Tears over tombstones

“Thrill and weep for Charlotte as if her life and death are all that matter; she will live, and so will you.” -Ann Douglas’ Introduction to Charlotte Temple; Lucy Temple, page XVI

When I visited the Grand Canyon at age 8, the only souvenir I purchased was titled Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, which details over 500 accounts of fatal mishaps and untimely, tragic deaths. Evidently, I have been fascinated with death for a long time, and I have found I’m not alone in this fascination. Over the Edge sold more than a quarter million copies and a fascination with death doesn’t stop there – visiting the graves or tombs of cultural figures is a popular enough activity to be grouped under “dark tourism,” an entire industry where people travel to places that are historically associated with death and tragedy. In fact, I have participated in dark tourism – about two years ago, I drove to Boulder, Colorado to visit a friend, and I made it a priority to pay a visit to the house of JonBenét Ramsey, a young girl who was murdered mysteriously in 1996. Sitting in the car outside of her old house, we watched videos and tried to pinpoint key locations from the crime scene onto the physical structure; I couldn’t help but wonder what was truly everyone’s fascination with, even fetishization of, this young girl that then propelled someone like me to visit the crime scene?

Upon reflection and brief analysis of my participation in JonBenét’s murder phenomenon, I found that “this simultaneous infantilization and eroticization of the sentimental heroine goes back to American fiction of the 1790s.”[1] JonBenét Ramsey’s murder was relatively recent and well-publicized, but if we look back to one of the first major novels from the eighteenth century, Charlotte Temple, we see that the novel’s heroine Charlotte affected readers in a similar but uniquely profound way, even though the character was debatably fictionalized. Originally published in England in 1791 under the title Charlotte, A Tale of Truth, Susanna Rowson writes a seduction narrative about a young girl named Charlotte detailing her misfortunes after she was manipulated and swept away to America. Similar to JonBenét Ramsey, the sentimental heroine of Charlotte Temple serves as a striking and compelling example of innocence being ripped away by death. In Charlotte’s case, her story is an unfortunate warning for others against seduction, premarital sex, manipulation, greed and corruption. One author speculates on the connection between these two heroines, “there exists a collective cultural fascination for what I term the ‘community fetish’: the female body drained of all negative associations through the magical hygiene of death.”[2]

Charlotte Temple is often discussed as “America’s first bestseller,”[3] and it was distributed widely after its publication in 1791,  with over 200 editions by 1955.[4] The novel had an international influence as well – it was printed in entirety in a Liverpool newspaper, The Kaleidoscope in 1827.[5] In a 1955 newspaper article, 164 years after its publication, Knox accurately writes that “the sentimental but universally appealing story has long held a special attraction for historians and other scholars.”[6] Indeed, Charlotte Temple has held a special attraction - located in the Trinity Churchyard in Lower Manhattan, amongst hundreds of headstones, lies a dark slab with the words “Charlotte Temple” written across the top. “For a time the grave of Charlotte Temple was one of the sights that all visitors to New York made a point to visit…for anyone who wants to see the last relic of a myth that became embodied in flesh and blood – the grave of a book!”[7] Clearly, the tombstone was a site of emotion and symbolism for New Yorkers and Charlotte Temple fans starting in the early 1800’s, and the grave still lies in the church yard today, withstanding time, weather, cultural shifts, technological advancements, and a dynamic and constantly changing New York City. But how did this eighteenth-century female character provoke such an intense, emotional, and arguably longstanding response?

In the novel, we find the characters often shedding tears, weeping and crying; this excessive or indulgent expression of feelings, or sentimentalism, is used to model the appropriate way we relate to others, highlighting and promoting eighteenth-century values. The presence of sympathy is vital to the novel and the eighteenth-century community, “for sentimentalism, sympathy is the glue that holds the social order together.”[8] In fact, the modeled behavior between the characters serves as a kind of basis of ethics, one that emerges out of the book and serves as a basis of behavior for the readers and their communities as well. The book set and promoted a set of morals so strongly engrained it translated into reality via a tombstone. I argue that the extremely sentimental nature of Charlotte Temple sets the basis for ways of relating to one another in a community, a “sentimental ethics” we might say, and this combined with its’ tragic and mysterious nature is so powerful that it enacted a mass community – a community that extended beyond identity (race, class, gender).

