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.
Symbols & Motifs
Hands
Hands develop the theme of authorship throughout the novel. Edgar wants to “ascertain the hand who killed” (33) Waldegrave, while Clithero’s “hands” are “imbrued in [Wiatte’s] precious blood” (94) in a moment reminiscent of Lady Macbeth’s blood-spotted hands. The work of hands is creative as well as destructive—Clithero creates a puzzle box with “the workmanship of his own hands” (119) and Edgar handcrafts a cabinet with a secret drawer that “no hands but” (134) his could open.
Another creative act that hands engage in is handwriting; for instance, when Clithero is exchanging letters with Mrs. Lorimer, Clarice would sometimes add a “few complementary lines under her own hand” (67). In the late 1700s and early 1800s, a person could be identified by their handwriting. However, letters sometimes fall into the wrong hands, such as when Edgar’s letter to Sarsefield falls into the “hands” (260) of Euphemia Lorimer and causes her to have a miscarriage.
Letters and Papers
As an epistolary novel, the letters that make up the narrative mention correspondence between characters and include letters as objects and symbols. The absence of letters between characters signal a loss of communication and potentially a loss of love. “Epistolary intercourse” (75) is how characters maintain relationships. In addition to Clarice writing to Clithero, Edgar writes to his fiancée, Mary, and Euphemia Lorimer writes to Sarsefield before they are married—here, letters tether lovers who are apart.
Letters are lost between Sarsefield and Edgar; the lack of communication between them contributes to Edgar siding with Clithero over his teacher and revealing details that Sarsefield wanted kept secret. At the end of the novel, letters become physically dangerous; simply reading Edgar’s letter (about betraying Sarsefield and informing Clithero of her location) causes the death of Euphemia’s unborn child.
Edgar also breaks a promise to Mary in being unwilling to transcribe all of Waldegrave’s letters because they contain controversial metaphysics and hides them while sleepwalking. This is foiled by Clithero’s sleepwalking and burial of Euphemia Lorimer’s manuscript that “vindicated herself from aspirations founded on misconceptions of her motives in refusing her interference” (88) in her brother’s case. The physical act of hiding letters is a way to protect reputations—Edgar doesn’t want Mary to think less of her brother and Clithero doesn’t want the manuscript to damage Euphemia’s reputation.
Caves
The cave that Edgar wakes in 30 miles from his house utilizes the symbolism of Jung’s underground cave; it represents spelunking into the unconscious as a rite of passage. Caves have a death-like “intense dark” (108) and thus offer a space for symbolic rebirth. Edgar is reborn as someone who can kill Native Americans, someone often unrecognizable to his friends, and someone who betrays the trust of a teacher. Sarsefield believes Edgar to be dead multiple times after he emerges from the cave’s pit; the cave is the first of several rebirths and divides the novel into halves.
As Edgar’s foil, Clithero hides in a “mountain-cave” (45) where he tries to commit suicide by starvation. Here, again, a cave is a symbol of death. Edgar rescues Clithero from death before his own cave transformation. Between supplying food to Clithero in his own death-like cave dive, Edgar discovers his marriage is in jeopardy because of Weymouth’s claim on Mary’s inheritance from Waldegrave. This is the psychological trigger for his sleepwalking to the cave pit.
