Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond and Lesbian Possibility in the Early Republic

Abstract

Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond (1799) contains the first ex tended fictional portrayal in America of what the novelist calls roman tic passion between women. Early critics generally treat the homoeroti cism between Constantia Dudley and Sophia Courtland either with disdain or as psychological aberration. Harvey R. Warfel, for example, claims that emotions of normal love are alien to [Constantia's] nature, and there seems to be homosexual tendency in her conduct (135); Donald A. Ringe remarks that Constantia's relationship with Sophia leaves much to be de sired [. . .] at best, the relationship is not one to increase the stature of Constantia as the heroine of the (44); Norman S. Grabo views Con stantia's queer with Sophia as one of a series of tests or temp tations in the formation of her sexual identity; and Steven Watts argues that it seems no accident that as [Constantia's] rational faculties steadily prov[e] less able to illuminate the social and moral atmosphere, she turn[s] to the attractions of (97). In contrast to these views, Lillian Faderman identifies the text as an important literary representation of romantic friendship ? evidence that such relationships were casually accepted in eighteenthand early nineteenth-century American culture (112-115); and most recently, Julia A. Stern has interpreted the rela tionship within the context of republican anxieties over the breakdown of male brotherhood, suggesting that female homoerotic longing becomes pliant medium for Brown's investigation of republican fraternity's fail ure (159). Curiously, however, no analysis of the novel has yet explored the homoeroticism in the context of cultural debates about women's