Rowson sets the reader up to sympathize with Charlotte consistently throughout the narrative, which eventually led to her readers constituting, “historically and materially, the narrator's imagined community of bereavement.”[9] In the preface, Rowson is clear about the emphasis on sympathy for Charlotte before the reader knows the full story. She writes “While the tear of compassion still trembled in my eye for the fate of the unhappy Charlotte, I may have children of my own, said I, to whom this recital may be of use.”[10] Before telling the story, she models how to feel for Charlotte and grounds it in a generalized reality with “I may have children of my own,” a feeling likely anyone could relate to. This connection back to reality, intended to engage the audience’s emotions, is important in establishing the sympathy required to affect action; “A sentimental ethics works through the operation of sympathy, which is a propensity to feel what others are feeling and enter imaginatively into their affective state.”[11] In order for Rowson’s sentimental ethics to function in the capacity it was able to, it was necessary to give the narrative context yet still allow room for the audience to enter into the affective state themselves. This also functions in the characters showing emotion; crying over loved ones lost, or even simply crying, is a situation that a general audience would likely be able to relate to or furthermore place themselves into. Rowson kicks up the notch from sympathy, however, and reaches towards compassion – compassion, from its Latin roots, means to suffer together with; whereas sympathy implies a (real or supposed) affinity or fellow-feeling, of being affected by the condition of another or sharing the feelings of another.

Rowson successfully allowed the reader to imaginatively enter the affective state in various ways, such as leaving space for the reader to enter into the character of Charlotte and through Rowson’s full characterization of her and her family. Another important tool Rowson uses is interruptions in the narrative. At one point, Rowson interrupts to say, "[S]urely, when we reflect how many errors we are ourselves subject to ... I say, my dear Madam, when we consider this, we surely may pity the faults of others."[12] Here, Rowson emphasizes a shared point – the reader and Charlotte’s shared state of sinfulness “creates sympathy between them.”[13] Douglas writes that her story did indeed reach far and wide, “men of all ranks,” “middle-class girls,” “even a group of black women in Ohio after the Civil War”[14] were all members of the novel’s audience. Charlotte Temple was loved my many, no matter their race, class, or gender. Charlotte “becomes that quintessential creature of memory, the child we once were, the child that died so we might become the judging, divided adult creatures we are.”[15] Regardless of precisely what Charlotte represents to an individual in a community, readers in one way or another were able to feel deeply connected to her story, and therefore connected to each other in a time of mourning and sympathy.

Crying in Charlotte Temple appears in various forms, some of which are framed positively or more appropriately than others, further setting the basis of the “sentimental ethics.” Mademoiselle La Rue serves as a key example of inappropriate behavior, specifically for females relating to one another in a female community. For example, Mademoiselle La Rue plays a part in Charlotte’s manipulation, and begs Charlotte to accompany her secretly one night, “‘perhaps it will give you pleasure,’ continued [Madame La Rue], letting fall some hypocritical tears, ‘to see me deprived of bread.’”[16] Here, Rowson characterizes La Rue’s tears as hypocritical, or of assuming a false appearance of virtue and goodness. Because her intention in this section is manipulative, her tears are not appropriate and are instead associated negatively. Even though the tears are falsely moral, Charlotte lets her response to the emotion erase her previous values, and she agrees to accompany La Rue to what turns out to be her own kidnapping. Later in the book, La Rue returns in a symbolic nature, and cries to Charlotte’s parents in grief and regret with her actions after she refuses to sympathize with Charlotte. Despite La Rue’s role in their daughter’s demise, Mr. and Mrs. Temple show pity and give her shelter, although she dies shortly thereafter. Here, Rowson ends the novel and leaves the reader with these images: Charlotte Temple, who lets emotions get the best of her, dies after premarital sex and seduction; Mademoiselle La Rue, the one who is falsely moral and plays a huge manipulative role in a fellow female’s misery, also ends up miserable and dead; and finally, the Temple parents, despite obvious reasons not to, still treat her hospitably and generously, and survive as positive and honorable.

In contrast to Mademoiselle La Rue’s character, Rowson paints a more positive picture of the characters who sympathize with Charlotte, which further establishes the moral principles of social order. When Charlotte shares her story with others in the novel, such as her neighbor Mrs. Beauchamp, the intended reaction is modeled as one of sympathy, “With the benignant aspect of an angel of mercy did Mrs. Beauchamp listen to the artless tale: she was shocked to the soul to find how large a share La Rue had in the seduction of this amiable girl, and a tear fell.”[17] The response to seduction, and to a fellow female like La Rue aiding in the downfall and not participating in fellow feeling, is again one of sentimentalism. “In keeping with its moral principles, sentimental authors idealized characters who sympathized with and assisted those who suffered; they encouraged readers similarly to feel the experiences of fictional characters."[18] Mrs. Beauchamp, who sympathizes so greatly with Charlotte that she decides to help her, is consistently characterized as benevolent, amiable, angelic, compassionate and consoling. 

