text: Susanna Rowson's "Charlotte Temple" is not the first novel and certainly not the last to deal with the topic of the morally fallen woman. Poor, pitiful Charlotte finds herself in the midst of an immoral and unforgiving world where one transgression sends her on the road to permanent ruin.          Rowson encases her heroine Charlotte Temple within a world of virtue and vengeance. Charlotte has no possible means of escaping her inevitable fate because the author/narrator makes it clear from the onset that she has written this story as a lesson to young woman. She has no real interest in Charlotte as a dimensional character. Charlotte simply serves as a symbol of lost virtue and symbols do not have real emotions or feelings.           "Charlotte Temple" was written in 1794 and became one of the first best sellers of the newly formed America. A morally abhorrent woman who pays for her sins almost always guaranteed a best seller in the eighteenth century and now "Charlotte Temple" has been rediscovered and published in a Scholarly Press edition.          Was this reclamation of Charlotte really necessary? In the past twenty years, feminist scholars have rediscovered authors and texts that have gone out of print or been totally ignored by the literati. Authors such as Anne Plumptre, Frances Burney, Aphra Behn, Sarah Fielding and Charlotte Lennox have been dusted off and given new literary lives. Feminist scholar Cathy Davidson has taken Charlotte Temple in hand and aims to join Rowson to the above list of rediscoveries.          Unfortunately, Rowson does not warrant such treatment. Rowson has a flat, humorless approach to the fallen woman story. Unlike Burney's "Evelina" or "Camilla," Rowson does not imbue her narrative with needed levity.  Her pedantic iron-fisted preaching smothers the modern reader in a moral morass that confounds rather than illuminates.           In many of the fallen women stories, authors would use the genre as a subversive technique to criticize the patriarchal structures. Rowson does engage in such subversion within the novel. She seeks to preach to the young women who may fall victim to the unscrupulous man -- in England and America, it was not considered altogether lady-like to read a novel, so Rowson would be preaching to young women who had already transgressed.          Rowson does not criticize men within the novel. She does not censure Montraville for taking Charlotte as his mistress, impregnating her and abandoning her for a wealthier woman. When he believes that Charlotte has becomes his best friend's mistress, he does not believe that she would soil her reputation even though she has ruined her life by engaging in an illicit affair with him.          He aims to enact revenge upon the friend for acting "dishonorable" against her. Yet if he had not acted dishonorably towards her, she would not have been reduced to a penniless, pregnant ex-mistress scrounging the streets for food and shelter. He never takes responsibility for his role in Charlotte's downfall.  Rowson had the perfect opportunity for savage criticism of the patriarchy with Montraville but she fails to take it.           Instead, Rowson places the blame for Charlotte's ruin on the women within the novel. When Charlotte leaves the safe bosom of her morally upstanding family, she enters into the deviant world of the female who fail to protect her from licentious men.          Madame Du Pont errs in judgment by hiring the morally loose Miss La Rue. Madame Du Pont sets Charlotte's downfall in action. Rowson does not punish the ignorant Madame Du Pont by killing her, she ends up an hysterical mess after the Montraville/Charlotte "elopement."          Miss La Rue, the woman who pushes Charlotte into the arms of Montraville, must be punished for being a promiscuous woman. She ends up poor and begs for her last scrap of food. She ends up dying painfully as Rowson takes the opportunity to lecture her readers on the improper behavior of loose women.          Why would modern readers want to read this? I do not think any intelligent would reader would want to subject themselves to the depressing experience of reading this novel. At 125 pages, it seemed to progress at such an excruciating pace. No character has any shadings. There are no subplots to divert the attention from the static Charlotte. Rowson does nothing to keep our interest.          Unfortunately Rowson has become a heroine to feminist scholars for her feat as the first American woman to have a best-selling novel. That accomplishment is noteworthy as literary trivia, but it does not make for engaging reading
  