Wieland

Chapter 6 finally reveals the archetypal trickster Carwin, the catalyst who sets things in motion and upends the homeostasis of the characters’ little world. Carwin has been present in the form of disembodied voices, but he is now seen for the first time, uniting the senses of sight and hearing. Carwin’s physical manifestation in the story is accompanied by chaos and disruption, as might be expected of a trickster, whose role is to overturn the status quo.

From the outset, Carwin interferes with Clara’s wits as well as her senses. For example, when she sees Carwin but before she hears him speak, she assumes he is a dull-witted and uneducated person—someone who seems barely human. When she hears him speak without seeing the speaker, she expects to see a person who fits her stereotype of sophistication and intelligence. She is so moved by the speech of the unseen visitor that when she finally sees Carwin’s features, which are unusually ugly and unprepossessing, she sees in them the qualities of intelligence and erudition that she is looking for. In both cases, she fails to apply critical thinking to test her assumptions and conclusions.

Carwin’s appearance causes Clara to lapse into a period of melancholy and obsession represented by the storm that lasts a night and a day while she contemplates the picture of Carwin’s face. She fully confronts the reality of death for the first time; the reflection that everyone she loves will someday die foreshadows the actual deaths at Theodore’s hands.

After coming face-to-face with Clara, Carwin’s tricks take a more malicious turn. The murder plot in Clara’s closet is genuinely frightening and disorienting. Strangely, the characters readily accept the intervention of a benevolent spirit, yet they dismiss the voices in Clara’s closet as a dream. In reality, all the voices they have been hearing are equally unreal.

Carwin’s appearance also announces Clara’s sexual awakening. Her feelings for Henry are childlike and romantic, but her reaction to Carwin is dark and stormy, full of chaos and confusion. Henry’s move into Clara’s house is a shocking intrusion into Clara’s female space. In ordinary society, a young woman living alone with a man would be socially ruined, but Clara’s family sees Henry as a brother to her. Clara’s feelings are more ambiguous. She is infatuated with him, but they have known each other since childhood, and she speaks of his sleeping over in her spare room exactly as she might speak of her brother doing the same thing.

The summerhouse is Clara’s private space surrounded by the feminine elements of earth and water, which represent emotion, sexuality, and the unconscious mind. There, she confronts her unconscious recognition that something is going wrong with her brother. Consciously, she has been concerned that his interest in and obsession with the daemon of Socrates might be a sign of some mental imbalance like that which consumed their father, but her unconscious mind has recognized something more sinister. Her dreaming mind depicts her brother summoning her toward certain death.

Henry teases Clara about her supposed infatuation with Carwin very much like an older brother would. Setting aside his insensitivity to her feelings, the evidence of the text suggests that he is correct. Claire’s encounter with Carwin in her summerhouse, the private female space in which no other man has intruded, implies a sexual element to her interactions with him. Carwin challenges Clara’s relationship to sexuality and the social mores of her time which condemn women for anything resembling sexual independence.

Chapter 8 revolves around the tension between the material and supernatural. For example, the Weiland family struggles to reconcile the death of Wieland Senior, asking whether it was supernatural or a scientifically reproducible phenomenon.

In conversation with the family, Carwin offers a variety of material explanations for each of the apparently supernatural events of the past few weeks. In some cases, he all but confesses to them. For example, he tells the family that some people can perfectly mimic another’s voice. They reject his rational explanations because they don’t make emotional sense.

They have two reasons for preferring the supernatural explanation—one passive and one active. First, they cannot imagine who would be motivated to play such a trick on them or why. Their circle of acquaintance is small to begin with. Carwin is the only outsider they have met, and they don’t consider that he might be the author of the mystery because they heard the voices before Carwin appeared among them. It never occurs to them that Carwin might have been present but unseen.

The other reason is self-interest. For one, they are flattered that a supernatural entity considers them important enough to trouble itself with. Also, the supernatural entity seems to promise them their heart’s desire. Clara convinces herself that her unseen guardian is matchmaking between her and Henry. Theodore, who longs for direct contact with God, sees the supposed entity as a potential conduit.