After Charlotte dies, the characters’ reactions to her death model the appropriate response for the reader, another layer to the “sentimental ethics.” Both of her parents “burst into tears” and fall “into strong hysterics.”[19] During her burial, a nearby soldier is seen crying; he “had just brushed off a tear that did honour to his heart.”[20] Here, the tears that arise crying over Charlotte literally give him honor. Her untimely and innocent death unites the book’s community into one of grieving and sentimentalism – and one that’s appropriately done. Charlotte’s narrative ends with the image of Montraville weeping over the tombstone; he “frequently retired to the church-yard, where he would weep over the grave, and regret the untimely fate of the lovely Charlotte Temple.”[21] This shows that the appropriate response, even for the antagonist, is to externalize your emotions; this is “an egalitarian fantasy of sympathy so powerful that it might bind together an imagined audience of Americans of disparate backgrounds,”[22] which the novel in fact does. This also models the appropriate way to mourn for innocence lost and reinforces that the best expression of sympathy is to cry over her tombstone, which directs the readers to follow suit. Here is where Rowson extends sympathy to compassion – she shows the appropriate behavior if one truly is sympathetic, to be affected to the point of action and go to suffer with them. Rowson writes, “has she a heart of sensibility, she will stop [over the silent ashes of the dead], and thus address the unhappy victim of folly – ‘…thou wert a fellow-creature – thou hast been unhappy – then be those errors forgotten.’” Rowson continues, “a tear will fall, and consecrate the spot to Charity. For ever honoured be the sacred drop of humanity.”[23] Here, Rowson establishes how to relate to others – specifically, for those who have passed away. She paints a picture of sympathy and action – the character, as long as one has a good heart, will pause over a grave and shed a tear, which symbolizes their humanity. Rowson urges her readers to have and show compassion and benevolence and insists that showing sentimentality is a path to immortality. Sentimental authors such as Rowson also encouraged readers “to seek the truth of a book through emotional and physical identification; they urged them to adopt appropriately humanitarian behaviors accordingly.”[24]

Charlotte Temple’s reach extends much further than to her fellow characters – her real tombstone in New York takes the place of her narrative and became a site of emotion for the books’ audience, of emotional and physical identification. Emotionally, the grave is commonly associated with sentimentalism in articles and headlines worldwide. One fan, signed “V.M.D,” writes under the title “Not Altogether Forgotten Amid the Roar of Wall Street.” In it, they appreciate “a kind heart, touched in its memory for human sorrows.”[25] He admires that strangers and other fans of the novel are still showing compassion for the young lost girl. Documented starting around 1855, thousands of lovers of the novel traveled from far and wide to visit Charlotte’s tombstone, and she was a familiar name for many who lived in New York in the early nineteenth century. In July 1905, in a Sunday edition of the New York Times, Taft writes, “the greater number of visitors ask to see the last resting place of the unfortunate young girl,”[26] Charlotte Temple. People would often bring flowers and notes to leave on top of the grave, “in certain seasons of the year this occurs as often as once a week. The men employed in the churchyard say they never see any one in the act of placing them there.”[27]

The mysterious and attracting nature of the tombstone comes also in its lack of solid history or records – it’s unclear if Charlotte Temple was real in the first place and if her real body, or any body, is buried under the stone. Rowson is insistent that the story is based on real life, hence the original title of “A Tale of Truth” and her insistence to consider the novel “as a reality”[28] in the preface and in interruptions in the narrative. Historians, academics, and other fans, however, are skeptical of the realities behind the story. According to “author Susanna Rowson…Charlotte was a true story based on the life of Charlotte Stanley, granddaughter of the Earl of Derby, and Col. John Montresor, Rowson’s cousin. Historical evidence does not support this assertion.”[29] Going along with this skepticism and mystery, it is unsure when or how the Charlotte Temple grave even appeared in the first place. Stories of weeping visitors over her grave start appearing in local newspapers around 1850-1855, but “the church’s early records were destroyed in a 1776 fire,”[30] and there is no record of when the grave was first placed. When there was a proposed improvement to extend the road that would take away her grave, the then Mayor of New York and Warden of Trinity Church, Philip Hone, declined the proposition and said, “she was treated like -- while she was alive, and I’ll be blanked if her grave shall be violated now that she is dead.”[31] It is clear that Rowson’s compassion for Charlotte, her insistence that Charlotte’s story is important and symbolic, has translated into reality through the physical object of the tombstone. The tombstone holds a uniquely emotional and emblematic meaning for the community surrounding Trinity Church Yard and the novel Charlotte Temple.

