Edgar Huntly: Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker

“Knowledge is of value for its own sake, and pleasure is annexed to the acquisition, without regard to anything beyond. It is precious even when disconnected with moral inducements and heartfelt sympathies, but the knowledge I sought by its union with these was calculated to excite the most complex and fiery sentiments in my bosom.” 

Edgar reflects on his motivations for investigating Clithero as a suspect for murder. He is debating whether or not to spy on the elm tree where he saw Clithero. Curiosity does eventually get Edgar into trouble, but he believes the combination of a quest for knowledge and offering sympathy justifies his actions. The gothic genre frequently uses forbidden and dangerous knowledge as a trope.

“It was in the highest degree rugged, picturesque, and wild. This vale, though I had never before viewed it by the glimpses of the moon, suggested the belief that I had visited it before. Such a one I knew belonged to this uncultivated region.” 

This passage occurs when Edgar is following Clithero from the elm to a cave and develops the theme of nature as the site of the early American gothic. Even previously familiar nature—Edgar and Sarsefield would go on walks through this vale—becomes uncanny in the moonlight. Nature is wild, “uncultivated,” which causes fear in the white settlers of Pennsylvania. To get lost in nature is to lose the behaviors that society cultivates in people and become “savage” (176).

“My attention was at length excited by a sound that seemed to issue from the cave. I imagined that the sleeper was returning, and prepared therefore to seize him.” 

After Edgar tracks Clithero to a cave, he waits outside and hears a noise, which ends up being an animal rather than the sleepwalker. This is another example of Brown’s use of the passive voice to obscure the subject—who, or what, is making the “sound.” Animal and man are blended in several other places; both the panther and the Native Americans are called “savage.” The cave is an element of nature (as the American gothic) and the primitive Jungian symbol of death and rebirth.

“He exceeded in depravity all that has been imputed to the arch-foe of mankind [...] He seemed to relish no food but pure unadulterated evil. He rejoiced in proportion to the depth of that distress of which he was the author.” 

In Clithero’s confession, he describes the twin brother of his benefactress: Arthur Wiatte. Unlike Clithero and Edgar who are “possessed” by evil spirits, Arthur is an evil spirit. Arthur is a doppelgänger (a gothic trope of doubling) for his identical twin sister, Euphemia Lorimer; she is benevolent instead of depraved. The theme of authorship is developed here; in regard to Arthur, there is no question who authors his crimes.

“[S]he deemed it incumbent on her to vindicate herself from aspirations founded on misconceptions of her motives in refusing her interference. The manuscript, though unpublished, was widely circulated. None could resist her simple and touching eloquence [...] This was the only monument, in a written form, of her genius.” 

Clithero’s confession is focused on Euphemia, his benefactress, who withdraws support from Arthur when he takes his criminality to another level. Her manuscript, also referred to as her “memoirs” in the novel, include details about her personal life that Clithero fears coming to light. This manuscript is what he is burying under the elm when Edgar sees him sleepwalking, and what Edgar later unearths.

“Was it I that hurried to that deed? No. It was the demon that possessed me. My limbs were guided to the bloody office by a power foreign and superior to mine.” 

In his story-within-a-story, Clithero refuses authorship of his actions. After killing Arthur Wiatte in self-defense, he attempts to kill Euphemia in her sleep. This quote comes right before he mistakes Clarice sleeping in her foster-mother’s bed for Euphemia. Clithero’s claim that a “demon” possesses him is like Edgar “imbibing a spirit” (182); neither man takes full responsibility for their violence. The passive voice in the final sentence of this passage emphasizes how Clithero’s “limbs” are out of his control.

“Thou knowest my devotion to the spirit that breathes its inspiration in the gloom of forests and on the verge of streams. I love to immerse myself in shades and dells and hold converse with the solemnities and secrecies of nature in the rude retreats of Norwalk.” 

This passage occurs a few days after Clithero confesses and subsequently disappears into the “rude retreats.” Edgar is contemplating searching for Clithero and recalls how his old teacher Sarsefield took him exploring in Norwalk. His love of nature—specifically immersion in nature—transforms after he sleepwalks, gets lost, and kills Native Americans. Nature takes on an ominous, gothic presence; Edgar later imbibes a “spirit” (182) wholly unlike the benevolent one he is devoted to here. When “secrets” are revealed, Edgar goes down Clithero’s path of madness. 

