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LITR 4231 Early American Literature |
Final Exam Essays 2014 Sample answers
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Dawn Iven
4 May 2014
Gothic in Early America
Gothic as we
have learned in this class is an element of Romanticism and according to the
course notes, “has deep roots in theology, architecture, psychology, the
imagination, and many literary traditions.”
It contrasts dark and light, good and evil, and makes us feel terror and
foreboding through graphic words and feelings of fearfulness that the
storyteller uses. Wilderness Gothic
uses descriptions like dark tempestuous woods and thick black forests, the
savage wilderness and feelings of guilt caused by a crime or sin.
The Gothic tells stories that are disturbing, terrifying, and horrific.
It can involve death, torture, and psychological mind games.
It will leave the reader with a pounding heart, sweaty palms, and sitting
on the edge of their seats waiting to be scared out of their minds.
The Gothic can be the dark, sick, destructive side of romance and can
have characters that are fair ladies and dark ladies as well as the ever sought
after bad boy or Byronic. We as
human beings for some reason like the feeling of terror and are fascinated by
the dark side of things. This I
suppose explains the fascination I have with the Gothic and why I chose it to be
the focus of my midterm and now the focus of this paper.
We began the semester with the Renaissance and the creation stories from the
Bible as well as the origin stories of the Indians.
I learned the creation story from the
Bible as a child in Sunday school, but I had never thought about it in terms of
being Gothic. The Indians have very
similar creation stories with the same struggle of good against evil, and the
contrast of dark and light. If you
really think about it, theology is full of the Gothic, and can be found
throughout the bible but the most familiar story is the creation story found in
Genesis. God (good) tells Adam and
Eve they will die if they eat from the forbidden fruit.
The serpent (evil) tempts Eve.
This is the story of the first sin, the first struggle between good and
evil. The Indian origin stories
tell the same stories of the death but through the death of one brother at the
hand of another, and falling from God’s grace in the form of the first sin.
These stories can create fear in people and sometimes used to threaten
what will happen if one is not submissive to God.
With the Renaissance came American Gothic Wilderness the letters of
early explorers like Columbus, John Smith, and Cabeza de Vaca who told
stories of the natives who were ferocious monsters that ate human flesh,
barbarians that stalked them in the darkness of the woods; they were described
as dark, hellish men who were like devils.
Their letters told of ominous weather conditions and nights of “tempest
and peril, in hellish storms in which bodies were disfigured by striking against
the rocks and being unrecognizable.
Their letters are the beginning of gothic literature that can bring feelings of
terror and horror and pictures of evil, destructive devils in the mind.
As we move into the seventeenth century, we find the Gothic twisted throughout
the lives of the Puritans. The
plain, modest black and white clothing they wore and the simple, unadorned
churches they worshiped in is considered an element of the gothic seen in the
plain style because of the contrast of black and white and the simple, plain,
unadorned churches compared to the dramatic elements of the Baroque style that
they escaped from in England.
Because of the strict moral code and the sexual repression, they were forced to
live with, one of the most famous Gothic horror stories emerged into real life
through the Salem Witch Trials.
Young bored, sexually repressed teenage girls conjured up of stories of witches
dancing in the dark, mysterious woods casting spells, and afflicting horrible
pain and mutilation on innocent people is a classic gothic tale.
Hundreds of innocent people found themselves accused of witchcraft by
these girls, and most of them were found guilty during the Salem Witch Trials.
There were nineteen people hanged and hundreds more imprisoned.
In my first research post, I discussed the life of Bridget Bishop, the
first woman hanged in the Salem Witch Trials.
She was accused of witchcraft because she chose to live her life the way
she wanted and not follow the majority.
In Salem, Massachusetts today, where the original witch trials took
place, they still tell the stories of the wrongfully accused and the deaths of
the innocent men and women caused by the young girls.
Another
example of the Gothic in theology is found within the Enlightenment era.
The later puritans believed God decided whom he would save.
Unlike the stories in the bible, they believed no one was born innocent
and free of sin, but instead everyone was born a sinner and God could save them
if he chose to. Jonathon Edwards
gave one of the most famous sermons, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
It was full of “fire and brimstone” and threatened a life in hell. “The
wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is
prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them;
the flames do now rage and glow… and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.”
This one line from the sermon tells of
the preparation of hell to receive those chosen by God to be damned for
eternity. It is full of horrifying dread, and ominous endings that changes the
first theological Gothic tales into something much darker and more terrifying
than that of the original sin.
Eventually, America moved into the early Romantic era and with it came the first
two American novels. Author,
Susanna Rowson wrote Charlotte Temple,
with the intention of teaching a moral lesson to young girls who are
contemplating going against their parents’ wishes and making bad choices in
life. In my opinion, this sounds
like the beginning of a gothic tale of things that can go wrong.
Charlotte Temple
characterized, as a romantic tale was easy to read and kept my attention because
it had notions of the Gothic within the characters as well as the grim almost
predictable outcome. As Lauren
Weatherly discusses in her final,
Charlotte Temple, while normally regarded as a romantic novel, can
definitely fall into the Gothic genre as well.
Charlotte’s character is a young naïve schoolgirl or in gothic terms
(fair lady) who makes a string of wrong choices while being manipulated by the
people around her who have their own personal agendas and do not truly care
about Charlotte. The very handsome
young bad boy (Byronic hero),
Montraville, seduces Charlotte, with help of the deceitful Mademoiselle La Rue,
characterized in gothic terms as (dark lady) and Belcour, who is just evil.
All three of these characters are examples of gothic elements within a
romantic novel. Abandonment,
deceit, and betrayal are all dark, evil connotations and Charlotte, eventually
isolated from anyone who truly loves her finds herself betrayed by and isolated
from those she trusted and cared about.
As Lauren Heatherly points out in her final, “Solitude is also extremely
frightening as the notion of being alone scares most people to death.”
Rowson uses Gothic elements throughout the novel not only in forming the
characters, but also in the undertones of what is unfortunately going to be a
tragic ending.
Charles Brockden Brown, author of the second novel we studied, Edgar Huntly; or,Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker has unquestionably written a Gothic story. As Lauren Weatherly states in her final, “Edgar Huntly…Just the name itself sounds Gothic. It rolls off the tongue in a familiar, yet unfamiliar and almost disturbing way upon reaching the ears.” The novel is full of gothic wilderness and the dark subconscious of an individual, as well as dark psychological traits of a sleepwalker. Although I was excited to sink my mind into a gothic thriller, I found the novel to be challenging to read. I found myself wanting to scream, “Just spit it out already!” In spite of the author’s long-windedness, I found the novel more than quenched my thirst for a gothic tale. Brown uses his words to create the sense of terror and foreboding using the Gothic wilderness; he uses descriptions of savages and devils, and twists death with the psychological aspect of the unexplained mind. This Gothic tale kept me on the edge of my seat not knowing what would happen next.
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