Injustice and Bad Sympathy in the Novel of Feeling Anonymous College

The eponymous characters of William Godwin’s Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams and Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker serve as protagonists that do not always seem to be at the center of their own narrative. However, their centrality is not determined by their action at every moment within the novel. Rather, the perspective that they offer as the focalized characters of their respective books solidifies their place at the center of the story.

One of the most important roles that these characters play as protagonists in the “novel of feeling” is that of a sympathetic observer, whose perspectives are defined and guided by the sensibilities that they pass along to the reader, either as their own stories or the backstories of other characters unfold. In his book, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Jonathan Culler defines the issue of perspective and focalization in narratives with the guiding question, “From whose perspective are the events brought into focus and presented?” (Culler 89). The viewpoint of a focalized character (in these cases, Caleb Williams and Edgar Huntly) is the context through which the reader understands the story at large. Therefore, as...