After his hideous and shocking accusations, Pleyel leaves Clara standing in her home, confused and hurt by his perfidy. “The matter–O Wretch!–thus exquisitely fashioned–on whom nature seemed to have exhausted all her graces with charms so awful and so pure! How art thou fallen! From what height fallen! A ruin so complete–so unheard of” (Brown 95). She has no weapons to fight back with when Pleyel accuses her. This, then, makes the disaffection of Pleyel a much more earth-shattering experience when it occurs.Īlthough readers of Wieland know about the deception that leads to Pleyel’s antipathy toward Clara, she does not, and her reactions are that of a typically helpless eighteenth-century woman. Other than the rare visit by an outsider that occasioned much excitement in the neighborhood, and an occasional visit by family acquaintances, Clara is isolated from the world-at large. Clara does have male company come and go in her residence, but the visitor is chiefly Pleyel, her brother’s brother-in-law, and the man with whom she is secretly in love, (a woman of this era would never be the first to declare her feelings openly before receiving a similar declaration from the object of her affections!).ĭespite Clara’s outward appearance as an intellectual woman with an interest in art, music and literature, she is nevertheless a sheltered, inexperienced woman, immured in a small corner of the world, surrounded by her brother, Theodore Wieland, his wife, Catherine, and Henry Pleyel. Her residence is a scant three-quarters of a mile from her brother’s home and “the short distance allowed us to exchange visits as often as we pleased,” meaning her brother’s assistance lay a short distance from her front door (Brown 20). She is independently wealthy, through the inheritance left by her father, who gained his riches from the toil of slaves. Despite the fact that Clara is allowed (by her brother) to live alone in her own cottage, called Mettingen, because of her desire to “administer a fund and regulate a household” of her own, it is a superficial independence at best.

Wieland charles brown