The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature is a novel by American author William Hill Brown which was printed in Boston on January 21, 1789. Considered the first American novel, it is a work that explores the lessons of the Enlightenment on the virtues of rational thought. The novel emerges from sentimentalism, a late-18th-century literary movement emphasising emotion, moral feeling, and sympathy as the basis of virtue.

Brown's novel is based on the real-life scandal of Perez Morton and Fanny Apthorp, a New England brother and sister-in-law who struck up an affair that ended in suicide and infamy. The novel revolves around Harrington, a young man who falls in love with Harriot Fawcet. Their relationship appears virtuous and ideal until Harrington discovers that Harriot is his half-sister. 

The discovery makes him spiral into despair, and he ultimately commits suicide. A secondary plot follows Martin and Ophelia, that reinforces similar moral lessons about female vulnerability, and the consequences of male irresponsibility.

The novelist treats sympathy as a double-edged sword. Sympathy enables people to feel for one another, whereas an excess of it leads to emotional indulgence and moral collapse. Readers are meant to feel deeply for Harrington, yet also recognise that unchecked emotion leads to catastrophe. This tension reflects Enlightenment debates about whether reason or feeling should govern human behaviour.

The incest revelation in the novel is symbolic. It represents nature being violated, aligning with the subtitle The Triumph of Nature. Harrington and Harriot’s love is emotionally pure but biologically and socially forbidden. Their tragedy reflects that good intentions are insufficient without knowledge, structure, and social regulation.

Women like Harriot and Ophelia are depicted as emotionally sensitive, morally pure, and socially vulnerable, whereas men are given agency and blame. The novel repeatedly insists that society unfairly punishes women for men’s moral failures, and traps them in narrow roles valued primarily for chastity and emotional delicacy.

Harrington’s suicide is presented as a tragic outcome of emotional excess, reflecting the Romantic era fascination with suicide as the ultimate expression of sensibility. The novel suggests that excessive moral idealism creates psychic fragility. There is no space for ambivalence, contradiction, or repair.

The novel is composed almost entirely of letters, which serves several functions. Readers gain direct access to characters’ emotions, reinforcing the novel’s emphasis on sympathy. There is no single authoritative voice. Truth emerges via conflicting perspectives, mirroring the instability of emotional knowledge.

The novel establishes American fiction as morally instructive, reflecting early American anxiety about family structure and civic virtue.

The writer evokes emotions in readers, giving them models on which to base their own emotional lives. Critics have read it as an allegory of the nascent United States, helping to reinforce the caution and virtue that would best serve the young nation.