Fiction Mirrors Reality
Part of the backstory to the narrative involves and ill-fated seduction of a young woman named Ophelia by a man named Martin. This tragically doomed romance is conveyed through a letter from Harriot to Myra using rich imagery to suggest very strongly a one-sided view of the story which is necessarily feminine in nature. In reality, however, the story told is such a very thinly disguised real-life scandal that few familiar with the real deal could possibly have missed the point. This is despite the fact that throughout her recounting, Harriot’s understanding of the consequential impact of the fictionalized scandal is mostly transmitted through imagery vague and ambiguous enough to apply to a much broader canvas of doomed romances:
“He had conceived a passion for Ophelia and…By a series of the most artful attentions, suggested by a diabolical appetite, he insinuated himself into her affection…THE affection of Martin now became changed to the vilest hatred. THUS doomed to suffer the blackest ingratitude from her seducer on the one hand, and to experience the severity of paternal vengeance on the other—and before her the gloomy prospect of a blasted reputation…Hope, the last resort of the wretched, was forever shut out. There was no one whom she durst implore by the tender name of father, and he who had seduced her from her duty and her virtue, was the first to brand her with the disgraceful epithets, of undutiful and unchaste.”
Epistolary Literature
Unlike texts or instant messages or social media posts, letters come equipped with a built-in protection against being hacked and publicly disseminated. Or, at least, they used to. Thus, it can be quite a tricky proposition for some readers today to fully accept that, indeed, real people did actually use to write letters using such lofty and elevated expressions of imagery:
“ONCE more let me intreat you, my dear friend, to arm yourself with every virtue which is capable of sustaining the heaviest calamity. Let the impetuosity of the lover's passion be forgotten in the undisturbed quietness of the brother's affection, and may all the blessings that life can supply be yours—Seek for content, and you will find it, even though we should never meet again in this world.”
Letter-Writing and Lust
One of the advantages of structuring a novel as a series of letters is the intimacy that letter writing affords. Unless previously informed to the contrary, most people writing a letter expect that only the person to whom it is addressed will be reading it; at least, that is, while the letter is still in the possession of the person to whom it was sent. In a way, letter writing allows for at least as much and possibly even more explicit expression of honesty than a diary or journal. Thus, while one might expect that scenes demonstrating the lustier side of romance might not appear in an epistolary novel, that is certainly not the case. It is true, however, that the imagery recalling those moments in remembrance are perhaps more poetic than a simple third-person description might have been:
“And has there subsisted nothing more tender—a sentiment more voluntary in our hearts? My feelings affirm that there has. At the hour of our first interview I felt the passion kindle in my breast: Insensible of my own weakness, I indulged its increasing violence and delighted in the flame that fired my reason and my senses.”
Almost Meta
About a quarter of the way through appears Letter XII from Mrs. Holmes to Myra. The letter is a bit different from the usual in that it is an accounting of a conversation. The verbatim quality requires a great degree of suspension of one’s belief, but is a common practice in the epistolary from. What is less common is this letter almost foresees postmodern meta-fiction by more than a century by becoming a commentary upon the novel as a form of literature itself. Since this is considered to be the first American novel, one can well see the point: imagery is powerful stuff in the world of advertising.
"`You all read, and it is from the books which engage your attention, that you generally imbibe your ideas of the principal subjects discussed in company—now, the books which employ your hours of study, happen to be Novels; and the subjects contained in these Novels are commonly confined to dress, balls, visiting, and the like edifying topicks; does it not follow, that these must be the subjects of your conversation?’”
