LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2003 sample answers to final exam question on the Gothic

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

· Briefly refer to Irving and Cooper

· Refer more extensively to Poe and Hawthorne

· Additionally refer to at least one other text or author (in these additional cases the Gothic may appear only briefly or tangentially, and we may not have gotten around to discussing these manifestations thoroughly in class, but there are plenty of examples in our readings).

· As a conclusion, consider the purposes or significance of the Gothic.

[nearly complete answer from email final]

Gothic style in American Renaissance Literature is used primarily to evoke a mood or set a tone to a writer’s work. Several techniques are utilized to achieve this goal. Typically, the stark colors of white, black and red representing good, evil and possibly the blood of man caught in the eternal struggle between the two opposing elements are found scattered throughout the story. The portrayal of ordinary objects, such as a house or tree, metamorphosing into eerie structures or things that somehow embody a malevolent sentience is also an indicator that the author is enlisting gothic elements to transport the reader out of their normal reality and into another realm. This unsettling style can also be used to tip the reader’s consciousness off guard so that it enters a malleable state that is more open to the subtle suggestions and questions of morality posed in the author’s stories.

European authors initiated the gothic style and used old castles, mansions and cathedrals to reflect another dimension of good, evil and the eternal struggle. American authors such as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper applied the same style elements to the American wilderness to achieve a mood or tone in their works. This was partially due to the fact that America, as a younger country, did not have ancient man-made structures and also due to the sense of mystery and danger existing in the unexplored territories. In Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, (2093-2112) Ichabod Crane’s nightmarish ride through the shadowy forest is an example of the gothic style. As “the night grew darker and darker,” he encounters a tulip-tree, connected with a tragic story that seems to harbor unpleasant memories: it “towered like a giant,” the limbs “gnarled, and fantastic,” and the branches rubbing together produced a groaning sound bringing human-like life to a plant. Confronted by a“ huge, misshapen, black and towering” figure, Ichabod races to reach the safety of a white washed church, “dimly glaring under the trees beyond.” This juxtaposition of dark (black), frightening and evil with light (white), safety and sanctity combined with the pairing of ordinary objects to extraordinary sights and sounds serves to formulate paranormal ideas with images creating a unsettling tone in the book and in the reader’s mind.

Cooper also uses these formulaic gothic elements of white, black and red in his novel, The Last of the Mohicans. Although gothic images can be found in Cooper’s description of the forest with its “dark canopy” and “numberless trunks of trees, that rose in dark lines” (p.27), Cooper also uses the classic gothic colors to explore more complex issues of race and prejudice. Alice has extremely pale skin and blonde hair and Cooper often reiterates her virtues of almost angelic innocence and goodness. Cora, on the other hand, has black hair and dark eyes and “her complexion was not brown, but it was rather charged with the colour of rich blood, that seemed ready to burst its bound” (p. 20). Cora character is not the helpless “damsel in distress” like her sister Alice, but instead more worldly, resourceful and independent. Cora, with her darker features and unconventional heritage, breaks away from the expected traditional female stereotype. She, not Alice, is the heroine of the novel, overcoming greater trials and dying a martyr’s death. Uncas, the purebred “red” Indian, is her unlikely counterpart also dying a hero’s death in her defense. Although their illicit love is never consummated, Cooper unites them in death, alluding to the shifting realities of race and heritage in America despite puritanical protocol.

Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the most obvious American Gothic author. The black, white and red colors schemes and his creepy imagery, with its often “phantasmagoric” and illusionary effects, threaten the reader’s sense of reality and sensory perception. An unsettling distrust into what is real or unreal preys on the mind. In The Fall of the House of Usher the pale figure of Madeline wandering around the house in the dark, stormy night, “blood upon her white robe,” forces the reader to ponder the seemingly simple question of whether she is dead or alive. Also, in the beautiful, yet haunting poem, Annabel Lee, the light of the moon, stars and eyes of his beloved offsets the darkness of the night. However, the final image of a man lying down with his dead wife confound the reader with questions of what is right and what is wrong. Is it metaphorical or could Poe be suggesting the unthinkable? The gothic images breach a psychological barrier, simultaneously tantalizing and repelling the reader.

