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

Jennifer Martin

Gothic Death

          The Gothic and all its descriptions is an important element in American Renaissance. It pops up everywhere in some capacity or another; whether it is in the city or in the forest; whether it is scary or romantic; it thrives in this particular thread of literature. Simply described, the gothic uses fear, disruption, blood and death of the body or mind then adds darkness, shadow, and unsettling settings in their various stages of decay or spookiness to unnerve the reader. The authors we have studied in this course use those elements and play with them to achieve different kinds of gothic. Most of the stories end in death; are associated with the death of an idea; or have characters literarily running for their lives to escape death. Cooper’s use of the gothic at the beginning of the semester was interesting. He applied the gothic color code of black, white and red to his characters and tangled with the meanings of those colors. His use of black in its reference to Cora signified her dark secret and her mysterious cleverness. White, as it was applied to her sister, characterized her as innocent and pure. Cooper also used red and applied it to the Indians to suggest that they were neither good nor evil but maybe something in-between; a wise and useful people that couldn’t always be trusted. In the end of his story the dark and the red colors are swallowed by death and the “good” or white color gets to live. We also learned through stories like The “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” that the original or classic gothic of decaying ruins, castles etc. changed with American literature. Since our country was new the gothic setting needed to be changed and therefore the wilderness gothic was invented.  However the setting did not change the element of death. In the end of Sleepy Hollow we are led to believe that Ichabod Crane is murdered by the frightful Headless Horseman and in “Rip Van Winkle” the character is left alone because many of his relatives, friends and even his dog have died with the passage of time. During the last half of the semester we learned new elements about the gothic form. Authors like Davis, Hawthorne and Dickinson created interesting adaptations of the gothic form with the use of the urban gothic, moral gothic and psychological gothic.

          “Life in the Iron Mills” by Rebecca Davis is one of the best examples of urban gothic that I’ve studied. While it seems too realistic to be considered romantic gothic, there is a deeper side of the story that houses a realistic story inside gothic walls. There are many examples of this throughout the story. Starting with Deb we discover that the woman is “deformed, almost a hunchback”; not a beautiful woman which is normally associated with the romantic but this is an example of the gothic grotesque. There is also the setting which is largely urban gothic. The use of the gothic color code comes alive in the industrial site and the use of dark and light is constantly displayed. Davis uses words like fog, ash, soot and smoke to convey darkness as it applies to the setting and the characters.  Then she uses descriptions like; “Fire in every horrible form: pits of flame waving in that wind; liquid metal-flames writing in tortuous stream though the sand; wide caldrons filled with boiling fire, over which bend ghastly wretches stirring the strange brewing” to illustrate the red section of the gothic color code. Later she uses the goodness of the Quaker lady as her description of the white element of the color code. Davis’ description of the Friends’ meeting house is an example of that; “Niched into the very place where the light is warmest, the air freest.” There are also words like creeping, ghostly, clamor, and shriek which all classify as gothic language. Based on descriptions alone a reader could easily place the characters in a creepy old mansion rather than an iron mill.

I also see Hugh as a Byronic hero, which is another gothic element. He is a dark character described as “filthy and ash covered” he is also a brilliant artist who transforms trash into a work of art so fetching that it claims the attention of those in a higher station. But Hugh becomes haunted by a secret crime and he spends a brief period wandering the streets with stolen money. It is this crime, not even wholly commented by him, but rather by Deb, that imprisons him and leads to his death. Again the reader discovers more death. The characters live in a world associated with death by the use of hell-like descriptions and one character physically dies at his own hand because he is so mentally tormented in his prison cell; a troubled mind is yet another gothic form.

          “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is another story that takes its own gothic turn. As a moral gothic Hawthorne uses gothic elements like death, color code and good vs. evil to convey a moral point. The story opens with the minister preaching a funeral sermon as the first signal of death. Then the reader discovers Mr. Hooper is wearing a black veil. This signifies not only that the man is mourning someone’s death but the color of the veil also matches the gothic color code. Everyone in town becomes afraid and suspicious of the “good” minister because he refuses to take off the black veil. Whenever the gothic color code is applied the black element almost always equals something terrifying and therefore, segregates the ominous color from the good and pure. In the end the reader realizes who is really good. Despite his “color” the minister remains a decent person and the town is guilty of making false moral judgments about him.

          Emily Dickinson used the gothic in her poetry to create the psychological gothic. In her poem “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain”, she uses familiar words to evoke eerie feelings about death. Words like mourners, box, creak, soul, heavens and silence at first glance seem harmless but when she weaves them together to illustrate a funeral service in her brain to illustrate the death of an idea, the reader feels the gothic just as much as if the poem were a longer and more detailed story. Dickinson is able to do in sixteen lines what it took most writers to do in sixteen pages. Here the reader discovers that death can be felt just as powerfully in poetry as it can be in plot and setting.

          The gothic element is a vast form with many threads. Authors have used its colors, its settings and its overall theme of death and decay to freak people out for centuries. The gothic form has changed with the passage of time and with the addition of new histories and cultures but the base elements remain the same. Darkness and light; creepiness and fright; all within a setting at night generally expresses the mode of the gothic. However, what really stimulates fear and a disturbed mind is the fear of death. The death of a person and the death of an idea stirs up an emotional thrill ride and keeps readers coming back for more.