“Could I not restore a mind thus vigorous, to tranquil and wholesome existence [...] frenzy, like prejudice, was curable. Reason was no less an antidote to the illusions of insanity like this, than to the illusions of error.” 

Edgar decides to seek out Clithero’s cave, post-confession, because he believes “reason” can cure him. Before Edgar’s acts of sleepwalking, he wishes to cure the sleepwalker, already identifying with him. Edgar’s interest foreshadows his own sleepwalking and madness that will occur in future chapters. Edgar needs Clithero to be curable so he can hope for a cure to his sleepwalking and madness.

“The magic of sympathy, the perseverance of benevolence, though silent, might insensibly displace those desperate suggestions which now governed him.” 

After finding Clithero sleeping in his cave, Edgar decides to leave food and drink for him. Rather than wake the sleeper (who isn’t walking), Edgar casts himself as a magical disembodied force in an effort to keep Clithero from committing suicide by starvation. Clithero accepts the “silent” offering.

“His earliest creeds tended to efface the impressions of his education; to deify necessity and universalize matter; to destroy the popular distinction between body and soul, and to dissolve the supposed connection between the moral condition of man anterior and subsequent to death.” 

This passage is what Edgar fears Mary will see and disapprove of in Waldegrave’s letters. Edgar pauses in his quest for Clithero to take up the project of transcribing Waldegrave’s letters for Mary, but in his plan to omit the contents of early ideologies that were later renounced, he breaks his promise to send Mary all of the letters by her brother. The division between body and soul gestures to philosophical ideas by Descartes as well as Locke’s ideas about hand and mind.  

“My heart droops when I mark the decline of the sun, and I never sleep but with a candle at my pillow. If, by any chance, I should awake and find myself immersed in darkness, I know not what act of desperation I might suddenly be impelled to commit.” 

Edgar pauses in his narrative after the arrival of Weymouth-—and before he sleepwalks to a cave 30 miles from his home—to directly address Mary. He worries about the coherency of the following details (his violence towards several Native Americans and subsequent betrayal of Sarsefield) and reflects on how the experience has changed him. His fear of darkness is related to cave darkness (the complete lack of light underground); it is the cave that transforms Edgar into a desperate killer.  

“He had not time to descry the author of his fate [...] The hatchet buried itself in his breast, and rolled with him to the bottom of the precipice.” 

During Edgar’s violent rampage against the Native Americans camped between him and the cave’s exit, Brown develops the theme of authorship. Brown’s use of the passive voice. That the hatchet buried itself rather than Edgar threw the hatchet, obscures the subject of the sentence and action. This sentence-level choice makes the reader question who the author of the violence is, similar to the Native American who can’t see his foe. 

“The marks were of a kind which could not be mistaken. The piece was mine; and, when I left my uncle’s house, it was deposited, as I believed, in the closet of my chamber.” 

Edgar discovers his musket among the Native Americans’ weapons, and this leads him to (wrongly) suspect that his uncle’s house has been burned and pillaged, as well as his entire family killed. This object focalizes his memories of his parents being killed by Native Americans and changes his feelings about murder from guilt to vengeance.

“I was not governed by the soul which usually regulates my conduct. I had imbibed, from the unparalleled events which had lately happened, a spirit vengeful, unrelenting, and ferocious.” 

This passage parallels Clithero’s demonic possession. Both men are unreliable narrators, in part because they are not claiming ownership or clear recollection of their actions. Here, the “spirit” that has taken over Edgar’s hands is killing Native Americans and rescuing a captive girl.

“[H]er romantic solitude and mountainous haunts, suggested to my fancy the appellation of Queen Mab. There appeared to me some crude analogy between this personage and her whom the poets of old time have delighted to celebrate.” 

Old Deb, the Lenni Lenape woman who inhabits a hut near Edgar’s uncle’s house where much of violence in the novel occurs, is renamed by the titular narrator. The nickname primarily alludes to a fairy described in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. She is associated with the theme of gothic nature and is arrested at the end of the novel in relation to the murder of Waldegrave and other crimes.

“My legs, neck, and bosom were bare, and their native hue was exchanged for the livid marks of bruises and scarifications. A horrid scar upon my cheek, and my uncombed locks; hollow eyes, made ghastly by abstinence and cold, the ruthless passions of which my mind had been the theater, added to the musket which I carried in my hand, would prepossess them with the notion of a maniac or ruffian.” 

