45 pages • 1 hour read
Charles Brockden BrownEdgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1799A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
At the beginning of this chapter, the narrative is handed over to Clithero; rather than writing a letter to a distant recipient, he speaks in the first-person to Edgar in the moment.
The tale begins with Clithero’s meager birth to peasants in the county of Armagh. A lady, Mrs. Lorimer, later fosters him in the capital, Dublin. She educates Clithero alongside her son, and Clithero acts as the son’s “monitor” while travelling on the continent. The son tires of Clithero’s reports to Mrs. Lorimer and sends him back to her household.
Clithero then details Mrs. Lorimer’s positive traits: beauty, beneficence, cheerfulness, and more. Despite their class difference, his constant closeness to her while completing his duties earns her confidence. She tells him what occurs at events that peasants cannot attend.
Chapter 5 Summary
Clithero’s describes Mrs. Lorimer’s twin brother, Arthur Wiatte. Wiatte is the opposite of Clithero’s employer: depraved, wicked, and “pure unadulterated evil” (63). Wiatte makes Mrs. Lorimer the “subject” of his schemes.
Prior to Clithero’s arrival in the capital, Arthur’s machinations kept Mrs. Lorimer from marrying her desired suitor and forced her to marry another husband, after which the twins’ parents died. The inheritance fell to Arthur, who gambled the money away. Mrs. Lorimer forgave him, but when Arthur began stealing, Mrs. Lorimer withdrew her support. Arthur is later (presumably) killed during a mutiny on a felon ship.
Following his presumed death, Mrs. Lorimer takes in Arthur’s orphan, Clarice, and Clithero is raised alongside her as well as Mrs. Lorimer’s son. Back at the Lorimer household, Clithero’s feelings toward Clarice become romantic.
Clithero fears that his love for Clarice will displease Mrs. Lorimer, and he resolves to leave her employment. When he tries to quit without explanation, Mrs. Lorimer calls in Clarice to persuade him to stay. Clarice, speechless, indicates the crush is mutual, and Mrs. Lorimer joins their hands together. She blesses their union.
Chapter 6 Summary
Clithero continues his confession by detailing the obstruction to his marriage with Clarice: she was keeping watch over a dying friend. He accompanies her to her friend’s home but returns to Mrs. Lorimer’s home, believing the friend to only have a month left to live.
The reader is reminded of the levels of storytelling when Clithero pauses to remark to Edgar, in the present-tense, that he is interrupting his narrative to include “preliminary details” before the “horrors” to come. After Arthur’s supposed death, Mrs. Lorimer exchanges letters with her original desired suitor, Sarsefield, and financially supports him so he can join the East India Company as a surgeon. They lose touch, and she fears he has died in a conflict with Native Americans.
Sarsefield returns to Dublin a few days before Clithero returns from the continent and reunites with Mrs. Lorimer. Clithero recounts Sarsefield’s journey back to America through “Hindostan,” Constantinople, Venice, and Leghorn. Sarsefield befriends Clithero and reignites his affair with Mrs. Lorimer.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
By Chapter 4, there are four levels of narrative: 1) the time at which Edgar is writing his letter to Mary, 2) the time at which Edgar’s story is occurring, 3) the time at which Clithero is confessing, and 4) the time at which Clithero’s story is occurring. The times when the narrator directly addresses their audience (Edgar to Mary; Clithero to Edgar) in the present tense are often meta-commentary on the other times (the main plots of the stories being told by Edgar and Clithero in the past tense). These digressions from the plots can call into question the reliability of the narrators.
Edgar and Clithero are foils in their unreliability as well as the doubling of other characters and plot points surrounding them. Both men are kept from marrying their fiancées by death or near-death circumstances: Waldegrave’s murder and Clarice’s friend’s illness. Clarice and Mary are herein doubles.
These chapters don’t mention Sarsefield by name but introduce him as the “husband” who Mrs. Lorimer originally chose in Chapter 5; he is doubled through his role as suitor and tutor in the narratives of Clithero and Edgar, respectively.
Arthur Wiatte foils Mrs. Lorimer; he is the most “evil” (white) character. Mrs. Lorimer’s “benevolence” (60) contrasts with Arthur’s “wickedness” (63). Twins—like Arthur and Mrs. Lorimer—are akin to doppelgängers, which are prevalent in gothic fiction. One doppelgänger is usually evil, but Arthur and Mrs. Lorimer are more distinguishable than other doppelgängers because of their gender difference.
Mrs. Lorimer’s unnamed son’s journey to the continent reflects the Grand Tour that many young men went on during this period; exploring Europe was a way to educate and refine outside of the classroom. Edgar Huntly, in this section, is reminiscent of travel narratives like Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. Sarsefield’s exploits, however, belong to the genre of adventure fiction rather than Grand Tour literature; his life is in danger while Mrs. Lorimer’s son is merely on what resembles a long holiday.
These chapters also double the number of letters exchanged. Clithero writes to both Mrs. Lorimer and Clarice while on the Grand Tour, and Mrs. Lorimer maintains a correspondence with Sarsefield. These exchanges reflect Edgar’s letter to Mary that occupies most of the novel.