Nathaniel Hawthorne takes this psychological breach a step further. He is not content to merely place our reality in question with the use of gothic elements, but also seeks to place our morality in flux. Hawthorne resists puritanical doctrines of black/white, good/evil and right/wrong and subtly suggests that there exists a gray area that is not definitive. In Young Goodman Brown seemingly pious folks converge in the woods at night to embrace evil. His wife, Faith, “a blessed angel on earth” (2187) with pink (a blend of white and red) ribbons in her hair, begs him not to go out at night, but Brown insists. “She talks of dreams, too” (2187), Brown thinks to himself, indicating that he is spurred by a dream. Once Brown enters the “deep dusk in the forest” (2187), with its “uncertain light” his reality begins to shift. He meets with people he considers religious and yet is horrified to find they are on a satanic mission. In his fear and madness he gropes for the image of Faith, but it is revealed that she is one of the converts as well. The classic gothic colors are in full regalia in the climatic scene in the forest: “dark world,” water, reddened by the lurid light? Or was it blood,” “pale wife” (2194). The reader is left in a quandary when Brown returns to his town; was it a dream or reality? Now a sullen, joyless man, his death is marked by gloom. Hawthorne, after presenting unsettling gothic images, gives no firm proclamation. He leaves the door open for the reader to reflect upon the conflicting moral issues. . . .

The Gothic style in American Renaissance Literature certainly evokes a mood and sets a slightly anxious and uncomfortable tone to a story for entertainment purposes. However, it also can produce an unsettled mind and psyche in the reader by which an author can introduce new and perhaps unconventional ideas in order to stretch our conceptions of ideals and morality. The time period of the American Renaissance was a time of growth and a search for truth and many authors of that time used gothic imagery to explore the emerging issues, questioning conventions and supporting individuality. [DD]

[complete answer from email final]

Throughout the semester we have focused on the literary use of the gothic. The authors of the American Renaissance use this technique to captivate readers in a number of ways. Authors such as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper rely on the raw natural settings of the new American country for its gloomy passageways and unique color schemes. Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne use dark gothic images to convey an overall feeling within the reader. Because the gothic involves such an array of colors and symbols, early American authors quickly realized that they could tap into its mysterious imagery and enthrall their readers, thus gaining the ability to express their messages.

Washington Irving uses the gothic to transmit his stories of mystery and suspense. Since America is quite young and there are no castles or dark alleyways about which to write, Irving relies on wooded areas and the colors and sounds of nature. Irving paints a picture of the archways created by the trees and the darkness of the woods as Ichabod is trotting through the haunted forest to confront the Hessian trooper:

In the center of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled, and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. (2108)

With the gothic result of the “gnarled” limbs, readers feel fear as Ichabod gallops along the road through the dark dell. Without the elaborate descriptions of the gangly character’s surroundings, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” would be dull and difficult to imagine.

Similarly, in James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, the diverse group of characters must traverse the untapped wilderness of New York in order to return to the girls’ father and safety. The story of the trials and tribulations of the group is elaborate on its own, but Cooper’s detailed description of their surroundings help the reader to imagine and share in their experiences. Readers gain a sense the circumstances faced by the story’s characters through the dark images Cooper presents with his lavish descriptions of “cragged rocks [and] fantastic limbs and ragged tree-tops“ (Cooper 48). In addition, Cooper also uses fire and light as a contrast to the gloomy wooded setting. For instance, Cooper describes the scene in Magua’s hut toward the end of the novel:

Occasionally, the air breathed through the crevices of the hut, and the low flames that fluttered about the embers of the fire, threw their wavering light on the person of the sullen recluse. At such moments, it would not have been difficult to have fancied the dusky savage the Prince of Darkness, brooding in his own fancied wrongs, and plotting evil (284).

The description of Magua is extremely dark and creepy, but his obscurity is made more evident with the light provided by the fire. Finally, Cooper often describes the travelers using the colors black, red, and white, which are the predominant shades of the gothic. The colors are used to illustrate the diversity of the group: Alice and Duncan are white; Uncas and Chingachgook are red; and Cora is both black and white. The multiplicity is farther distinguished when love arises between Uncas and Cora, providing the reader with a blend of the three gothic colors.

