LITR 4231 Early American Literature 2012 Student Midterm Samples #1. Long essay describing and focusing learning, challenges, issues concerning Early American Literature. (6-8 paragraphs)

Veronica Ramirez

How the Gothic Works in Pre-Romantic Texts

The thought of enjoying a Puritan sermon, such as the 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God” seems completely foreign to a lover of Romantic Literature such as Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” and Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”.  The suspense, darkness and fears in these Romantic texts capture my imagination and keep these texts relevant and interesting today.  Jonathan Edwards’ sermon along with several other texts in this course, have a common quality that works for most readers, the Gothic.  The Gothic is an element of Romanticism, and even though most texts in our course preceded the Romantic period (late 1700s-1800s), there are threads of Puritan/Moral Gothic and Wilderness Gothic in our texts. Some of the early American texts in our course that have Gothic elements are  “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards, “Of Plymouth Plantation” by William Bradford,  “The Wonders of the Invisible World”  by Cotton Mather,  and “The Maypole of Merry Mount” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The Gothic not only unifies all these texts in early North America, but also across the world and through time, as the Gothic makes these texts relevant and interesting and makes Objective 1 applicable- To learn about early North American and U.S.texts and cultures and make them matter now. 

The relationship of light and dark with good and evil is one of the Gothic conventions that works really well in Pilgrim literature. William Bradford in “Of Plymouth Plantation” works with this light (good) / Dark (evil) relationship specifically by relating it to religious terms and thus the Puritan/Moral Gothic. The Puritans such as Bradford compared Protestantism, as the “light of the gospel” with Catholicism representing the opposite evil, the “gross darkness of popery” and this of course was “well known unto the godly and judicious” Puritans.

One of the reasons that Romanticism, especially the Gothic, shows up in these early American texts before the full swing of the Romantic period, is due to the unifying fears of the initial settlers. The Pilgrims and Puritans are faced with woods filled with the unknown and non-Christians, which relates to the Gothic aspect of Romanticism of the “haunted” woods. The haunted woods for the Pilgrims represent an unknown world that may be physically uninhabitable to them that borders their Christian settlements. The Puritans live in the light of God, while the woods are inhibited by the “other” the wild, dark, and heathen Native Americans.

A branch of the Gothic, the Wilderness Gothic, takes the dark-evil connection and transfers that into the woods. In “Of Plymouth Plantation”, Bradford takes the wilderness and emphasis the danger in the unknown, “Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men and what multitudes there might be of them they knew not.” The Pilgrims used these devices, as Objective 6 states as models for telling a “Providential history” and telling one single American story.  The early American story was centered on Christian settlements, their resolve and struggles, all against the background that Bradford paints of “the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue”. 

From the Pilgrims onto the Puritans, the Romantic themes including the Gothic undertones continue even as the fear has shifted from “heathen” and unknown woods to converting unreligious people within the community. Jonathan Edwards in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” reaches out in his speech in “awakening unconverted persons in this congregation.” According to Edwards the people who are “out of Christ” are in a dark world, and calls to the Gothic to explain that “that world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open.” Jonathan Edwards also uses the wilderness gothic as Bradford did, by embodying violent and uncontrollable nature, “There are black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder.”

 In “The Wonders of the Invisible World”, Cotton Mather is working against a different backdrop that the first Pilgrims were but within the same type of fear that Jonathan Edwards’ sermon is working with, to relight the religious fervor in their community. Instead of dealing with an unknown world and Native Americans, Mather and Edwards are working with a “fear of growing secularism or worldliness in a religious community.” (Salem Witch Trials Web Review). 

Cotton Mather uses another Gothic convention by bringing in aspects of the supernatural and “spectral or grotesque figures” to instill fear into his people and describe the situation.   People are “tormented by invisible hands, with tortures altogether preternatural” and “specters of G.B to have a share in their torment”. The supernatural images of the Gothic convention make the texts interesting by showing the passion and fears of the Pilgrims and Puritans, for example as Mather explains that the court thought G.B. with the “assistance of the Black Man.. put on his Invisibility, and in that Fascinating Mist” made himself invisible to hear what his wife and brother in law were talking about.   Even though the Gothic elements have switched to the supernatural, the underlying message is still of the devil as darkness and evil, and of surrendering to Christ as the only correct Path. 

“The Maypole of Merry Mount” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, written in 1837, during the Romantic period brings together all of the Romantic ideas that the previous early American texts were hinting towards, light/dark interplay, wilderness gothic and the supernatural.  Hawthorne uses the wilderness gothic and the supernatural just like the early American authors did by describing the wilderness and those who inhabit it as “those devils and ruined souls with whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness” and “and the shadows of the forest mingle gloomily in the dance.”  Hawthorne extends the wilderness gothic to include a relationship between pleasure and wilderness, by showing that the “The men of whom we speak... imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came hither to act out their latest day-dream.”

Hawthorne, working in the Romantic period, is able to work with the Gothic elements beyond what the Puritans used them for and even inverts them for his stylistic use. Hawthorne inverts the light/dark interplay as the Pilgrims who were formerly the light and good people are now the “grim”, “wretched,” “men of iron” and “grizzly saints” who “frowned so darkly that the revelers looked up imaging that a momentary cloud had overcast the sunshine.” The Maypole “sunny” and “gay sinners” are now the people of light, when they should be portrayed as the evil and dark sinners.  Hawthorne plays with the Gothic conventions, and keeps the reader interested and on their toes concerning Gothic stereotypes.

The Gothic elements in these early American texts are one of the reasons why we still find these texts exciting and why we still go see scary movies.  The ability to transcend time for these texts directly reflects Objective 1: To learn about early North American and U.S. texts and cultures and make them matter now. The Romantic period embodied all of these Gothic elements and included other Romantic elements of Gothic literature. These texts led the way to our enjoyment of Gothic texts like the British Gothic texts of the Bronte sisters, and the American Gothic texts of Edgar Allan Poe. 

Texts used for Essay 1:

Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation

Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Hawthorne's "The Maypole of Merry-Mount"

Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World

Web review: Salem Witch Trials