|
LITR 4328: American Renaissance .png){kind=small} |
Model
Assignments |
 |
Brandon Burrow
Gothic Genres through Time
In American literature the Gothic genre has evolved with
the fears and anxieties that are present in our society. Washington Irving is
considered a recognizable beginning to the American tradition when he wrote
about the fractured national identity and fearsome speed of progress in “Rip Van
Winkle.” In our course, in addition to Irving, we also studied the writings of
Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Rebecca Harding Davis, all authors
whom preserved this fascinating genre in their works and adapted it to deal with
events contemporary to their writings. Adrian Russell writes in his 2016 essay
“Evolution of Gothic American Literature: A Journey Through the Dark,” a
statement that I agree with: “People are drawn to the dark by design. It is
almost as if life cannot be as exciting without the prospect of death”
(Russell). The Gothic has lasted through the present because its vivid language
and tropes serve as an appealing vehicle for dealing with whatever haunts the
public conscious at the time.
Edgar Allan Poe was perhaps the most famous of the Gothic
writers we studied. Every work he wrote was dripping with dark sensibilities. He
was an American writer but often thought of as almost European in style, and he
served as a great bridge between the established European Gothic and the
burgeoning American Gothic. His ability to blend styles shows in his short story
“The Fall of The House of Usher”. The use of the “mad tryst” as a correspondence
between a medieval European romance and the visceral impending arrival of the
prematurely buried Madeline can be traced back to the creation of the European
Gothic as it was meant to be a fusion between medieval romance and darker more
realistic literature (32-43). The decayed and lifelike house with its “vacant
eye-like windows” and its “donjon-keep” are also reminiscent of the old-world
tropes where ruined family estates, “mysterious mansions” and dark castles were
often the scene of the terror (Course page, 1, 24). At the end of the story the
Gothic imagery of the “blood-red moon” shines down as the fissure that has been
cracking its way through the house bursts and sends the House of Usher crumbling
into the “deep and dank tarn” that lays at its base. The scenery of the European
Gothic is swallowed by the new American Wilderness Gothic swamp in a “dreary
tract of country” spotted with a “few white trunks of decayed trees” (1, 44).
America’s unexplored wilderness is the most terrifying thing to early settlers,
a trip out into the woods could easily be their last.
In Poe’s William Wilson we see an example of the
Psychological Gothic. The setting is classical European as it takes place in a
“venerable old town” with “deeply shadowed avenues” and a church complete with a
“Gothic steeple” (4). The narrator is haunted by a doppelganger, another
archetype pioneered in Europe, that seems to be a supernatural character or even
an emanation of the narrator’s own mind. The Gothic imagery extends to the
school the narrator is educated and meets William Wilson at, when it is
described as having “black, ancient, and time-worn” “benches and desks” with
“grotesque figures” carved into them by past students (10). The house where the
students sleep is like a maze with “no end to its windings—to its
incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult at any given time, to say with
certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be” (9). Mazes and
labyrinths were often used as symbolism for a disturbed and twisted
psychological mentality, representing the twisting thoughts of the brain.
Particularly of interest is the narrator’s difficulty in
figuring which of the two stories he is on. If William Wilson is none other than
a figment of the narrator’s imagination as he appears to be when he and the
narrator are simultaneously slain at the end of the story, then it can be read
as the narrator not knowing which of his two identities is operating in the
moment. These questions of identity were originally formed by Irving in “Rip Van
Winkle,” in response to the Revolutionary War, but seemingly persist in Poe’s
Psychological Gothic. Reasoning for this could just be the appeal of the
doppelganger or evil twin story from an entertainment perspective, who has not
felt like they are their own worst enemy at times? But also, and while this may
be a stretch, it could be the continuation of the theme of fractured national
identity that Irving wrote about 20 years prior. Instead of Revolutionaries and
British loyalists, the new rivals could be North and South, or the political
parties in America’s two-party system.
Writing in a different part of
the country, Nathaniel Hawthorne primarily wrote in the genre identified as
Puritan Gothic. His stories seemingly respond to the trauma of the Salem
Witchcraft Trials and the fear of the unknown and mass hysteria that caused
them. In his short story “Young Goodman Brown” the narrator feels himself called
to an “evil purpose” as he makes his way to a supernatural meeting in the woods
(8). He journeys through a gloomy forest representative of the American Gothic
that could harbor a “devilish Indian behind every tree” or even the “devil
himself” (8-9). Goodman Brown is struggling with his faith. He identifies
himself as coming from a “race of honest men and good Christians since the days
of the martyrs,” however, the old man that represents Satan in the forest
responds to this claim by telling Brown that he was “good friends” and “well
acquainted with” Brown’s “family as with ever a one among the Puritans” (17-18).
As Goodman Brown stumbles his way forth into the clearing where the meeting
takes place, he recognizes many townsfolk at the gathering “including
a score of the church members of Salem village
famous for their especial sanctity,” and his own wife (56). He awakes as if from
a dream, and for the rest of his days he is unsure about the moral character of
his entire village. Fraught with Gothic imagery, such as the “heathen
wilderness” and Goodman Brown’s tendency to “behold the whole earth [as] one
stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot” after his experience, Hawthorne’s story
serves as a cautionary tale that not everyone is who they seem on the surface,
even the devout who point the fingers of condemnation (45, 63)
Finally, Adrian Russell said it best when he said that
“the blend of Gothic, Romantic, and Realist techniques” in Rebecca Harding
Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills “lends
to its believability” (Russell 2016). Taking a piece of the literary movements
that came before it and incorporating elements characteristic of the Realism
movement that follows Romanticism (such as dialects and intricate details),
Rebecca Harding Davis’ story utilizes Gothic elements to make a statement about
the horrors of the widening gap between the social classes during the Gilded Age
of industrialization. She describes the mills as being a hellish “city of fires,
that burned hot and fiercely in the night” where “crowds of half-clad men,
looking like revengeful ghosts in the red light” went about their work on this
“street in Hell” (44). This could be considered an example of Urban Gothic,
where the setting has shifted from the untamed American wilderness to its
rapidly growing cities. Hugh Wolfe is described as being capable of producing
beauty through his sculptures, but his torturous conditions lead to his making
an immoral choice and ultimately to his demise. This is meant to suggest that
the working conditions that these people are subjected to is corrupting what
otherwise would be good people. Davis spares no detail in her description of the
squalid conditions of the workers of the mill as they go about their lives
facing a “reality of soul-starvation, of living death, that meets [them] every
day…on the street” (57). Deborah’s transcendence at the end of the story where
“her eyes turned to hills higher and purer than th[ose] on which she live[d],
dim and far off now, but to be reached someday” anticipates her completing her
hopeful Romantic journey and reminds the reader of how the infernal conditions
of the mill deprived her of love and Hugh of his life.
Throughout these tales, Gothic imagery and tropes are
used to explore topics that are horrifying to the writer and the society of the
time. Washington Irving’s and Poe’s exploration of the Psychological Gothic and
identity, Hawthorne’s critique of the superstitious fire and brimstone New
England religious tradition, and Davis’ unflattering look at what America was
becoming through industrialization all shocked and excited readers. The vivid
descriptions of terror and suffering serve to contrast with our plain daily
lives and heighten the experience and insight gained from these stories. The
genres of the Gothic moved and evolved with the writers and readers that created
and consumed them and the Gothic continues to evolve as it seeks to capture the
silhouette of the shadows of today.
