The Power of Sympathy

"The Power of Sympathy" (1789) is a novel written by William Hill Brown, usually considered to be the first American novel.

The story of "The Power of Sympathy"

In January 1789, Isaiah Thomas and Company published Brown’s "The Power of Sympathy", his first novel. One of the novel's intertwining stories of seduction mirrored that of a scandal taking place around the time of the novel’s conception in Boston. His character Ophelia reflected Frances Apthorp, a woman who engaged in an affair with her brother in law, named “Martin” in Brown’s novel, and eventually commits suicide. For this reason, Brown allegedly agreed to stop the sale of the book and destroy many copies of it to save the name of the Apthorp family involved in the scandal. This may also be reason for the novel’s anonymity for several years.

A century after William Hill Brown’s death in 1793, Arthur Bayley, editor of The Bostonian published a serial publication of "The Power of Sympathy", attributing the work to Sarah Wentworth Morton of Boston, a poetess. Rebecca Vollentine Thompson, an old woman at the time, heard of the publication and contacted Bayley, correcting him as to the true author of the novel: her uncle, William Hill Brown. Bayley subsequently added the correction to The Bostonian, clearing up the question of "The Power of Sympathy’s" authorship.

Plot summary

William Hill Brown addressed "The Power of Sympathy" to “The Young Ladies of United Columbia.” The Power of Sympathy displays the themes of love and sentimentality as well as seduction and its evils. It calls out to young women as a sort of educational guide against seduction.

The "Power of Sympathy" is written in correspondence: several letters between friends and lovers. Though a few storylines intertwine throughout the novel, the main plot takes place between five main characters: Thomas Harrington, his sister Myra Harrington, Myra’s friend Harriot Faucet, Thomas’ friend Jack Worthy, and Mrs. Eliza Holmes, a widow and common friend of all the aforementioned characters.

The first few letters of Brown’s novel reveal that Thomas Harrington has fallen for Miss Faucet. Though Thomas’ father disapproves with his young love, he continues to pursue Harriot. Worthy writes to Mrs. Holmes and Myra Harrington expressing his love for Miss Harrington and his intention to marry her: they become engaged.

As Eliza Holmes becomes aware of the growing love between Thomas and Harriot, she becomes alarmed and decides to expose a deep family secret to Myra, Thomas’ sister. Mrs. Holmes reveals that Harriot is in fact Thomas and Myra’s third sibling. Mr. Harrington, their father, at one point had had an affair out of marriage with Maria Faucet. The birth of Mr. Harrington’s bastard daughter had to be kept a secret to maintain his family’s honor, so Eliza’s mother-in-law, the late Mrs. Holmes, took Maria and her child, Harriot, into her home. Later, Maria became ill and died, leaving Harriot with a family friend by the name of Mrs. Francis.

Upon receiving the news of this family secret, Harriot is devastated: she realizes that she is in love with her own brother. Soon after, she commits suicide. Harrington follows suit, taking his own life out of depression from lost love and his frustration in falling for his own sister.

The last letter of the novel is written by Jack Worthy to Eliza Holmes. He explains the funeral of the two sibling-lovers whose gravestone-monument reads: “And Sympathy united, whom Fate divides.”

Overview of Early American Literacy and the Emergence of Print Culture

In the late 18th century to the early 19th century, America saw a rise in literacy as well as an emergence of a new popular print culture. In 1790, “approximately 85 percent of adult men in New England and 60 percent of those in Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake could read and write,” (Murrin). The literacy rate for women was also on the rise, though much lower than the male literacy rate at “about 45 percent in New England” (Murrin).

As the literacy rates increased at this time, so did the supply and variety of publications and reading materials. Correspondence by mail became extremely popular, tying in with the style in which "The Power of Sympathy" was written in: letters.

While "The Power of Sympathy" was released in 1789, American novels were not a popular or common publication in the United States in the late 18th century -– this novel was considered the first American novel. The most common type of publication at that time was the newspaper.

With the boom of literacy and publication taking place, so did a sort of democratization of print. No longer were publications limited to the wealthy and well-educated: books, bibles, and newspapers were becoming available to the masses.

Literary significance & criticism

William Hill Brown’s novel certainly may be called controversial for its time. It displays the themes of seduction, betrayal, and incest. The novel portrays women as easily seduced without investigating the origins of their love. Without such investigation, Brown’s novel asserts that women will be led astray into harmful relationships, often ending in disaster, and in the case of Ophelia and Harriot, death.

Betrayal is also a salient theme in "The Power of Sympathy". For example, Mr. Harrington betrays his family by failing to reveal the secret of his illegitimate child to them. Also, Ophelia betrays her husband when she falls in love with her brother-in-law. Last, it is interesting that Brown’s novel utilizes the idea of incest in both of these plots, though that of Harriot and Thomas is much more severe than that of Ophelia and her in-law. In a later work of Brown’s, entitled Ira and Isabella, he interestingly includes incest once again as a terrible consequence of blind seduction.

In the late 18th century, when novels had just began to be popular in the United States, women were their main readers. Tales like those in Brown’s "The Power of Sympathy" were certainly considered indecent for young women to be reading. Novel-reading was not something that could be easily monitored as it was done in privacy and silence, which promoted the idea that novels were especially dangerous publications for women to possess.

References

Brown, William Hill and Hannah Webster Foster. "The Power of Sympathy" and "The Coquette". (Penguin Classics, 1996)

Byers Jr., John R. "A Letter of William Hill Brown's (in Notes)." "American Literature", Vol. 49, No. 4. (Jan., 1978), pp. 606-611.

Ellis, Milton. "The Author of the First American Novel". "American Literature", Vol. 4, No. 4. (Jan., 1933), pp. 359-368.

Martin, Terrence. "William Hill Brown's Ira and Isabella". "The New England Quarterly", Vol. 32, No. 2. (Jun., 1959), pp. 238-242.

Murrin, John M. et al. "Liberty, Freedom, and Power: A History of the American People". Volume I., 4th ed. pp. 252-253. (Wadsworth, 2005)

Walser, Richard. "More About the First American Novel". "American Literature", Vol. 24, No. 3. (Nov., 1952), pp. 352-357.

Walser, Richard. "The Fatal Effects of Seduction (1789)" "Modern Language Notes", Vol. 69, No. 8. (Dec., 1954), pp. 574-576.