Edgar Allan Poe’s writing is universally known as dark and gothic. He often makes the contrast between light and dark and living and dead in his poems and short stories. The pictures Poe paints of “Ligeia” and the House of Usher are the epitome of the gothic disparity between light and dark. He describes Ligeia’s skin as “rivaling the purest ivory,” her hair as “raven-black,” and her eyes as “shining […] divine orbs”(Poe 2391). From his description, the reader can imagine a very dark and mysterious creature with well-defined features, a very gothic image similar to the modernized interpretation of gothic as a style or fashion by teenagers. The same dark features are described in regards to the House of Usher:

…I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down […] upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. (Poe 2401)

The dark images continue throughout the story as he describes the house as a “mansion of gloom.” At the very end of “The Fall of the House of Usher” Poe describes Madeline of Usher and the “blood upon her white robes,” providing the red color imagery and farther emphasizing the scary feel of the story. In addition, he makes one last contrast with his escape from the house on a path led by a “wild light,” the “shadows” from the house behind him, and the “blood-red moon” 2413). Poe speaks of life and death in his poem, “Annabel Lee.” He describes a live person visiting a dead person when he writes:

And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side

Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,

In the sepulchre by the sea—

In her tomb by the sounding sea. (Poe 38-41)

This provides an intrinsic contrast between life, which is associated with light and the death, which is associated with dark.

Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the gothic throughout his novels and stories. In “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Hooper, a respected and religious figure wears a dark veil and provides a very gothic effect with the blend of a light moral character wearing a veil commonly worn by a dark sinful character. In addition, Hawthorne provides several descriptions of Hooper as he interacts with the people of his congregation and illustrates the contrast between the veil and the bright smile and nature of the man wearing it. One member of Hooper’s congregation makes the observation: “The black veil, thought it covers only our pastor’s face, throws its influence over his whole person, and makes him ghost-like from head to foot” (Hawthorne 2197). The veil provides a gothic mystery about the minister. His smile is described as a “glimmering of light […] proceeding from the obscurity beneath the veil” (2200). The veil itself gives a gloomy feel to the story and brings together color, light and dark, and moral imagery created by the gothic literary technique:

By the aid of his mysterious emblem—for there was no other apparent cause—he became a man of awful power, over souls that were in agony for sin. His converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves, affirming, though but figuratively, that, before he brought them to celestial light, they had been with him behind the black veil. Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections. (Hawthorne 2201)

Through the use of gothic imagery, Hawthorne is able to convey his deeper message through the use of the veil as a parable. The darkness felt by the reader will enable them to see the meaning and symbolism behind the story and the presence of the hypocrisy of society.

The use of the gothic is not exclusive to classic and popular literature. Representative authors such as Harriet Jacobs also employ it. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs describes the pain and torture she suffers as a slave, which invokes a dark and gloomy feeling within the reader already. The most evident use of gothic imagery is seen when Jacobs must live in the dark attic of her grandmother’s house with only a gleam of light out of which she may take a glimpse of day and of her children whom are outside. Jacobs ends her narrative with a recollection of her days as a slave and of her grandmother:

It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could. 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. (1985)

The emotional comparison of the clouds, which symbolize her grandmother, and the sea, which symbolizes slavery, effectively utilizes the gothic with the contrast of light and dark. She also uses this contrast when she compares “gloomy recollections” and “tender memories.”

Authors use the gothic to captivate readers for one purpose or another. Nature and life provide gloomy images that reader can relate to. Gothic does not necessarily serve to scare readers as much as to enthrall them. Contrasts between dark and light, happiness and sadness, and life and death keep literature moving instead of remaining stagnant and boring. [SR]

[complete answer from email final]

The study of the gothic and its variations has been a recurring theme in many of the texts read this semester. It is a tool used by many authors and poets, not only to scare the readers, but to instill a feeling and an image in the mind of the audience. The gothic is more than colors and other visual sights. It is a mood different from other genres. It makes the reader become involved, and takes them on a journey into the story. The norm is thrown out of whack, and the readers can make their own conclusions about the story.

