Charles Brockden Brown's Somnambulism: A Fragment

In "Somnambulism: A Fragment" Charles Brockden Brown uses the gothic style to convey an unharnessed terror in a single vision: Young Althorpe, while sleepwalking in a forest, murders the woman he desires. But the story is more than a ludicrous curiosity, to read it thus would miss its elegantly stated manifesto against the dangers of Benjamin Franklin's megalomaniacal ideals of industry and pragmatism. The story exploits Franklin's example of the studious, dutiful, useful young man and turns him into a monster. Browns' mode of style is strategic, subversive, infiltrating the reader and earnest student of the eighteenth century by mixing the ordinary with the grotesque, the intelligent with the very wrong.

"Somnambulism scares because it is surrounded with the normal, because its central character, its killer, is not the usual deviant monster, but a sharp, educated young man, not very far removed from the ideals of Franklin himself. As a cue of his hunger to learn, his desire for accurate information, Althorpe uses an elevated language (example: "The family retired to sleep. My mind had been too powerfully excited to permit me to imitate their example." [1233]). He lives, not with his mother and father, but with his uncle and aunt, which goes unexplained. The placement situates Althorpe to work, to work for familial and personal usefulness. He is no plodder, no idle participant in life. Although briefly mentioned, he achieves usefulness, and fills his days with a strong sense of work ethic and duty: "I went into the fields, not merely to perform the duties of the day, but to ruminate on plans for the future." (1233). He is also aware of the standard of outward appearances within his family, understand the concepts of the "rigid decorum" (1231) and the "bounds of scrupulous propriety (1231). "My age and situation, in this family, rendered silence to submission my peculiar province." (1231).

In fact, it is the rigid decorum that conceals him as a predator to Mr. and Miss Davis, house-guests for the night. "On this occasion I was eloquent in my remonstrances." (1231). They see him only as an awkward young man, flawed with boyish goof. To them, his eagerness marks his inexperience; annoying and nothing more. Mr. Davis, though, has been fooled: "But you seem… chiefly anxious for my daughter's sake. There is, without a doubt, a large portion of gallantry in your fears. It is natural and venial in a young man to take infinite pains for the service of the ladies." (1231). Neither does Miss Davis see him as a threat, and remarks to Althorpe and her father, "I confess the fears that have been expressed appear to be groundless. I am bound to our young friend for the concern he takes in our welfare, but certainly his imagination misleads him." (1235). The following lines in their conversation seem less a dialogue about Althorpe's character, than an authorial critique of the Franklin model of pragmatism and genius.

Mr. Davis: "Have you any reason to fear him on any account?"

Miss Davis: "Yes. The period of youth will soon pass away. Overweening and fickle he will go on committing one mistake after another, incapable of repairing his errors, or of profiting by the daily lessons of experience. His genius will be merely an implement of mischief. His greater capacity will be evinced merely by the greater portion of unhappiness that, by means of it, will accrue to others or rebound upon himself." (1235)

Nor does his uncle seem to comprehend the boy's sociopathic inclinations. Althorpe awakes by his hand:

"In the morning, my uncle, whose custom it was to rise first in the family, found me quietly reposing in the chair in which I had fallen asleep. His summons roused and startled me. This posture was so unusual that I did not readily recover my recollection, and perceive in what circumstances I was placed." (1233)

His uncle shows no signs of worry; his face does not bend at the reasoning behind his position on the chair, nor does he question Althorpe's sudden shock. The consensus of him seems to be general indifference: Just another hopeless, half-witted intellectual, just another young man whose earnest proclivities bores and burdens to the point of household malaise. No one knows, no one can see him clearly, only the audience is privy to his dangers element of desperation.

Althorpe's power lies deep within the stronghold over his thoughts and his manner of editing them out for the appearance of sanity. Like Franklin's earlier ambitions with Deism, Althorpe rationalizes his motives: "The strength of a belief, when it is destitute of any rational foundation, seems, of itself, to furnish new ground for credulity." (1230). He is too intelligent to ever let himself knowingly lose control of a situation, yet his mind swims with obsessions over Miss Davis ("I was willing to run to the world's end to show my devotion to the lady." [1232]). He agonizes at the thought of a non-existent lover:

"Who was he that Constantia Davis has chosen? Was he born to outstrip all competitors in ardour and fidelity? He had hitherto been unrivalled; but was not this day destined to introduce to her one, to whose merits every competitor must yield… As soon as his superior is found, his claims will be annihilated… But soft! Is she not betrothed? If she be, what have I to dread?" (1229)

But Althorpe knows he has no chance for the reciprocation of her love. He worries: "But how shall I contend with this unknown admirer? She is going whither it will not be possible for me to follow her." (1230) In so many words, Miss Davis politely rejects him, and he states his emotional result as, "The evil that was menaced was terrible." (1231). He does not show backbone towards her dismissal. Instead, Althorpe's tone changes from gawky little man to obsessive passive-aggression. And sadly, obsession is Althorpe's most honest, least aggravated emotion, although he might not knowingly admit the defect. The dim light of studiousness and industry flickers out and suddenly and new bulb brightens when the thoughts are natural, without rein or switch. "My imagination was vivid. My passions, when I allowed them sway, were incontroulable. My conduct, as my feelings, was characterized by precipitation and headlong energy." (1231). Without him as a guide through the forest, Althorpe envisions Mr. and Miss Davis in terrible danger. Indeed, the gothic scenery is in place: An unknown forest, a falling stone, a creaking carriage, a sagging black night. He uses nature and the dangers within the mysteries of a natural environment as a front, as a device for his killing her. He uses the unknown to his advantage. In his mind's eye, he can foresee everything. "I pondered on every incident till the surrounding scenes disappeared, and I forgot my situation." (1233). The worry over their sanctitiy is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy of their fate.