One writer writes on his specific attachment to the story of Charlotte Temple, describing,

“When I was a boy the story of Charlotte Temple was familiar in the household of every New Yorker. The first tears I ever saw in the eyes of a grown person were shed for her. In that churchyard are graves of heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, whose names are familiar to the youngest scholar, and whose memory is dear to the wisest and best. Their graves, tho marked by imposing monuments, win but a glance of curiosity, while the turf over Charlotte Temple is kept fresh by falling tears.”[32]

Just as Montraville is said to return to the grave and weep over it often, the writer confirms that Charlotte Temple’s grave was a unique site for sentimentalism, specifically tears shed over her. In fact, he goes so far as to say that she is “kept fresh” by the tears that are shed for her, possibly implying that her story and her narrative are kept alive, or “immortal.”[33] This is accomplished through sentimentalism, through the excessive showing of tears.

The novel Charlotte Temple was a cultural phenomenon that created a mass culture surrounding her tombstone, and the seduction narrative was common in the literature of that time, but today this does not command the same attention as it once did. One passer-by at the Trinity Churchyard in 2008 “didn’t give [Charlotte’s grave] a passing glance,”[34] and the name was instead associated with Charlotte’s Web. With the passing years, Charlotte Temple grows less popular and less prevalent to our current climate, leaving her gravestone abandoned and forgotten. The novel clearly highlighted and promoted specific eighteenth-century values; it was a framework for Rowson to “comment upon some of the most pressing issues of the late eighteenth century: the status of women in the new nation, women’s education and literacy, the rise of the novel as a genre, and the meaning of virtue and vice in the newly secularized society.”[35] Not everyone was excited about Charlotte and her tombstone, however, even in the time that it was popular. One reader who signed “CLENA” wrote to the New York Times in the June 21st, 1905 edition, and warns about the “mawkish sentimentality.” He claims that “gushing over Charlotte Temple is silly and dangerous.”[36] One modern day writer feels similarly, writing that “the sentiment made famous in the eighteenth century has evolved into that obvious excess of feeling which threatens to overwhelm our contemporary culture.”[37]

While it was wildly successful in the time, and indeed may have a lasting effect on culture beyond the tombstone, this code of sentimental ethics does not translate to the more progressive twenty-first century we live in. Perhaps this is why JonBenét Ramsey is a more common household name today. In a New York Times article about Ramsey’s murder mystery, author James Brooke attempts to explain the obsession, he writes “fueling the fascination is a mix of wealth, sex and child beauty.”[38] In a brief description of JonBenét, Brooke almost unknowingly highlights this simultaneous fetishization and of the young girl. He writes that JonBenét was “a precocious kindergartner…her white baby teeth highlighted by fuchsia lipstick, and her large innocent eyes framed by blonde curls.”[39] Her features of innocence here are highlighted and also contrasted by features associated with sex; other narratives mirror the emphasis on her youth and innocence being ripped away by sexual assault and death. According to Dr. David Henderson, "Witnessing violence and destruction, whether it is in a novel, a movie, on TV or a real life scene playing out in front of us in real time, gives us the opportunity to confront our [own] fears of death, pain, despair, degradation and annihilation while still feeling some level of safety."[40] While I sat in the car outside of JonBenét’s house, my heart pounded as I imagined someone murdering me in my own room, which is less than 50 miles away from JonBenét’s, but I was able to confront this with a level of distance and therefore a feeling of increased security. This could be another explanation for the mass visits to Charlotte Temple’s tombstone as well, but JonBenét’s narrative instead surrounded the pressing issues of present day. JonBenét’s story may be seen as a warning against trusting authorities, families, or a community and overly sexualizing children. Her status as a child beauty pageant star and various widely circulated videos of her performances raised questions and discussions of murder in the digital age, forensic technological developments, child sexuality and the ethics behind beauty contests, which became popular with the Miss America pageant in 1921. At any rate, it does not seem likely that shedding tears over lost sentimental heroines will stop any time soon.

