LITR 4232: American Renaissance
UHCL, spring 2002
Sample Student Answers to Final Exam

Essay Question 1. Describe the characteristics and significance of the Gothic as well as some of the variations on it that we've observed in our course readings.  To what different purposes do the various authors use the Gothic? (Objective 2, the Gothic)

 

[Complete email essay answer]

Throughout this semester one of the objectives has been to study the use of gothic and sublime in literature.  Many of the authors that we have studied use the gothic as a major means of conveying mood and themes.  From Irving and Cooper to Poe and Hawthorne, the authors use variations of classic gothic writing in their works. Two major characteristics of the gothic in literature are the use of colors, specifically black, white and red, and also the portrayal of supernatural ideas or beings in everyday life.  Finally, the significance of gothic is beyond a mere attempt at scaring a reader or creating a mood, its significance lies in what the author is using it as a tool to lead their reader to where they want them to go.

In the beginning of the semester, we read The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, and Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.  Both of these authors used the gothic in their writing.  One of the most significant aspects of their use of the gothic was how their use changed from that of British authors.  Their style was truly the beginning of American gothic.  In British literature we see gothic settings of castles, abbeys and cathedrals.  America is a new country and there are none of these things.  What there is, however, is an abundance of wilderness.  So authors like Irving and Cooper move their characters into this untamed wilderness and begin to create gothic elements there. 

In Sleepy Hollow, Irving shows Ichabod Crane riding home through the woods one evening.  He constantly is showing the shifting shadows and the interplay of light and dark in the trees.  Anyone who has been outside at night in the woods knows that feeling that Irving describes Ichabod as having.  His senses become heightened and his mind begins to impose lifelike qualities onto his surroundings.  The whole story is based on belief in ghosts and supernatural beings.  Even when it is shown that the culprit is a human, that belief of supernatural beings remains.  Irving uses gothic to set the mood in this story and leads the reader to question what is lurking behind the trees.  By shifting the setting to one that his reader is familiar with, he begins to adapt the traditional ideas of the gothic to a more modern, americanized version of itself.

In Last of the Mohicans, Cooper also uses the wilderness as a background setting for the gothic.  This is something that will define American authors as gothic writers.  Cooper’s characters also are seen in the woods, often at night and the interplay of light and dark again comes into play.  One use of light that Cooper uses that is significant is the use of fire as light.  At several times in the novel Cooper shows a brilliant burst of fire or a roaring fire. Often there is someone or something is the shadow caused by this fire.  Cooper also uses belief in the supernatural, although not as much as Irving.  Cooper’s supernatural comes from his use of the character of Uncas.  Uncas has a tattoo of a turtle on his chest and this belief of the Mohicans about turtles shows their spirituality and belief in higher powers.  Cooper’s use of color is also gothic.  His most powerful gothic image is the color of skin. The different races interacting, and even mingling, is a striking use of gothic.  Cora is a mixed blood (black and white) and Uncas is an Indian (red).  Other characters also have their race used as an element of gothic.  Cora’s innocent sister, Alice, is pure and fair; she’s also the lightest skinned white person. Cooper’s use of color and light and dark is very trend setting and useful in this work.

Both of these authors began to set the basis for a new type of gothic writing.  The next generation of authors embraced their stylistic changes and took them even farther.  Many authors use gothic elements in their writing without their writing being considered part of the gothic genre.  The most compelling example of that is the use of gothic in slave narratives.  Many of the slave narratives follow Cooper’s example and show the races as colors.  One author who used gothic in her slave narrative, with particular success, was Harriet Jacobs in her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. 

In Incidents we see a runaway slave, Linda, live in a tiny space above her grandmothers to escape a hateful owner.  Throughout the passage describing her living situation in the garret, we see bits of light allowed into the dark.  At one point, angry red ants come into the garret and attack Linda.  The use of these three colors (white/light, black/dark, red) lifts the situation out of being a merely horribly uncomfortable one into the realm of a moral and physical struggle.  At the end of the piece Jacobs’ describes her recollection of the time she spent in bondage. The final sentence of the work is another example of her use of light and dark elements. “Yet the retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with those gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good old grandmother, like light, fleecy clouds floating over a dark and troubled sea.”

The use of color as gothic elements is used throughout the American Renaissance.  The two most famous American gothic authors, Poe and Hawthorne, both used color in their writing.  They also used supernatural ideas as compelling forces that interacted with their characters.  Poe and Hawthorne both used gothic elements in most of their stories, but two that stand out as having the most gothic themes and elements are Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher and Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown.

First, in Poe’s short story The Fall of the House of Usher we see him use both the interplay of light and dark colors, as well as moods, and also supernatural ideas.  Poe’s narrator first comes upon the house and sees a dark reflection of the house in the pond before it.  The narrator immediately begins thinking about the effect that this house has on him. He states that “there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us.” This idea is a very supernatural one that sets up the rest of the story in such a way that the reader is very open to other supernatural ideas.

Poe also uses colors in this piece.  We see Madeline Usher as a wisp of white that wanders through the house.  The author again feels an overwhelming sense of melancholy when he sees her. She is another one of the “natural objects” that affects him.  Another point that Poe uses color is in the poem that is in the story. He talks about green valleys, yellow banners, pearl and ruby, red-litten windows, a ghastly river and pale door.  This is the most bold use of color in the story and it all happens in one passage.  This burst of color in the story only emphasizes the darkness in the rest of the piece.

