Trials of the Human Heart by Susanna Rowson (review)

For nearly a decade now scholars of early American literature have been calling for readers and scholars to move beyond Charlotte Temple, Susanna Rowson's most popular work, and to pay more attention to the wide variety of texts Rowson produced in her long and constantly evolving career. In their 2011 special issue of Studies in American Fiction "Beyond Charlotte Temple," Jennifer Desiderio and Desiree Henderson argue that "Susanna Rowson is an author who deserves our full and engaged attention" (xxvii), and the essays in their valuable collection suggest that scholars are indeed taking notice of Rowson's plays, poetry, schoolbooks, and multiple novels. Despite this very welcome development, however, print editions of works other than Charlotte remain few and far between, thus making it challenging for scholars to introduce Rowson in all her variety to students or for nonspecialists to encounter Rowson as an author of far more than the sentimental phenomenon that is Charlotte.

A new edition of Trials of the Human Heart (1795) published by Early American Reprints is thus a very welcome addition to the list of Rowson texts available in print. Aside from its being "the first best-selling novel in the United States," a key reason for the popularity of Charlotte Temple among teachers of early American literature has surely been its brevity; it's easy to find a place for Charlotte on a crowded syllabus. While Trials of the Human Heart is decidedly not brief (it was originally published in four volumes), it has other qualities that recommend it to educators trying to engage their students' interest in early American literature and culture. Its heroine, Meriel Howard, is in many ways far more intriguing and likely to provoke lively discussion than poor Charlotte. The "trials" Meriel faces over the course of the sixteen years covered in the novel include attempted rape-incest at the hands of the man she believes to be her father, her nearly becoming a prostitute in order to provide for her destitute mother, an unhappy marriage, and shipwreck. As the novel draws to a close, however, the mood lightens and Meriel reunites with a lost true love and with her real parents, and finally achieves a happy marriage and home. These events surely make for an exciting narrative, but what gives the novel greater depth and interest is the fact that we hear these events narrated by Meriel herself in letters to her friend Celia, who remains throughout the novel in the French convent where Meriel herself spent her childhood. The epistolary form of the novel enables readers to consider Meriel's own explanations of how she chooses to respond to the various villains and misfortunes she encounters, and to ponder whether the naïve Meriel of the early chapters gains wisdom along with experience. Along with its epistolarity, gothic and picaresque elements in the novel make it an ideal vehicle for discussing the various subgenres of the eighteenth-century novel.

The supplementary materials in this Early American Reprints edition are excellent. The footnotes are helpful enough to enable undergraduates to read the novel, and the introduction provides useful, concise information about Rowson's life and career and argues, insightfully, that Trials "exceeds the bounds of the marriage plot even as it delivers one" (11). The inclusion of the epilogue to "Slaves in Algiers" (written just a year before Trials), in which Rowson boldly proclaims that women "were born for universal sway," provides an interesting counterpoint to Trials, raising questions as to what extent Meriel is ever able to achieve agency in the patriarchal world in which her adventures take place. An excerpt from William Cobbett's "A Kick for a Bite," a misogynist attack on Rowson and her work, further highlights the way questions about gender relations and women's role in public life shaped Rowson's writing.

Editions like this one make it possible for students and general readers to see for themselves the fuller...