Many characteristics go into defining the gothic. The most obvious is the use of colors. Red, black, and white are all colors associated with the gothic. Light and dark are also interplayed with each other often, used as symbols mostly for good and evil. The past is usually revisited, by either a hidden secret coming out or a remembrance of evil doings of the past and the affect it is having on the characters in the story. This usually brings in the supernatural, which fits accordingly to today’s readers because of the unknown about the supernatural, and everyone’s interest in it.

Irving and Cooper write with the new American concept of the gothic. They use the wilderness as a setting, instead of the decaying churches and cathedrals we see in European Gothic that Poe and Hawthorne use. This was a complete change from what we were used to seeing with British poets in their use of the gothic. The reader could now journey into the wilds of America, which was unknown territory. This unfamiliar aspect brought readers into a new world, which is scary when you they used to British ideas and settings.

Irving uses the American wilderness in his writings. One example is in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Irving shows us just how scary the wilderness can really be when he has Ichabod Crane ride through the woods late one night. The colors of the night are the first visuals we get when seeing Ichabod riding on his horse through the woods. Irving uses the light/dark interplay a lot, with the blackness of the night, and the moon shining through the trees. It gives a sort of scary evanescence thinking about being alone out there and what it must be like, with just the light of the moon scraping through the gaps in the trees. The setting heightens the senses, making the audience and Ichabod wonder, “What’s out there?” That is when Irving brings in the supernatural and correspondence to help that heightening of the senses. Ichabod hears sounds in the woods, scaring him. At the same time, because he is so scared, his mind starts to play tricks on him, and consequently hears more coming from the woods. It is a vicious cycle one can get in if frightened enough.

Cooper also uses the American wilderness gothic in The Last of the Mohicans. The description of Glenn Falls is dripping with gothic images. Again, light/dark imagery is used, but now a waterfall with jagged rocks and winding ways is involved. Light/dark is used in Cora’s bloodline, as well. Cooper keeps her past a secret until further in the book. Although Cooper only hinted at it in the beginning, the readers pick up on it through the contrast of Cora and Alice. The dark verses the fair and innocent. Cooper makes the light/dark usually associated with the gothic be in humans, themselves, with the difference in skin and blood. He even matches their personalities with their skin, allowing the reader to draw some conclusions before being told anything. The darkness of the Indians ties in with their strong will and fierceness. Cora was a mix. She was strong, but also sympathetic. Alice was the fairest in skin, and she also turned out to be the fairest in personality.

Poe and Hawthorne use the gothic just as extravagantly, but often in different ways than Irving and Cooper. Poe uses the British concept of Gothicism by using castles and cathedrals with arched entryways, often found abandoned and decaying. In Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, he uses a house where an evil deed of some kind was done previously. The British concept differs from the American in that of looks and setting, but some of the same techniques are used. The interplay between light and dark is used again, as that is a gothic theme for both American and British authors. Darkness is scary to us, and the authors use that to their advantage. Poe even brings in the color red, to complete the color pattern of the gothic. In house of Usher, he describes the moon as being blood-red. So not only is the moon red, which is a color not usually associated with the moon, but it is “blood” red, making the image more grotesque and more gothic. In the first few lines, we get a sense of the supernatural coming in to play. The narrator walks up to the house, and sees the death and decay and can only wonder what is out there to get him. I can see him looking over his shoulders every other second and turning around in circles so as not to have his back facing anything for too long of a time. Like Ichabod, his mind starts to play tricks on him. Just looking at the house brings “insufferable gloom” in his mind and he starts corresponding with the scene around him. The scariness of the house and the landscape makes the narrator even more scared, and makes him left wondering again, “What’s out there?” So it’s not only Poe’s description of the setting and the house that obviously shows his use of the Gothic, but the techniques he uses to get in the head of the reader.

