LITR 4328:
American Renaissance
        

Model Assignments
Final Exam Essays 2016
assignment
Sample answers for
C1. Variations on Gothic

 

Cassandra Waggett

Variations of the Gothic: Exploring Morality, Gender and Grief

          Gothic elements have both popular and classic appeal. While they provide entertaining horror and suspense, the gothic can also be adapted to serious moral and spiritual issues. Originally inspired by religious prototypes, the gothic is a way of externalizing internal conflicts so that they can be explored and is inherently psychological. Hawthorne, Davis and Poe adapt the gothic to explore issues of morality, gender and grief.

In Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne uses the gothic to depict a struggle with suspicion and hypocrisy. The narrative details Goodman Brown’s loss of Faith, who is set apart from the gothic color scheme by her pink ribbons (Hawthorne 4). Even after the trial in the woods is over and Goodman Brown returns home to find his wife, he has lost his figurative faith in god, in himself, and most importantly, in the potential for good in his fellow human beings. Hawthorne turns the most “grave, reputable and pious people” of the town into demonic worshippers who stood alongside “wretches given all over to all mean and filthy vice” and says that “It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked” (Hawthorne 56). This transformation satirizes the pretensions of the Puritan elect and of everyone who professes to be wholly virtuous and looks down on others. Although this gothic transformation from the best to the worst is extreme, it points out that everyone has inner demons and the potential to commit sin. Beyond providing fantastical spectacle, the campfire is an equalizing event where sin has an equal claim all, regardless of class, gender, or place in society.

After attending the campfire, Goodman Brown becomes “a stern, sad, darkly meditative, distrustful” man fixated on the potential for evil in the human soul and blind to earthly good (Hawthorne 72). This is the extreme moralistic inverse of the elect’s claim to absolute virtue, and this in turn is mocked. Goodman Brown’s rumination on mortality and morality proves to be a waste of an otherwise fortune life (Hawthorne 72). Hawthorne seems to imply that people should be humble and accept that humankind has the potential for both good and evil without obsessing over it or oversimplifying it.

Davis does just that in Life in the Iron Mills while adapting the gothic to industrialization. Kirby, the owner of the mill, is told that his works looks “like Dante’s Inferno”, and its “engines sob and shriek like “gods in pain”’ (Davis 65, 41). Industrialization has created an indoor hell in which poor laborers perpetually toil like tormented souls. In contrast, the romantic, natural landscape of the Quaker settlement is a spiritual paradise (Davis 289). Rather than moralizing poverty and making the workers themselves demonic and wicked, as is commonly done in early tragic works, Davis depicts the workers as the victims of the industrial system. She also refrains from wholly villainizing the wealthy, instead attributing poverty and misery to a systemic problem. The Doctor asks ‘“Who is responsible?”’, and there is no definite answer (Davis 131). What is established is that one person’s charity and one person’s salvation will not eliminate the problem. The Doctor tells Hugh “Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?—I have not the money, boy," (Davis 151). While this is a cop-out on his part, there is truth to it. Davis asserts that responsibility for social problems cannot be assigned to any one person or even any one class. She uses the gothic style to compare the suffering brought about by poverty and industrialization to spiritual torment; however, she does not give her Hell a definitive ruler.

Davis also uses the gothic style to explore gender and self-image. Deb assumes the gothic role of the “witch dwarf” (Davis 192), a Faustian figure. This is her personal choice to expand upon her disfigurement, of which she is constantly conscious. Despite her “passionate love” for Hugh, or rather because of it, Deb sets aside her own desires to be with him and relegates herself to a mystical servant (Davis 55). She tells Hugh “Wud hur take me out o' this place wid hur and Janey? I wud not come into the gran' house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t' hunch,—only at night, when t' shadows were dark, stand far off to see hur" (Davis 192). Deb acknowledges that in this scenario Janey would live in the house with Hugh, presumably as his wife, and she herself would be merely a gothic specter. Deb’s love for Hugh drives her to embrace a gothic identity that empowers her to remain a part of his life. Deb transforms an attribute that would label her grotesque into a power more becoming of a dark lady figure, a rival in some respects to the fair Janey.

Deb’s selfless dedication to Hugh gives her the strength to endure the gothic “clicking” sounds of his suicide in silence (Davis 273). Recognizing Hugh’s “passion for whatever was beautiful and pure,” Deb does not attempt to prevent his death by speaking out (Davis 56). Because Hugh’s death is transcendent, he stands to lose nothing from it while gaining peace. In contrast, Deb’s decision to abstain from preventing it is an assumption of great grief and pain. Her silence is, in every way, evidence of her strength of will rather than gendered submission to his will. Davis’ tale does not begin and conclude with Hugh, but with Deb, who is empowered by every instance of the gothic.

          Poe also uses the gothic to explore grief in his poem “The Raven”. The raven, “Perched upon a bust of Pallas”, is symbolic of the speaker’s grief for “the lost Lenore” (Poe 7.5, 2.4). Pallas is the Roman goddess of wisdom and is also associated with reason. In perching on the bust, the raven signifies that grief overrules reason. Practically and biologically speaking, grief is not a productive emotion, in fact, it cripples the mind, making survival less likely. However, in spite of all reason it persists. This is precisely what Poe demonstrates when the speaker says “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor / Shall be lifted—nevermore!” (Poe 18.5-6). Poe uses the shadow, a gothic image and an extension of the raven, a gothic creature, as a metaphor for the weight of grief. The speaker will always remain in the shadow of grief, which never fades.

          The prevalence of gothic themes and figures in popular culture evidences that the gothic style is entertaining. While the gothic can easily become cliché or pure spectacle, its adaptability lends it classic value. The gothic style allows an author to create a metaphorical world that projects the inner turmoil of the human mind and has endless potential for psychological and spiritual exploration.