[1] Stern, Julia. “The Politics of Tears: Death in the Early American Novel.” Mortal Remains: Death in Early America, by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, p. 227.

[2] Stern, p. 110.

[3] “The Mystery of Charlotte Temple.” Trinity Church, 16 Dec. 2008, www.trinitywallstreet.org/blogs/archivists-mailbag/mystery-charlotte-temple.

[4] By, SANKA K. "First U. S. Best Seller is Brought from Britain and Sold for $5,000." New York Times (1923-Current file), Nov 11, 1955, p. 27. ProQuest, http://www.wesleyan.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/113389803?accountid=14963.

[5] "AN AMERICAN NOVEL." The Kaleidoscope: Or, Literary and Scientific Mirror, vol. 7, no. 356, 1827, p. 341-342. ProQuest, http://www.wesleyan.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/2751748?accountid=14963.

[6] Sanka, p. 27.

[7] "FICTION CHARACTER'S NAME ON GRAVESTONE: FLOWERS PLACED ON MOUND IN TRINITY CHURCHYARD EACH SPRING "OUT OF SENTIMENT" FOR "CHARLOTTE TEMPLE"." Daily Boston Globe (1928-1960), May 31, 1931, p. 1. ProQuest, http://www.wesleyan.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/757881877?accountid=14963.

[8] “The Tragedies of Sentimentalism.” Mourning Happiness: Narrative and the Politics of Modernity, by Vivasvan Soni, 1st ed., Cornell University Press, 2010, p. 293. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt7z7tm.13.

[9] Stern, p. 116.

[10] Rowson, Susanna. Charlotte Temple. Edited by Marion L. Rust, W.W. Norton & Company, 2011, p. 5.

[11] Soni, p. 298.

[12] Rowson, p. 52.

[13] Henderson, Desirée. “The Imperfect Dead: Mourning Women in Eighteenth-Century Oratory and Fiction.” Early American Literature, vol. 39, no. 3, 2004, p. 487–509. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25057367.

[14] Douglas, Ann. Introduction. Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple, by Susanna Rowson, The Penguin Group, 1991, p. x.

[15] Douglas, p. xxxv.

[16] Rowson, p. 23.

[17] Rowson, p. 59.

[18] “Sentimental Masochism.” The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature, by Marianne Noble, Princeton University Press, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, 2000, p. 64 JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7stj5.6.

[19] Rowson, p. 40.

[20] Rowson, p. 88.

[21] Rowson, p. 89.

[22] Stern, p. 116. 

[23] Rowson, p. 51.

[24] Noble, p. 64.

[25] V.M.D. "Not Altogether Forgotten Amid the Roar of Wall Street." New York Times (1857-1922), Jun 19, 1905, p. 6. ProQuest, http://www.wesleyan.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/96498812?accountid=14963.

[26] T, I. A. "Charlotte Temple in Fiction and in Fack: Perennial Interest in the Tragic Romance of the Traditionally Beautiful Young English Girl Whose Life Story was made the Whose Life Story was made the Basis of One of the most Popular Novels of the Early Nineteenth Century." New York Times (1857-1922), Jul 09, 1905, p. 1. ProQuest, http://www.wesleyan.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/96524342?accountid=14963.

[27] Halsey, Francis W. "IV. The Tombstone." Introduction. Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth, by Susanna Haswell Rowson, Funk & Wagnalls, 1905.

[28] Rowson, p. 5.

[29] “The Mystery of Charlotte Temple.” 2008.

[30] Hughes, C. J. “Buried in the Churchyard: A Good Story, at Least.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 13 Dec. 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/nyregion/13trinity.html.

[31] T, I, p. 1.

[32] Halsey, 1905.

[33] Rowson, p. 51.

[34] Hughes, 2008.

[35] Henderson, p. 495.

[36] CLENA. "CHARLOTTE TEMPLE." New York Times (1857-1922), Jun 21, 1905, p. 6. ProQuest, http://www.wesleyan.edu:2048/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/96526583?accountid=14963.

[37] Stern, p. 119.

[38] Brooke, James. “Colorado Murder Mystery Lingers as Police Press On.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Jan. 1997, www.nytimes.com/1997/01/10/us/colorado-murder-mystery-lingers-as-police-press-on.html.

[39] Brooke, 1997.

[40] Page, Danielle. “The Science Behind Why We Can't Look Away From Tragedy.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 18 Sept. 2017, www.nbcnews.com/better/health/science-behind-why-we-can-t-look-awy-disasters-ncna804966.