LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2010 final exam—Answers to Question B1

Jeff Derrickson

A Legacy of Fear

          The American Renaissance cannot be explored fully without mentioning the element of the gothic. This dark aspect of literature is pervasive throughout this time period, appearing in some capacity in almost every text examined in class. The gothic has survived to be woven, like a spider’s web, with modern pop culture, though the question stands: why? The gothic is a multifaceted tool a writer uses to examine the sensibilities of both the character and the reader, and it is this personal intrusion that makes it so appealing. The gothic applies to several environments, states of mind, and religious sentimentality, and allows the reader to explore the darker aspects of all three without the danger of losing himself in the process.

Gothic elements developed from the fear of the unknown, especially concerning the virgin wilderness, which was usually portrayed as a perilous and sinful environment that would either lead to death or demonry. Washington Irving capitalized on this fear in both Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, as the wildernesses of each story played upon superstitions and fear. Nathaniel Hawthorne would utilize this superstitious wilderness gothic directly in Young Goodman Brown, as Brown enters a forest that seems to close behind him as he ventures on his dark errand. Readers on the time must have been absolutely captivated by these tales, because the chances that they would be in the heart of the forest at night, or at all, were slim.

The gothic also represented the complexities of the human mind, linking it to complex castles, houses, or structures, and allowed readers to explore the unknown qualities of the soul. Edgar Allan Poe was indeed a master of this, as he himself had much to explore. Poe had a hard life that might have echoed the lives of some of his audience, and his writing provided an outlet to express the darker impulses of humanity. Perhaps the reason that readers like Poe so much is that his writing is so indulgent, both in language and deliciously sinister content. In The Fall of the House of Usher, Poe’s sweeping descriptions of the “mansion of gloom” dominate much of the story. Such attention characterized the author’s over-the-top way of tying significance to his depictions. Correspondence is used, as the house symbolizes the state of the Usher family embodied in Roderick, who was as “profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered” as the furniture he sat on. The story plays upon superstitions such as being buried alive

          William Wilson, which is also guilty of interpretable gothic structures, is characteristic of Poe’s exploration of the darker natures of man. He uses the literary element of the doppelganger to split Wilson from his very conscience, which allows Wilson to indulge in a multitude of “ungovernable passions” such as “secret carousals,” gambling, and murder. The traits of Wilson and Roderick Usher echo Poe’s own, and that they all are self-destructive individuals separated from the masses lends to their characterization as Byronic heroes. That Poe himself can be examined alongside his fiction in this manner is a testament to the power of romanticism and the gothic.

          Young Goodman Brown brings the gothic into familiar religious territory. The idea of a malicious Devil presiding over an ever welcoming pit of suffering to those who live sinfully is rooted in romantic thought. Puritans linked this terrifying fate to the wilderness, which became synonymous with sin. This notion held their closely-knit theocratic societies together, as they were bound by a healthy fear of the unknown afterlife. Goodman Brown’s journey into the woods reveals to him the possibility that everyone in his village has turned to Satan, including his wife, the paragon of virtue, Faith. He is willing to follow the Devil into the woods because he is curious enough to want a taste of the delicious sin he has lived his life worrying about. Dream or not, what Brown sees leads him into a cantankerous life full of distrust and relative gloom. The reader can accompany Brown into the woods, as he might be just as curious about sin, but he will not suffer as Brown suffers. The gothic can allow a reader to explore even Hell without recompense.

          Life in the Iron Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis, exemplifies that the gothic would survive into the next era of literary realism. The industrialization of America was well underway, and Davis describes her West Virginia town as living in the shadow of monstrous factories’ “nightmare fog” of smoke that touches everyone and everything. She likens the environment of an iron mill to Hell, with “wide cauldrons filled with boiling fire,” and “half-clad men, looking like revengeful ghosts” attending them. It is here that the idea of a social machine that devours the souls of the many nameless people that serve as its components becomes gothic. This idea can also be seen in Thoreau’s Resistance to Civil Government: “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.” The fact that Hugh Wolfe is separated from this dynamic places him in the same Byronic hero category shared by Roderick Usher and Goodman Brown. The fear of losing one’s self to an all-powerful corporate or industrial machine is significant, and makes it ripe for gothic infusion and exploration.

          The gothic survives to this day because it is inexorably tied to the primal human emotion of fear, which will not fade, just as the works of the American Renaissance will not fade. Fear can be linked to fun, as there are people who love a good scare. The gothic is nested in this fear, and allows readers to wander haunted forests, indulge the darkest recesses of the mind, and stare down Satan without immediate danger. The gothic might be seen as fantasy, but the fantasy of the gothic is tethered to reality. Therefore, the gothic will always be present in American culture despite predilections to romanticism or realism.