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Chapter 34
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Charlotte Temple, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Temptation and Vice
Regret, Guilt, and Shame
Deceit and Manipulation
Kindness, Compassion, and Forgiveness
Honor, Reputation, and Social Status
Wealth, Poverty, and Happiness
Summary
Analysis
Mr. Temple returns to England with his granddaughter, whom he and his wife name Lucy. After they mourn Charlotte, the Temples manage to establish a happy life with Lucy. It almost feels as if they’ve regained Charlotte. Roughly ten years after Charlotte’s death, the family goes to London for some business, and when they return, they find a haggard old woman on their doorstep. They usher her inside and do whatever they can to help her, since she’s clearly unwell. When she comes to her senses, the old woman reveals that she’s Mademoiselle La Rue. She says that she doesn’t deserve their kindness because she refused to help Charlotte, but the Temples let her stay.
Unlike many of the characters in Charlotte Temple, the Temples are extraordinarily virtuous. They don’t let a thirst for revenge ruin the rest of their lives—rather, they focus on raising Charlotte’s daughter in a loving and supportive household. Meanwhile, selfish people like La Rue focus only on themselves, but this worldview only leads to unhappiness, as evidenced by La Rue’s rapid decline from wealth to destitution.
Active
Themes
La Rue says she has been separated from Mr. Crayton for seven years. In that time, she has lived a life of vice, but now she’s impoverished and unwell. She hasn’t eaten in two days, and she slept the previous night on the hard ground—an appropriate punishment, she says, for forcing a similar kind of destitution on Charlotte. Mr. Temple has no reason to show La Rue kindness, but he still lets her stay the night and then checks her into a hospital the following day. She dies a few weeks later, providing what the author says is a good example of how vice might seem “prosperous in the beginning” but always ends in “misery and shame.”