Hawthorne’s style was like Poe’s with its use of colors and of the supernatural. In Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne has a man who seems meek in personality enter the dark, shadowy woods meet up with the devil. The idea in itself is extremely Gothic-now the Devil is even being brought in as a supernatural device. Hawthorne uses colors more symbolically, as he uses it to describe a person and their tendencies, in both YGB and The Minister’s Black Veil. Faith, Goodman’s wife is always being referred to pink, which is not done much by the other authors. Her name is light and fair, and her ribbon is too, until you start to really think about it. The ribbon is not white and not red, but mixed. Faith is not simply pure and innocent, but scathed or tarnished in some way(s). In Black Veil, the veil is used as a symbol for the sins all humans have, the guilt that comes along with it, and the refusal to change their ways. The forest in YGB is filled with what could be the supernatural. He hears things and sees things he cannot distinguish. When he does see people, they seem to be floating and moving mysteriously over him, in a dream-like mode.

Emily Dickinson is another writer who can be linked to the gothic in many ways. I do not consider her a gothic writer but she definitely has tendencies to lean in that direction, and writes about it so well, that I thought I’d include her. Her life was a mystery, too, which engrosses many readers and may help to aid her gothic tendencies. She experiments with death, which is a theme of hers when dealing with the gothic. In “I heard a Fly buzz” she writes from the viewpoint of a dead person, which is more grotesque and ingenious than just writing about death from a second hand point of view. The fly is an animal that feeds on death and decay, and she brings in the insect after just three words of the poem. Her use of syntax helps to mold the Gothicism of the poem. She writes that the stillness around her was like the “Heaves of Storm” indicating tension and a deadly calm in the room. She writes of the King of terrors coming upon her, leaving an allusive meaning for the audience of the excessive amount of death in the room. She deals with the gothic in a completely different style than that of these other authors, and tackles the issues differently, but leaves the reader shuddering, just like a good gothic writer can do.

The gothic takes a reader’s mind to places it hasn’t been before, and leaves the reader wondering. It is powerful, and is filled with so many much detail and mystery at the same time, that a reader can get lost in a story, and feel a part of it more than other types of genres. [SS]

[nearly complete answer from email final]

Many of the authors that have been studied throughout the semester have included the use of gothic elements in their writings. Some writers have used the elements to create a mood or theme. Others have vaguely used the gothic elements by only lightly touching the surface of the gothic. The major characteristics of the gothic in literature are the use of colors, specifically black, white, and red, and also using the ideas of the supernatural. Yet another use of the gothic that is used in American Literature that differs from that in European Romanticism is the description of gothic that occurs in nature versus the European castle or dungeon. The significance of the use of the gothic in American Literature is that the authors use it to lead the reader down a path that they might not willingly want to go.

Gothic elements are observably present in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and in The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. Because in America there were no decaying castles or ancient cathedrals, they both used the natural landscape of the American wilderness to create the gothic elements. The authors were both very successful in creating the new gothic styles that appeared in American Literature.

Irving uses the elements of light and dark of the gothic throughout the story. He purposefully places Ichabod Crane in the forest at night to exaggerate the mood of the story. Because of the description of the scenery and the noises heard by Ichabod, the forest comes alive. Irving leads the reader into the realm of the supernatural with the innate surroundings becoming almost lifelike. Cooper also uses the American Wilderness as the setting of Last of the Mohicans. However, he more obviously uses the gothic colors of black, white, and red in the descriptions of the characters. Alice is pure white and is often referred to as being the innocent or fair one. Cora is of mixed blood, black and white, while Uncas is an Indian, red. The most obvious use of this is towards the end of the novel when Magua speaks of the different colors of skin. Cooper also uses the idea of the mystical or supernatural in Uncas. Uncas is the last of the pure Mohican and has the tattoo of a tortoise on his chest. This image showed the Indian belief in the supernatural and as evidence of an existence of a power higher than their own.

Yet another author than uses elements of the gothic, but is not considered a part of the genre of gothic, is Harriet Jacobs. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Jacobs uses the elements of the dark with a bit of light and sometimes a hint of red. In the attic crawl-space in which she lived, it was almost totally dark, only with a hint of light occasionally shining in. While in the attic, Jacobs also describes being bitten by tiny red ants. The use of these colors brings the novel into a realm of the gothic. In the last sentence of Incidents, Jacobs once again uses the elements of light and dark. “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.”

