LITR 4232 American Renaissance 2012 final exam—Answers to Question B1 "Gothic characteristics and uses" final exam assignment

Dorothy Noyes

Spooky Selections: The Gothic in American Renaissance Literature

          The scream of the wind through the spindly fingers of the bare-branched tree. The darkness of the woods in the depths of the night, and the terrifying possibilities that it encompasses. The aged people and objects, slowly making their way into the pits of madness and decay. These are images that are par for the course when reading some of the literature of the American Renaissance. They are representations of the Gothic images that are portrayed for us, the reader, in an effort to spook, excite, and chill. The gothic and its implications are very important to the American Renaissance as it is a tool with which the authors paint a spine-tingling picture of what scares us the most- both in the story and within ourselves.

          The gothic is a style or genre utilized among authors by the use of various instruments and images to paint a dark overall picture and make a point within their work. It is a style that focuses on the dark and scary aspects of any scene, situation, or character. By emphasizing the darkness, the reader understands how much they miss the light. In using the gothic, an author can take something mundane and transform it into something that wreaks havoc on the mind and soul. There are many different ways of doing this within the gothic, many forms it can take to get the point across, and all of them are not only effective, but scary as well.

          One aspect of the gothic that is used commonly to illustrate the darkness and desolation within a piece is the use of colors. The contrast between light and dark is never as drastic as when they are used in gothic texts. Take the pictures that are painted of the two women represented in Poe’s “Ligiea.” Ligeia is the dark and Rowena the light, and they are polar opposites. Ligeia is the representation of all that is wild and mysterious, her darkness emphasizing these traits and showcasing the gothic within her character. The same can be said of Cora in Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. Like Ligeia, Cora’s coloring in drastic comparison to Alice’s fairness indicates a wildness and uncontrollable aspect of her character. These color-coded gothic signals are incredibly important in allowing a reader to see the author’s intention, and in seeing their intention, applying the gothic paint brush that tints the story with its significance.

          The personification and application of negative and frightening features to inanimate objects is also popular in the gothic. Using not only objects themselves, but the surroundings and settings we can’t avoid in our every-day lives and applying to them the darkest attributes of the gothic, the readers can’t help but to feel the desolation and horror associated with them. Houses especially have played this role in famous gothic works such as Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” take on devastating and startling personalities. The house in “The Fall of the House of Usher” is malicious and dangerous to its occupants, driving them to madness while after twenty long years away, the house of Winkle’s is a rotted shell that clearly indicates a passage of time Rip Van Winkle does not want to acknowledge. Both the malice and the decay of the homes of characters force them to examine terrifying truths that they would have otherwise avoided had they not been their very surroundings.

          Another aspect of the gothic that is featured regularly is that of decay and ultimate death. These two characteristics are hard to ignore because they focus on the psychological fears that most individuals harbor of growing old, of losing what they currently have, and of dying and leaving behind nothing for which people to remember us. They also illustrate the insignificance of all the things we as individuals hold dear to us. From the death and loss of all the female characters in Poe, to the broken, rotted, and smoke-smothered angel always pointing upwards in “Life of the Iron Mills” the use of death and decay indicates a terrifying fragility of all existence.

          Something I recently noticed and found fascinating in the use of the Gothic in American Renaissance literature is what seems to be the struggle between the gothic and transcendence. I saw this most clearly in our final reading, Rebecca Harding Davis’ “Life in the Iron Mills”. A picture is painted of these characters that are trying so hard to get out of the hellish existence that working in the iron mills is. As they try to rise above, those dark aspects, the filth, danger, flames and cruelty continually pull them back in despite their longing to transcend and find a safer, more religious, and peaceful life. The gothic doesn’t just try to scare them in this piece; it is their reality despite their most valiant efforts. The flames of hell engulf their reality until, at least in Hugh’s case, the only release and transcendence is in death. The gothic paired with the gritty realism of the story is especially powerful.

          In closing, the gothic is obviously not only a scary subgenre of Romanticism used to illicit cheap thrills out of the reader, but something much deeper and more significant. The gothic is the tool used to examine, understand, and come to terms with the darkness within every aspect of literature, life and every individual. It is the representation of a dark dance performed by everyone, the flirtation with what is forbidden and feared, and the illustration of the seriousness of the human condition.