Wieland is conventionally and correctly regarded as a novel of purpose which marks a turn from the stories of love and seduction fathered by Richardson to the kind of story made prominent by Holcroft, Bage, and Godwin. The particular purposes of Wieland, however, have never been precisely identified, and this reading is offered in the belief that the novel has been subjected by most students to a form of damnation through faint praise. By marveling that an American in 1798 could produce readable fiction, they place undue emphasis on mere chronology and slight the importance of the novel as part of a more meaningful cultural continuity. Wieland is an important novel because of the extraordinary manner in which Brown employs sentiment against itself (rather than simply dismissing it, as it is averred he has done), penetrates beneath the principles of the optimistic psychology of his day, and recognizes the claims which Calvinism makes on the American character.