{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.032929598788796366, 'fraction_numerical': 0.010219530658591975, 'mean_word_length': 5.006818181818182, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
“Low as your Charlotte is fallen” × 2 in Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple and Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons

Over two centuries separate Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple and Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, but both novels chronicle in similar ways how two young women named Charlotte succumb to the false promise of social status. Published first in England in 1791 (as Charlotte: A Tale of Truth) and soon afterward in the United States in 1794, Rowson’s work is recognized as the best-selling American novel before Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Claiming the events are historically true, based on an actual woman’s misfortune, Rowson requests in her preface that readers consider her story “not merely the effusion of Fancy, but as reality” (5). Wolfe also claims his 2004 story is based on reality, in particular his own observations at institutions of higher learning throughout the country, and he acknowledges these schools in his “Vos Saluto” preceding the table of contents. Rowson’s text is generally classified as a seduction novel, and although Wolfe’s story has not been categorized within this literary genre, Charlotte Simmons is certainly coerced into sexual encounters in much the same manner as Charlotte Temple. Both naïve females are pursued as sexual prey by experienced male predators whose primary attraction is elevated social status. In Charlotte Temple, Rowson’s didactic purpose is obviously to alert innocent coquettes about the sexual trickery of gentlemen libertines; in I Am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe’s warning about the wiles of male seduction is more subtle but is, nonetheless, just as pragmatic. On a theoretical level, Wolfe addresses many of the same sociocultural issues as Rowson, as Charlotte Temple sets the standard for the seduction story. In The Seduction Novel of the Early Nation, Donna R. Bontatibus contends seduction is a vehicle to call attention to the forced allegiance of women to early American patriarchy and to the continued repression of women within colonial rape culture (5). Bontatibus writes, “The narratives of seduction ... offer social critiques of the early nation and its colonial laws and customs, limited educational opportunities for women, and stereotypes of the fallen woman ... While many narratives of seduction may be read as allegories of woman’s sin ..., [they] portray woman’s fall as a consequence of a much greater social problem” (6–7), which she later identifies as including rape, harassment, and assault (22). In “Working through the Frame,” Julia A. Stern explains the purpose of the seduction novel in America during the 1790s: