would prompt him to act benevolently if only he would follow the dictates of his feelings. A controlled, essentially chaste response to certain emotional stimuli became a sign of virtue.3 The second strain, represented in England by Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey, revelled in emotions for their own sake, although technically Sterne, too, was tied to Shaftesbury's philosophy. But where Richardson offered an affected conscience, Sterne promoted the virtues of impulsive action motivated solely by strong emotion— or so it seemed to one outraged contributor to the New Engfond Quarterly in 1802. "I suppose few writers have done more injury to morals than Sterne," he wrote. "Formerly, if a man felt a passion for the wife or mistress of a friend, he was conscious at least, that, if he persisted in the pursuit, he was acting wrong; and if the Novel Writer invented such a character, it was to hold him out as an object of detestation and punishment. Now this is so varnished over with delicate attachment and generous sensibility, that the most shocking acts of perfidy and seduction are committed not only without remorse, but with self-complacency. . . ."4 Brown's preface to The Power of Sympathy leaves no doubt that he shared with this anonymous contributor the conviction that novels should aim at some high moral purpose. He attacked books which "expose no particular Vice, and which recommend no particular Virtue"5 and identified the value of his own work in terms of these two key functions: "the dangerous consequences of SEDUCTION are exposed, and the Advantages of FEMALE EDUCATION set forth and •Robert D. Arner is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. 122Robert D. Amer recommended" (p. vi). As part of his overall plan, he seems to have intended to draw a sharp contrast between Richardsonian sentiment and Sternean sensibility, for in "Letter I: Harrington to Worthy" he introduces Harrington as "a strange medley of contradiction—the moralist and the amoroso—the sentiment and the sensibility—are interwoven in my constitution, so that nature and grace are at continual fisticuffs" (p. 8). The stylistic ambiguity here is crucial, however. As the middle pair of terms enclosed by moralist versus amoroso on one side and nature versus grace on the other, "the sentiment and the sensibility" are not clearly defined as either positive or negative forces; the pattern in the first enclosing pair moves from positive to negative, but the naturegrace opposition reverses that parallelism. In terms of the contrast between Richardson and Sterne, of course, "sentiment" is meant to relate directly to "moralist" and "grace," "sensibility" to "amoroso" and "nature," but Brown's syntax has already begun to blur a distinction upon which his moralistic critics would have insisted.6 As the novel progresses, moreover, that distinction disappears altogether and the terms "sentiment," "sensibility," and "sympathy" become almost interchangeable. For the characters involved in the action of the book, all three words seem to suggest a regenerative and redemptive emotion. Thus the elder Harrington, a reformed rake, uses "sensibility" in a positive sense in his account of his last meeting with Maria Fawcett, the innocent maiden whom he has seduced."However her sensibility was affected" by that last scene, he confesses, "mine was doubly so; I felt for her—I felt for our infant ..." (II, 62) . So moving and intense is the experience that Harrington's conscience awakens; he reforms and determines to do right by Maria. He even intimates that he might have married her, if his wish "to place her in a situation that should screen her from penury and malice and to...