Wieland

After Carwin has gone, Clara hears footsteps entering the house. The footsteps are Henry’s, but Clara assumes that Carwin has returned. She seizes a penknife from her table. She tells her reader that they will no doubt assume she intends to defend herself; she always supposed virtue would give a woman strength to resist—even kill—an attempted assailant. She always imagined herself doing that, yet now all she can think is that she will die by suicide before her assailant fulfills his intention.

The steps pause outside her door. Clara holds still and silent, hoping the intruder will think she has fled the house. Henry tries her door. Finding it locked, he goes to his room and slams the door. Still believing the intruder is Carwin, Clara waits several minutes for him to leave. Finally, she sees Carwin briefly through the window, standing on the riverbank. Clara creeps down to the front door and locks it, then mounts the stairs more confidently to her room. Henry hears her climbing the stairs and concludes that she is just then returning from a tryst with Carwin.

The next morning, Clara is awakened by Henry knocking at her door. She meets him in the parlor where he accuses her of having engaged in an affair with Carwin. He uses words like “polluted”, “wanton” and “profligate,” then rushes from the house. Clara supposes he must have seen Carwin leave the house the night before and drawn the wrong conclusion. She decides that when Henry’s feelings have cooled, he will see his error. Meanwhile, she must tell Theodore about the incident with Carwin.

Arriving at her brother’s house, Clara finds that Henry has been there before her and told Theodore his version of events. According to Theodore, Henry was returning home late from the city when, passing along the bank above the summerhouse, he heard Carwin and Clara engaged in a tryst. Once back home, he heard no sound of Clara in her room, but shortly thereafter, he heard her returning to her room after going downstairs to shut the front door. He concluded that she left Carwin in the summerhouse and returned home. Clara tells Theodore what actually happened, and Theodore assures her that he would believe her even if his own eyes and ears contradicted her. Theodore adds that Henry has had a sudden change of plans and is leaving the neighborhood immediately.

Realizing she doesn’t have time to wait for Henry to realize his error on his own, Clara sets out to confront him. She burns with reflections on the social impact of chastity versus “pollution” for women. Nothing about her has changed, yet if Henry exposes what he believes to be her sin, she will be socially ruined. Henry believes Clara has come to him to confess her guilt and remorse. He tells her that he has not abandoned all hope for her redemption; he feels she cannot be utterly devoid of better feeling, and he refuses to believe that her heart is “incurably diseased.”

Indignantly, Clara informs him that she is there to protest her innocence; his only evidence is a voice that he thinks sounded like hers saying things that he should know she would never say. She further points out that when one of his senses (hearing) contradicted what he knew to be true, he failed to use another (sight) to resolve the conflict. For a moment, Clara believes Henry is going to see his error, but he relapses into his previous conviction of her guilt; he sees Clara’s denial as further evidence of her depravity. He announces his intention to leave the neighborhood as soon as he can.

Clara collapses in despair, and Henry rushes back to her. When she recovers consciousness, he clasps her hands and praises God for her recovery. He declares that he must have been mistaken in his accusations. No doubt his senses were momentarily confused.