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(2018
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2018 #3: Web Highlights (Index) |
LITR 4328 |
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Virginia de Leon
Correspondence: A Space for the Haunted Mind
One of the most interesting topics for me this
semester has been correspondence. Before this course, I had never heard of
correspondence in its romantic literary meaning. According to Dr. White,
correspondence can best be described as “a broad state or condition in which one
thing exchanges, shares, or agrees with another” (course site). In other words,
correspondence mirrors, or reflects internal emotions into the outside world, or
vice versa. In romanticism, especially gothic literature, correspondence is a
recurring theme in a majority of texts. The student submissions I have chosen to
review all correlate to correspondance: Jessica Zepeda’s
Nature’s Correspondence (2017),
Rebecca Dyda’s Correspondence highlighted
through model assignments (2017), and Melissa King’s
You Can Rain on my Parade (2010).
In Jessica Zepeda’s
Nature’s Correspondence, she explores
correspondence in a variety of romantic texts. However, one of the most
captivating moments of her essay was her analysis of in Susan B. Warner’s
The Wide, Wide World. Because this
was one of my favorite texts in the semester thus far, I quite enjoyed reading
Zepeda’s commentary. I connected to Ellen’s character on a very deep level—for
the love I have for my mother is just as intense. When little Ellen’s mother
informs her that she must go away, I felt their sorrow, “Ellen had plenty of
faults, but amidst them all love to her mother was the strongest feeling her
heart knew” (Warner). Zepeda goes on to identify some of the correspondence in
the text.
Zepeda finds the beauty in such a heartbreaking tale
by writing about its romantic elements, “The
Wide, Wide World depicts a great example of correspondence between nature
and man” (Zepeda). She continues by quoting the following passage from the text
“as if somebody was saying to her, softly, ‘Cheer up, my child, cheer up; things
are not as bad as they might be; things will get better’” (Warner Chapter 2). At
this point Zepeda goes on to beautifully elaborate about the correspondence
between Ellen’s released feelings as she “gazed out the window above her at the
bright sky” (Zepeda). According to our course site, romantic writers use
correspondence to describe “cognitive psychology, in this case how the
individual mind interacts with its surroundings”. Because Ellen was such a young
child, her mother’s absence in her life has caused great trauma. Warner’s
romantic writing highlights this emotional turmoil.
Furthermore, Rebecca Dyda’s
Correspondence highlighted through model
assignments and Melissa King’s You
Can Rain on my Parade both mention correspondence in
The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow.
Washington Irving’s classic tale of a headless horseman haunting individuals “in
the gloom of night” continues to fascinate us to this day. The following passage
from the text represents both gothic and correspondence elements: “The dominant
spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be
commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air [Ephesians 2.2], is the
apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be
the ghost of a Hessian trooper [German soldier fighting for Britain], whose head
had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the
Revolutionary War [app. 40 years before story’s publication], and who is ever
and anon [now and then] seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of
night, as if on the wings of the wind” (Irving).
Irving’s romantic writing embeds correspondence into the story by taking a land
that has been ravaged by war and giving it a haunting, paranormal element as
consequence. Both Dyda and King place emphasis in their writings on the effects
of correspondence in the romantic texts. For instance, king focuses on mood,
“Authors can use correspondence to set the mood for a particular scene in a
piece of literature. This is perhaps most seen in the realm of the gothic.
Washington Irving uses the projection of Ichabod’s mood onto the environment to
create a very unnerving setting”. On the other hand, Dyda choses to analyze a
previous assignment focusing on attitude “Here, it seems as though Jackie has
interpreted correspondence between the attitude that Ichabod Crane had towards
the woods and the events that transpired at the end of the story. She explains
that since he viewed the woods as a scary and dark place due to the scary
stories told prior, the woods then became a scary and dark place”. Both students
have dived deep into the realm of correspondence.
