Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker is a 1799 novel by the American author Charles Brockden Brown and was published by Hugh Maxwell. The novel is considered an example of early American gothic literature, with themes such as wilderness anxiety, the supernatural, darkness, and irrational thought and fear.
Plot summary
Edgar Huntly, a young man who lives with his uncle and sisters (his only remaining family) on a farm outside Philadelphia, is determined to learn who murdered his friend Waldegrave. Walking near the elm tree under which Waldegrave was killed late one night, Huntly sees Clithero, a servant from a neighboring farm, half-dressed, digging in the ground and weeping loudly. Huntly concludes that Clithero may be the murderer. He also concludes that Clithero is sleepwalking. Huntly decides to follow Clithero when he sleep walks. Clithero leads Huntly through rough countryside, but all this following doesn't lead to Huntly learning much about the murder. Eventually, Huntly confronts Clithero when they are both awake and demands that he confess. Clithero does confess, but not to Waldegrave's murder. Instead he tells a complicated story about his life in Ireland, where he believes he was responsible for the death of a woman who was his patron, after which he fled to Pennsylvania. Clithero claims to know nothing about Waldegrave's murder.
One night, soon after Huntly goes to sleep in his own bed, he wakes up in a completely dark place made of rock, which he eventually determines is a cave. He is hungry, thirsty, and feels as though he's been beaten. He is attacked by a panther, which he manages to kill and then drinks some of its blood and eats some of its flesh. Looking for his way out of the cave, he finds that some Lenni Lenape, an Indian tribe, are holding a white girl prisoner at the mouth of the cave. Edgar kills the guard and rescues the girl. In their flight, he kills more Indians, who seem to have begun a war. By the end of the novel, Edgar learns (among other things) that he himself has been sleepwalking, that Clithero was indeed not involved in Waldegrave's murder, that Waldegrave was murdered by a Lenni Lenape Indian, perhaps one he himself had killed, and that he and his fiancée are both destined to inherit nothing.
Themes
Sleepwalking
In the novel, both Clithero and Huntly are sleepwalkers, although at the beginning of the book Huntly does not realize it. Sleepwalking is prevalent in the story, and Brown uses this device to drive the plot of the novel. For example, Huntly first notices Clithero while Clithero is sleepwalking near the Elm tree. This is what leads Huntly to investigate into Clithero's activities further, and why Huntly accuses Clithero of killing Waldegrave. It is while Huntly is following a sleep-walking Clithero that he first comes to the cave, which plays a major role in the plot. The entire second half of the novel revolves around the travelings of Huntly as he tries to return home; this occurs because Huntly wakes up in the bottom of a cave which he entered into by sleep-walking. Waldegrave's papers also mysteriously disappear, but later the reader learns that they were misplaced by Huntly during the night. Because Huntly was sleepwalking while he did this, he has no recollection of the events and the missing papers are therefore a great concern to him. At the end of the novel, Huntly no longer has troubles with sleepwalking.
Morality and truth
According to Scott Bradfield, "Brown's notion of truth is so deeply private, so radically democratic, it never firmly or fully establishes itself anywhere or in any one person. All people stand equal in their judgment of the truth, because no permanent, instantly accessible field of knowledge exists to which they can submit." This idea can be found in this novel, especially in Clithero and Huntly. In Clithero's tale, for example, he goes to kill his caretaker Mrs. Lorimer, because he killed her brother. In Clithero's mind, he reasons that Mrs. Lorimer would be better off dead then learning about the death of her brother, especially because she herself said that she could not live with the knowledge of his death. Clithero therefore thinks that what he is doing is an act of mercy instead of murder. When Huntly first hears this tale, he is moved by compassion and also twists his reasoning and logic to come to that conclusion. However, at the end of the novel, when Clithero goes out in search for Mrs. Lorimer again, Huntly realizes his mistake.