As I read Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson, one of the first major questions that I continued to think throughout the novel as I read it was “Is this real love that is being expressed or is this fake love?” And by fake love I mean love that is really just emotions like lust, manipulation, fascination, jealousy etc. deep down that is disguised and perceived as love. Everyone has their own definition and version of what love looks like and feels like to them, and in Charlotte Temple, I found there to be foundations of relationships where these different versions of “love” really stuck out and were built from.
Charlotte’s parents have real unconditional love for her, and we can really see that through their pain and concern when they found out that their daughter ran away to America, along with her dad going there to find her, for example. In contrast, Charlotte’s relationship with Montraville is not a true representation of what real love is like. For them, their “love” is rooted in manipulation and power over Charlotte. Montraville sought out and pursued Charlotte like an object since she was at a very young age and knew that she was naïve and vulnerable when he approached her finally in a romantic way. He was able to use her unguarded innocence to his advantage to continually persist and manipulate her using guilt tactics and romantic promises to lead her into leaving everything familiar behind in order to be with him. For example, Montraville kept insisting that Charlotte meet with him one more time before he left for America and she distressingly said no multiple times. One of the things he said during this conversation after she said she didn’t want to see him any longer was “O say not so, my lovely girl: reflect that when I leave my native land, perhaps a short few weeks may terminate my existence; the perils of the ocean-the danger of the war- ” (31) and then is interrupted by Charlotte because it is so overwhelming for her to hear this. He is clearly trying to use his potential death to guilt her into seeing him again after completely disregarding her telling him no and calling her ‘my lovely girl’ like he owns her.
Another relationship that I noticed a different type of love is between Charlotte and Mademoiselle La Rue. As Madem La Rue was first introduced in the novel, I had expected her to have a genuine, caretaker-like love towards Charlotte, as she seemed kind and had gained the trust of the school they were at. Their relationship started to change whenever Montraville came into the picture and Madem La Rue became interested and started to push her to accept Montraville’s love letter. Despite Charlotte’s hesitance and feelings of uncomfortability regarding the situation, Madem La Rue took advantage of Charlotte’s naivety and was able to convince her to read his love letter and then eventually go to America with him. The author states “Mademoiselle eyed the unsuspecting Charlotte, as she pursued the letter, with a malignant pleasure. She saw the contents had awakened new emotions in her youthful bosom: she encouraged her hopes, calmed her fears, and before they parted for the night, it was determined that she should meet Montraville the ensuing evening.” (25) where the reader starts to get hints that maybe Madem doesn’t have the best intentions with Charlotte.
Looking at these relationships and how they developed can challenge the way in which adolescents are understood and judged based off of their decisions. Charlotte didn’t know the ways in which she was being manipulated because it was disguised as love, and she had no reason to not trust any of them, which we know does not turn out well for her. This novel challenged me to really think about how adolescents are evaluated and criticized based off of their choices that may not be smart or agreeable, but from no fault of their own, it may be rooted in a false sense of love and trust in a person or persons who is influencing their life in some way. In this novel as a reader, we are able to know how the different characters influence Charlotte’s decisions and the factors that led her to make those decisions. But, in real life and sometimes in books, we don’t always know what people or factors are influencing an adolescent’s decisions, and they should be given the benefit of the doubt due to naivety and immaturity. The inability to differentiate between what real or fake love looks like can be hard as an adolescent and can put a young person in a position to be used or harmed if they trust a person that doesn’t have real love for them. This 19th century novel also challenges our views of adolescents regarding love as it is not as accepted for a girl to marry an older man at such a young age like in this story. However, young girls nowadays are still preyed on and persuaded by men like Montraville, and the fact that this novel was written in 1814 shows just how far we still need to go as a society to have these conversations and promote change while advocating for adolescents.
Anna Sepic
Citation
Rowson, Susanna, Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth. Evert Duyckinck, 1814, New York.
Representing Adolescence @ Pitt 