Charlotte Temple has never known any form of autonomy in her life. From birth, she has been under someone else’s control. Charlotte Temple is the main character of a novel written by Susanna Rowson in the late 18thcentury, titled, you guessed it, “Charlotte Temple.” She is a 15-year-old girl with doting parents, living in England, and attending a boarding school. She gets caught up in this romance with an officer in the military, who is a good bit older than Charlotte, Montraville; and this man turns out to be her downfall. Albeit, he did not singlehandedly ruin Charlotte’s life, he had plenty of help from other authority figures in her life, who also contribute to her lack of autonomy.
Charlotte’s lack of control is certainly one of the main themes in the novel, and it is quite easy to see throughout the entire novel. From the very beginning when she is at school, she has a headmistress and other teachers that oversee her. One noteworthy character, being Mademoiselle La Rue, a teacher at the school, who is instrumental in getting Charlotte to go with Montraville to America. La Rue essentially guilt trips and tricks Charlotte into not only meeting with Montraville the first time, but also helps Montraville convince her to get on the ship. Yet, Charlotte does not have the sense of self control to stand up for herself in this situation, as she has never had any real autonomy over her own choices in her life. Further, when she is actually in America she has even less control over her own life. Montraville just puts her up in a house somewhere, and he comes when he feels like it. Charlotte is at this man’s mercy, especially once she ends up pregnant with his child. At this point in the novel, she is a barely 16 year old girl who is pregnant out of wedlock. In the 18thcentury, this was clearly not a good position to be in. However, what is interesting, is that the novel’s author seems to make readers feel bad for Charlotte rather than criticizing her.
One could argue that Charlotte got herself into this situation, but the way in which Rowson writes this novel, shows that Charlotte has not had any control in her circumstances and her lack of autonomy is what led her there. I think this novel is not criticizing Charlotte, but rather it is criticizing the fact that young women truly had no control over their own lives. They grow up listening to their parents, and other authority figures, until they are old enough to marry. They then get passed off onto a husband, who they must now also listen to, so a young woman usually never gets a chance to gain this sense of autonomy. This novel may not be unique in its criticism of the treatment of young women, but it is certainly unusual, especially for the time period. Rowson is arguing in this novel, that the treatment of Charlotte is unjust because she had no actual control over her situation, even if it is normalized for this period.
This novel brings about the idea that adolescents are not old enough to make decisions for themselves and be treated like true adults, but they get to be classified as adults when it is convenient. I think this theme will be prevalent in a lot of other works about adolescents, but it may change over the years as our treatment of adolescents has changed too. Adolescents are not really children, but they are certainly not adults either. This leaves them in this weird phase where they do not have any true control over their own lives, but they are both old enough to wish they did and be held accountable for their actions. For Charlotte, she was under her parents control, then her school teachers, and then Montraville’s. This experience is not that foreign to what adolescents experience today. You are under your parents control until at least 18, you have to listen to your teachers at school, and then once you do turn 18 you only get control some of the time. You may be an adult legally, but you often need your parents still to vouch for you and help you make decisions. Overall, autonomy is a commodity that adolescents typically do not get a whole lot of, as is evident in Charlotte Temple.
-Kaitlyn Kurz
Representing Adolescence @ Pitt 
I agree with your point about Charlotte having relatively no control over her life throughout the novel, even when it seemed like she was making her own choices she was always influenced by an authority with way more social power than her. It’s interesting to look at when there became a space for teenagers, especially young women, to more safely test out the limits of their own autonomy, because that idea was clearly nonexistent in the time of Charlotte Temple. I think Rowson made an important step in addressing these issues simply by talking about it.
LikeLike
I liked your point where you say this novel is not unique in criticizing the treatment of young women, and I agree, however, I think the mode by which Rowson does this is extremely unique. She takes a genre of literature, seduction novels, and seems to write a fairly stereotypical one, but she layers in all these subtle and not-so-subtle messages of her own agenda including the developing idea of adolescence, that maybe our overwhelming pressure and control over young girls lives is itself causing these issues in our society. I find that a trend within developing countries that uphold a patriarchy shows that as the country develops the more women can practice their autonomy, and in this case, I think Charlotte Temple serves as the perfect sample of the experimental dealing of autonomy within the developing U.S. Loved the ideas you discussed in this post.
~Catherine Buchanan
LikeLike
I like how you relate Charlotte’s failure to stand up for herself to her lack of experience with autonomy. Without a history of making personal decisions of consequence, how could she accurately weigh her desires, the influence of La Rue/Montraville, and the potential consequences of her actions? She is aware that she is not supposed to fraternize or run off with strange men because her culture tells her so, but that is just external knowledge. She has gone through life doing what she has been told to do, and does not have experience dealing with the repercussions of her actions to guide her decision making. Most reasonable adults realize now that teenagers learn from experience and mistakes, and need a period of reduced adult supervision before complete independence. Like you said, Charlotte does not have this experience. The brain is still developing its decision making and judgement capabilities into ones 20s. Had the adults in Charlotte’s life allowed her more autonomy, like the freedom to explore and spend more loosely supervised time with male peers, the events may have unfolded differently. She probably would not have been so easily infatuated by or trusting of the first man that paid her attention, and would have more experience making decisions that were in her best interest.
LikeLike