Two other Renaissance authors, Poe and Hawthorne, more extensively use the gothic elements in most of their stories. They not only used colors throughout their stories, but they used the interaction of the supernatural ideas with their characters. These are most evident in Fall of the House of Usher by Poe and Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown.

In Fall of the House of Usher, Poe uses the elements of dark and light colors, gothic moods, and the sense of the existence of supernatural ideas. To begin, and set the mood for the whole story, Poe provides an eerie description of the house, which causes it to become almost life-like. The view of the house frightens the narrator who feels like the house has a life of its own in its “vacant eye-like windows”. He even states that “there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us.” As stated by K.P. in the Spring 2002 semester, “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.” . . . . [KM]

[complete answer from email final]

Using objective two as a guide throughout this course, we have studied the gothic elements present in many American Renaissance texts. American authors drew their gothic inspiration from European influences. Unlike the European gothic trends, which were set in haunted castles and ancient churches, American authors used forestry and wilderness as their gothic architecture. Cooper in his novel, Last of The Mohicans, used ideas such as the “vastness” and “dark encompassing veil of the woods” to convey gothic settings. The transformation of the gothic style into American literature incorporated the familiar concept of nature into its text, drawing in frontier audiences who lived among the wild forests and could empathize with the dark shadows from trees and creepy sounds at night. Irving, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, capitalized on his audiences’ knowledge of the forest by using the deep woods as the setting for his story. He used gothic terms such as “gnarled” limbs and “broken” rocks to emphasis the dread and doom that could be present with in the wild woods.

Gothic literature in America stretched farther than residing castles and even forests and penetrated its way into the human psyche. Poe used correspondence techniques to relate the human mind to a twisted labyrinth of gothic architecture. In his poem, “Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe uses illustrations such as “eye-like windows” to relate body parts to structural foundations of a house. This combination of the European gothic, which incorporates a mysterious house with numerous doors and hallways with the new American displaced gothic setting works to make Poe’s modification of Gothic themes innovative and revolutionary, expressing the creative styles that were present and developing during the American Renaissance time period.

Hawthorne uses a conventional American town setting to develop his story, The Minister’s Black Veil. Hawthorne capitalizes on his American audiences’ knowledge of town life and the affairs that are common in towns. Hawthorn creatively weaves gothic trends into the everyday lives of the villagers and steadily bombards his readers with gothic imagery breaking the standard norms with in the town. Hooper’s veil brings gothic images of darkness and disillusionment into the village, which before the veil was seen as a common town. Hawthorn uses many forms for gothic techniques in his novel one of the most captivating uses of the gothic ideals is his application of the gothic colors of red, black and white. Unlike Cooper, who uses the mixing of the white, red, and black races to evoke gothic intrigue, Hawthorn excites his readers with gothic imagery through everyday symbols. The wedding scene in “Black Veil” elaborately weaves the gothic trinity of colors together creating webs of horror. By fusing the wedding, normally associated with white, with the “deathlike paleness” of the bride, Hawthorne creates a paradox between the idea of the purity of white and death being white. He goes on to twist this scene with addition of the wine (assuming red), which in its self carries a bittersweet taste, juxtaposing that with the idea of the dysfunctional wedding. Finally Hawthorn refers to the black veil, which “involved his (Hooper’s) own spirit of horror.”

The colors combine together to create a discord and obscurity to the supposed joyous occasion of the wedding.

Other authors incorporate gothic themes and trends into their writings without having the gothic mystique engulf the whole creation. Dickinson fuses word combinations such as “ Heavenly Hurt” and “Slant of light” making gothic connections between the ideas of light and goodness with pain and dysfunction. Whitman, not known for gothic intrigue, incorporates gothic elements into his poem, “Memories of President Lincoln.” Whitman uses dark imagery such as “cities draped in black”, “spotting the gray debris” and the “coffin” aligning it with the beautiful lively essence of the lilacs and early roses. These images combine the gothic dark and death with the living quality of the flowers. Whitman’s use of the red roses, black coffin, and white lilacs also conjure up gothic color themes.