Edgar reflects on his appearance before approaching his neighbor’s mansion after his 30-mile journey through rural Pennsylvania. There are a number of parallels to Clithero here—Clithero is shirtless when he sleepwalks under the elm; Clithero also abstains from food/drink (although Edgar’s abstinence isn’t suicidal like Clithero’s); and Clithero is repeatedly called a maniac in the novel. Edgar worries his acquaintances will see him as a savage, and indeed he has killed more people than Clithero. 

“On the table stood a travelling escritoire, open, with pens and inkstand [...] This apparatus was rarely seen in this country. Some traveller, it seemed, occupied this room, though the rest of the mansion was deserted. The pilgrim, as these appearances testified, was of no vulgar order, and belonged not to the class of periodical and everyday guests.” 

The “traveller” in this passage is Sarsefield, Edgar’s old teacher, and his desk signifies his character is cultivated, high class, and well educated. Sarsefield’s refinement, seen in the delicate “pens and inkstand,” is contrasted with the oral traditions of the Native Americans, and his lack of vulgarity sets him apart from the murderers Clithero and Edgar. This characterization establishes him as the most reliable narrator.

“Few, perhaps, among mankind have undergone vicissitudes of peril and wonder equal to mine. The miracles of poetry, the transitions of enchantments, are beggarly and mean compared with those which I had experienced. Passage into new forms, overleaping the bars of time and space, reversal of the laws of inanimate and intelligent existence, had been mine to perform and to witness.” 

This passage is Edgar’s reaction when he finds Waldegrave’s letters in Sarsefield’s guest room. He had hidden them in his uncle’s attic while sleepwalking, and Sarsefield found them and stored them until Edgar returned from his adventures in nature. The letters between Edgar and Waldegrave serve as a microcosm for the structure of the entire epistolary novel.

“‘Huntly [...] are you mad?’” 

Sarsefield questions Edgar’s sanity when he hears the narrative that Edgar has invented about his uncle, sisters, and the Native Americans based on the discovery of his gun. This reinforces the unreliability of Edgar’s entire story that is not corroborated by other characters (such as most of violence in the hut). He, like Clithero, turns out to not able to perceive the world as it is.  

“His tale was a catalogue of crimes and miseries of which was the author and sufferer.” 

After reuniting with Sarsefield, Edgar argues for Clithero being both victim and criminal. Sarsefield believes Clithero is beyond help, but Edgar is deeply invested in his ability to be rehabilitated. The theme of authorship is developed here; in being sufferer as well as author, Clithero is supposedly less maniacal and less accountable for his actions (Edgar argues). This leads to betraying the preexisting friendship between tutor and student.

“Disastrous and humiliating is the state of man! By his own hands is constructed the mass of misery and error in which his steps are forever involved.” 

This is Edgar’s reflection on how his sleepwalking journey of hiding Waldegrave’s letters is similar to Clithero’s burying of Euphemia Lorimer’s manuscript. Hands represent authorship; “man” constructs “his own” misery. Edgar falls short of taking responsibility for his actions but realizes that the gothic horror lies within the dual nature of humans—they can be divided into waking and sleeping selves.

“To apprise him that she was now alive, in possession of some degree of happiness, the wife of Sarsefield, and an actual resident on this shore would dissipate the sanguinary apparition that haunted him, cure his diseased intellects, and restore him to those vocations for which his talents, and that rank in society for which his education, had qualified him.” 

Edgar writes to Sarsefield after revealing Euphemia Lorimer’s location to Clithero and tries to justify this betrayal by categorizing it as a cure for Clithero’s madness (an exorcism of a bloodthirsty demon that possessed him). However, Edgar is deadly wrong. Instead of a curative effect, this revelation inspires Clithero to seek out his former benefactress. Reading “Letter II,” included after the main letter to Mary that takes up most of the novel—mere words about Clithero’s approach—is what causes Euphemia to have a miscarriage. 

“How slender is the accommodation which nature has provided for man.” 

While visiting Clithero in Queen Mab’s hut, Edgar contemplates the resources that the exiled character can access. Rural Pennsylvania does not offer an accommodating terrain or climate. At best, nature inspires awe; at worst, nature is a savage gothic antagonist. This is one of the most popular lines from Brown’s novel—it turns one moment about a specific character into a metaphysical reflection on the world.