Mr. and Mrs. Davis leave the house. In their wake, Althorpe tires himself with awful, wishful thoughts. "My imagination continually hovered over our departed guest." He sees them in every imaginable situation of death, and then, Althorpe fall asleep, fully inspired, a "profound sleep." (1233). Sleep is where Althorpe is most honest. If, when fully conscious and awake, his mind tortures to keep him straightened proper, and cannot admit to its own indescribable visions of sickeness, then when he is asleep and unconscious, Althorpe is truly Althorpe. His slumber is profound because it is real; his slumber is profound because it proves results, shows no embarrassment, has nothing to edit; his slumber is profound because it is truly active, truly alive, committed and brave. Althorpe kills Miss Davis.

"At length, as I have said, I sunk into a profound slumber, if that slumber can be termed profound, in which my fancy was incessantly employed in calling up the forms, into new combinations, which had constituted my waking reveries… The events of the morrow recalled them to my remembrance with sufficient distinctness." (1233)

Brown makes a stern choice for the murder: He does not use sleepwalking as decorative stylistic coating to cover the audience from the realism of the horror (would the story be any more or less frightening had Althorpe murdered her fully awake, in the clear light of day?). He uses sleepwalking, the somnambulism, for a specific point, as his character's most natural, bodily act. Coming back to Benjamin Franklin, his influence of pragmatism and self-awareness on the young man has yield towards stiffness, folly, and shame. Folly in love, shame in thought, stiffness in life. He is too rigid to be normal, and cowards under the guise of studiousness to cover his impulses.

Asleep, he sees Mr. and Miss Davis in trouble and attempts to save them:

"My ideas were full of confusion and inaccuracy. All that I can recollect is that my efforts had been unsuccessful to avert the stroke of the murderer… I did not employ the usual preliminaries which honour prescribes, but, stimulated by rage attacked him with a pistol and terminated his career by a mortal wound." (1233)

The confusion and inaccuracy refer to his lack of control of his tendencies. His body has been so heavily navigated by the Franklin design that he is made unable to comprehend his own raging rudder, his own wayward reactions. No error: Althorpe is a sociopath. He believes the world is against him and has a flight of revenge without cause. This is his true nature, a nature that is revealed to the audience by his sleepwalking. Awake, his false sense guides him to a strict, if not awkward, moral compass. But that is not his true identity; it belongs to someone else, in a character of a man from a book.

After the sleep, after what he thinks was simply a dream, Althorpe's composition of tone changes:

"I shook off the dreams of the night. Sleep had refreshed and invigorated my frame, as well as tranquillized my thoughts. I still mused on yesterday's adventures, but my reveries were more cheerful and benign." (1233)

Something has changed, something has gone wrong, because for the first time in his narrative, Althorpe questions nothing. For a man so committed to self-doubt and indefatigable probing, the sudden shift to linear movement profoundly shows his unknown, unconscious guilt.

In fact, it is this writer's opinion that Althorpe does not know what he has done, that Brown has written character completely ignorant of his crime; and that forgetting to mention local lunatic Nick Handeyside was indeed an honest oversight, not clever plotting on his part. Altorpe's modus operandi is that if anyone is going to kill Miss Davis, it will be Althorpe and no one else. Althorpe gives scenic, sensuous detail of the night. "[The physician's] tale was meager and imperfect, but the substance of it was easy to gather… The circumstances of this mournful event, as I was able to collect them at different times, from the witnesses, were these." (1234). This is no cover-up for guilt. Althorpe, unknowingly, thinks he is giving a twice removed recount of events. But the description is too able, too perfectly composed, to be a simple restatement. "[Mr Davis] pointed to the field that skirted the road on the left hand. The young lady's better eyes enable her to detect his mistake. It was the trunk of a cherry-tree that he had not observed." (1235). This sort of detail and others following are so small that the only way in which he could have seen this is if he had been there, hover over them, sidled in the trees. But Althorpe, throughout the narrative, is unaware. He describes the murdered as "demoniac" (1240), a category he would never place himself, and yet it is he whom is described. Why would he announce his own guilt, why would he tell his murderous tale, if he had for a moment considered that he might be the killer?

Miss Davis dies. The story ends. "Why should I dwell on the remaining incidents of this tale?" (1240). Althorpe's dememnted sense of loss is too great to make his story anything more than the fragment; he lacks words for the very real languish he feels. Pre-Freud, "Somnambulism" shows the identity in its truest form; that is, in its unconscious. Charles Brockden Brown creates on of life's little problem children, a character whose every superfluous every move defeats its pre-occupation of structure and self-awareness, the common virtues of Benjamin Franklin's genius. Althrope represents the nightmare of this model. It is almost as if, from Franklin's clever bullying of arching intelligence, when love and sensitivity become very real, very physical demands, Althorpe displays his emotional lack of training and the emptiness of his soul.