Gothic literature has a significant place in American culture. Gothic stories entice the mind to explore the escape to the supernatural while still being subject to the natural and aware of everyday occurrences. Gothic literature works to stretch the human understanding of life, fate and death. It opens doors for new expressions and creative outlets for authors and audiences to deal with issues that surpass the human confines of understanding such as death and the after life. [JN]

[excerpts from email final]

Imbedded in many, if not most, of the products of literature from American Renaissance is the element of the gothic. Adapted from its European form, found mainly in the mysterious and ancient castles and mansions that decorated the European countryside, the gothic in the Americas inhabited the ancient and mysterious forests that decorated the American countryside. With this initial adaptation, implemented by writers such as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, the gothic was frequently used in other genres, such as in Emerson’s essays and Harriet Jacob’s slave narrative. In the meantime the gothic underwent even more adaptations by authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, who created a form of the gothic known as the puritan-moral gothic. Across the board, the gothic in all of its environments, even in its original environment of the mysterious mansion, as seen in Edgar Allan Poe’s writings, the gothic has been used by American authors because of its usefulness in creating the mysterious and adding elements of the supernatural, both of which are components that give such literature its long life.

Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper brought the gothic into the wilderness in their works. Characterized by its usage of light and dark and the color scheme of white black and red, the gothic is found in the forest and the characters in the forest. . . . This interplay of light and dark in the forest is also seen in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, in the characters of Magua and Alice. Alice . . . is the embodiment of goodness, as Magua, like the “Legend” is the embodiment of darkness and evil. The composition of the two realms in the darkness creates the mysterious and suspense the authors are aiming for. Also seen in Cooper’s work is the color scheme of the gothic in the characters: Uncas, who is red, Alice, who is white, and Cora who is a mixture of both black and white. This color scheme plays into the story as the white and unmixed blood goes free (Alice, Hawkeye, and Chicago), whole those of mixed blood and mixed relationships (Cora and Uncas) have to die. All the gothic traits are used brilliantly in the story. . . .

Another adaptation of the gothic within the genre of the novel and the short story was accomplished by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his creation of the Puritan-moral gothic. Hawthorne uses the gothic in much the same way as Cooper and Irving, but he adds another dimension to it. The resemblance to Cooper and Irving are in his talk of the ministers customary walk to the graveyard in “The Minister’s Black Veil,” and in the night spent in the forest in and by “Young Goodman Brown.” The difference is seen in his use of light and dark in his characters as states of mind. Parson Hooper, for example, uses the black veil to represent some unknown sin of his, which creates the mystery. A parson is supposed to be the person of light and goodness, and with the veil both light and dark collide, not only in the Parson’s mind, but in the minds of the people in the story: “A subtle power was breathed into his words. Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought” (2197). In this we see that the gothic in the mind is being intimately linked with morality, and it is a dynamic new way to use the gothic. . .

Adapted from its original European form, the gothic is still being adapted in the present as seen by the suburban gothic and the space gothic. [KV]

[excerpt from email final]

. . . Slowly, American authors began to infuse their works with the elements of the British Gothic. However, the first daunting task was the location. British Gothic existed in towering cathedrals and dilapidated churches. These structures where often dark and dank, slowly degenerating due to time, cold, hard and containing towers that spiked the clouds. The fresh America landscape had yet to be littered with old gothic architecture as of yet so American Writers had no where to place their gothic talents. Irving met the challenge in "Rip Van Winkle" by taking the elements out of the British ruins and placing them in more familiar American settings, the wild frontier. The cold darkness intermingled with the pointed spires formed the vast darkness of the wild canopy. The sounds and screams in the night substituted for the haunted ghosts and the sudden yells found in British Gothic, while the splash of red almost always stayed the same and was represented by either the moon light or splashes of blood. Slowly the woods became the gothic structure by inheriting the same mysterious ambience and hidden secrets associated with the British Gothic style. The stylized difference that marked Irving as different from the future Gothic Poets fell in the ability to describe the interplay of lights and shadows that danced in the woods. Irving takes you inside the forest and lets you ride beside Ichabod Crane as he travels the dark pathways. As one student answered in a previous paper, anyone who has been in the woods at night knows the dark feelings of paranoia that creep into your subconscious. Even the most stout of hearts can fear a shadow or a sound. [RA]