The house in this story takes on a personality of its own and it seems to have its own agenda and spirit.  In a very similar manner, the forest in Hawthorne’s story Young Goodman Brown seems to be another world, unlike the one that the characters normally inhabit.  Hawthorne also uses color and light and dark in the story, and the supernatural is a major point of the story.

Brown takes a walk into the dark and shadowed forest, only to come upon a huge gathering of witches and wickedness that is illuminated by huge pillars of fire and light.  Another use of color is in Brown’s wife Faith.  Faith wears pink ribbons in her hair and throughout the piece we see these ribbons.  The fact that the ribbons are pink can be interpreted many ways, one of which is that they are not white, not pure, but somehow tarnished by red, making them pink.

Also, as Brown walks through the forest everything seems to take on a surreal feeling and people move and come and go in almost inhuman ways.  These characters seem to not be in a normal realm of the world.  When the narrator poses the idea that the night was all a dream, there are many elements of the story that would point to that being true, but most readers have a hard time committing to the idea that such vivid recollections could be a dream.

In all of these stories we see the authors use color, the interplay of light and dark, and supernatural beliefs and ideals.  The use of gothic is not merely a stylistic tool that these authors use to make the reader gasp or jump.  The gothic in these pieces leads the readers mind into places that they would not normally go.  These authors take familiar settings and situations and force the reader to think about them, and the world, in a different way.  The authors do not preach or even come out and state blatantly what they think, but they use these gothic elements to lead the reader to think on their own about what the authors deeper purpose and ideals might be. That is why the gothic movement, especially in America, is so vivid and important. [KP]

 

[First half of email essay answer]

During the eighteen-century, writers began to move away from the stark, realistic literary style of the Enlightenment toward a style rich in older romantic traditions.  The purpose was to remove the reader from the ordinary, everyday world to one of exotic and unfamiliar origins.  This was the beginning of the Romantic Era and stemming from this movement came the Gothic novel.  This unique genre combines most of the elements of the Romantic novel, but adds a dark twist.  The emphasis in the Gothic world is with the horrible, grotesque, supernatural, and/or the mysterious.  This produces feelings of fear or uneasiness for those brave enough to turn the pages.

            Traditional, or European Gothic, as used by Poe, contains such characteristics as, but by no means limited to, an old, decaying, gabled castle or manor house where some sinister deed took place in the past, usually death.  Hidden passageways, tombs, casks, or dungeons where whatever action is to be performed is done at night or in a sunless or claustrophobic atmosphere.  The mood tends to be dark, dreary, and colorless or gray and there exists a prevalent sense of apprehension coupled with a premonition of impending doom or inexplicable disaster.  The Gothic architecture used in connection with a dark story supplies the perfect setting to terrorize or overwhelm the reader.

            Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper both use the wilderness Gothic in their writing.  This is a convention that projects the architectural features of the Gothic castle onto nature.  The reason for using this particular method is probably because America did not contain old, decaying castles, so the mysterious forests filled with savage Indians was the next best thing.  This convention does add the necessary darkness and mystery to the mood of the stories, but appears to offer little else.  Though some self-reflection takes place, the reader does not feel like a better person for reading them.              Irving effectively used the convention of wilderness Gothic in both “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.  An excellent example is seen when Ichabod is riding through the forest at night and happens upon the enormous form of a tulip tree with its “gnarled and fantastic limbs…twisting down almost to the earth…” (2801).  At one point the tree moans at Ichabod, thus adding an even eerier tone.

            Cooper uses the Gothic in both setting and as a tool to symbolize repressed feelings or sins of past violence.  Readers journey through a secret cave hidden behind a waterfall to an abandoned, “decayed block-house…crumbling in the solitude of the forest…” (125).  The memory of first blood drawn by Hawk-eye as a youngster and the graves of the fallen Mohawks, bring back the repressed memory of the horrible acts of the past.  Cooper also uses the Gothic as a matter of light and dark to enhance the setting, but there is a particular emphasis on the differing shades of the characters’ skin.  For instance, Magua, Cora, and Alice would represent the red, black, and white of the Gothic color scheme.

            When Gothic style is mentioned, the first name that is recalled is usually Edgar Allan Poe.  He was a popular writer whose use of strong imagery and spectacular stories of grotesque nature has earned him a spot on the classical shelf of literature.  He distinct style of writing led to his popular image of an insane drug addict.  This is due in part to the fact that his readers were unable to separate the real man – a working alcoholic – from the fictionalized “I” character of his work.

            As mentioned previously, Poe was prone to using elements of European Gothic, but he was able to move beyond the physical realm and into that of the psychological by using the convention of correspondence.  This technique, as you stated in class, relocates the Gothic space to the mind itself and only needs a place to project it.  In other words, a change in the surrounding environment or nature correlates to a change in the state of mind of the character or even the reader.  Poe effectively uses this convention in “The Fall of the House of Usher” when the narrator is approaching the Usher home and with his first glimpse of the decaying structure “a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded [his] spirit” (2401).  Here the structure represents the environment and the gloom is the state of being.  The reverse is also true as witnessed on page 2405, Roderick’s “unceasing radiation of gloom” works in opposition to affect the characters and the atmosphere. . . .  [DE-S]