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 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Edgar Huntly begins his letter to his fiancée, Mary Waldegrave. Only somewhat recovered from recent events, Edgar is shaking as he writes. The narrator describes his “torment” over the murder of Mary’s brother, Waldegrave, which prompted his late-night arrival at his uncle’s house.
Rather than wait until morning, Edgar sets out for the elm tree where Waldegrave was murdered to find some overlooked clue or the killer revisiting the scene. There, Edgar encounters an “apparition” that turns out to be a “half naked” (35) man digging a hole with a spade and sobbing near the elm. Unbeknownst to Edgar, the man is Clithero.
Edgar calls out to him, but Clithero ignores Edgar, fills the hole with earth, and once again has a fit of sobbing. When Clithero leaves the scene, Edgar realizes that he is asleep and heads back toward his uncle’s house.
Chapter 2 Summary
Absorbed in thought, Edgar walks past his uncle’s house and to a hill. Here, he decides the sleepwalker murdered Waldegrave and must live near the elm. His neighbor Inglefield’s house is closest, and he employs a servant who emigrated from Ireland named Clithero. Clithero is the only “foreigner” among the Anglo-Saxon settlers, which inspires his resolve to unearth Clithero’s past. The narrator questions his motives for this investigation and settles on curiosity rather than vengeance.
The following night, Edgar returns to the elm and sees Clithero sleepwalk. Clithero is crying but isn’t digging. When Clithero leaves, Edgar follows him in a circuitous route through fields, bushes, glens, fens, and rivulets before reaching a vale in an “uncultivated region” (43). Here, Clithero enters a cave, and Edgar is afraid to follow. An unidentified animal leaps from the cave, but Clithero does not reappear.
Edgar paces in front of the cave’s entrance until the sun rises, at which point he gives up his vigil, once again returning to his uncle’s house.
Chapter 3 Summary
During the day, Edgar naps and ruminates on his investigation. That night, he plans to dig up what Clithero buried, but Clithero is there. Giving up on his original plan, Edgar follows the sleepwalker to Inglefield’s property. Edgar realizes the sleepwalker is Clithero. After Clithero retires to his barn apartment, Edgar plans his next moves—to hire Clithero for a job at his uncle’s and then interrogate him after he completes his work and stays the night.
The following evening, Edgar visits Inglefield, who is also a friend of Mary’s, and tells him about Clithero’s sleepwalking. Inglefield reveals that his housekeeper was suspicious of Clithero because he would not divulge details about his past. Clithero is a hard worker, but his roommate, Ambrose, notes Clithero’s sleepwalking and sleep talking. One evening, Clithero was dismayed by a long conversation with a traveler at their gate.
After Inglefield and the housekeeper corroborate these details, Edgar obtains permission to enact his plan. He hires Clithero, who comes to his uncle’s house the following day, but refuses to stay the night. So, Edgar walks with Clithero back to Inglefield’s house. They reach the elm, and Edgar leads Clithero along the path they had taken the previous night and recapitulates their “adventures” again. Clithero stands “motionless as a statue” (53) in the moonlight and looks afraid. He agrees to confess soon.
A few days pass, and Edgar grows impatient; the following Sunday he travels to Inglefield’s and passes Clithero, who was on his way to Edgar’s uncle’s house. The men decide to talk in the “wildness” of “the heart of Norwalk” (54).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
These early chapters introduce the psychology of Edgar—the epistolary format allows the reader to see into the workings of his mind. He admits that his story might include inaccuracies because of the “emotions” he feels in the process of retelling, which sets up the idea of an unreliable narrator. Placing the action in the past tense allows time for reflection and digression; Edgar addresses Mary (and therein the modern reader) directly throughout the book.
The characters of Clithero and Edgar begin to foil one another through Edgar’s compassion and path-walking; walking at night while under emotional duress to the elm tree links them. However, Clithero is decidedly a “foreigner” to Edgar and his community. During this period in post-Revolutionary War America, Americans saw Irish settlers as lesser than settlers from England and there was considerable prejudice against them.
This section introduces Edgar’s social circle, Waldegrave, Mary, and Inglefield, who inspire Edgar’s actions. Waldegrave’s murder is the impetus for the investigation, and Inglefield serves as a sounding-board for Edgar’s suspicions. The interrogations can be read generically as proto-detective fiction (which was formally invented by Edgar Allan Poe about 40 years later). Entirely external to the story, Mary Waldegrave nevertheless casts a strong influence over Edgar, both as his fiancée and his murdered friend’s sister.
The “uncultivated” land in Pennsylvania helps set Brown’s American gothic novel apart from the British gothic tradition. Only recently established as an independent nation, America includes more haunted woods than haunted mansions in the late 1700s. Geographic features, like caves, are where the fears of Americans dwell during this period, as opposed to the time Poe was writing when mansions were considered sites of horror.
One of the most distinctive features in this novel is Brown’s use of passive voice. While most schools of thought about writing warn against the passive voice, it can be employed to add mystery—to make it difficult to “ascertain the hand” (33) of the crimes. For instance, Brown writes: “My attention was at length excited by a sound that seemed to issue from the cave” (44), which obscures the unknown source of the sound by using the passive voice.
