Wieland

Carwin finally reveals himself as the trickster he is, yet his confession is incoherent, inconsistent, and implausible. His arguments are self-serving, and his protests of innocent intent ring false. It appears to be a mix of self-exculpation, flattery, and wheedling. He is dismayed by the consequences of his tricks—or by the fear that Clara may think badly of him—but genuine remorse is missing. He is impishly distractible and changeable. When he leaves Clara in her room, Carwin is supposedly mortified by being discovered and by the fact that she must now believe him to be a villain, but the moment a new opportunity for mischief arises, he forgets everything else and pursues his new end with enthusiasm. If Carwin is seen as a trickster character, then his actions arise from his essential nature. Like the serpent in the garden, he was created to tempt. Like Puck or Caliban, his nature is chaos and deception. To apply reason to chaos must fail.

He lies to Clara about why he was in her closet because he would rather deceive than tell the truth. Carwin tells the truth only when it will create more chaos than a lie. Clara is so confused already that the fact of ventriloquism is less believable to her than the superstitious fantasy of spiritual entities interfering in her life. When Carwin told the family about the many ways that the voices they heard could have been produced by mechanical means, the Wielands and Henry refused to believe that their own experience could be explained away so easily. Possibly the reason they reject rational explanations is that it reduces them to mere dupes, as opposed to targets of divine or demonic influence.

Carwin flatters Clara by speaking of her “remarkable character”, though he does not tell her what is so remarkable about it. Clara is a perfectly nice young woman, intelligent and intellectual, but by no means remarkable. Carwin’s curiosity about her “remarkable qualities” is likely no more than a voyeuristic desire to invade her privacy. He tells her that the supposed murder scene in the closet was intended to “test” her supposed fearlessness, then later, he contradicts himself by mentioning that he played on her particular vulnerability to fear.

Carwin claims he means no harm by his manipulations, but his games are cruel: He tells Henry that Theresa is dead, frightens Clara, snoops in people’s private spaces, and reads their private correspondence. The deception of Henry is particularly cruel to Clara, although it may have ultimately benefited her by exposing Henry’s shallow nature. Carwin’s statement that he believed Clara unlikely to feel any profound grief over her disappointed romance suggests two things: First, that Carwin himself is indifferent to profound feeling; and second, that he has judged astutely that Clara’s feelings are those of a girl who wants to be admired more than those of a woman who deeply loves another.

The role of the trickster is to sow chaos not for its own sake but to disrupt a natural order that has become stultifying. Clara has been isolated in a pastoral utopia, a metaphorical garden of Eden in which she faces no challenges or significant choices. Her infatuation with Henry has less to do with his own merits and more to do with the fact that he is the only unmarried man with whom she comes in contact until Carwin’s arrival. Their union has an emotional logic to it, given that Clara’s brother is married to Henry’s sister. It makes sense that Clara and Henry would marry if only for the sake of symmetry. However, Clara’s assumption is not based on reality or on a realistic appraisal of Henry.

For all Carwin’s protestations that he meant no harm, there remains a moral question: should he have reasonably predicted that his tricks would have more serious consequences than he intended.