Sample Student Research Project 2016: Essay
LITR
4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments
Sample Student Research Project 2016:
Essay
Neil LeBoy
Hawthorne’s Use of the Sublime
"The ideas of pain are much more powerful than those which enter on the
part of pleasure" - Edmund Burke on the sublime. (White: Course Web.) The
concept of literature having sublime context can be difficult to grasp. When
analyzing sublime elements of Washington Irving's
Rip Van Winkle on the midterm I
considered Winkle's mundane existence as sublime not truly understanding what
the term sublime meant. I considered the sublime to describe the beauty
following danger and troubles, not occurring in connection with the danger
itself. After reading the feedback from Dr. White, I went over all information
on the term sublime found on the course website. The selection displayed from
Thomas Jefferson's The Life and Selected
Writings of Thomas Jefferson titled "The Natural Bridge" helped me visualize
the sublime. Jefferson describes slowly crawling to arch of a hill resembling a
rocky hill and glancing over the side. The bridge brings sublime emotions to the
individual, with a view that is "painful and intolerable", but also extremely
delightful. (White: Web) The class website describers sublime as "a phenomenon
whose beauty is mixed or edged with danger or threat--usually on a grand or
elevated scale" (White: Web). Nathaniel Hawthorne, an early American Romantic
writer, demonstrates the sublime in multiple stories. This paper will serve to
analyze sublime themes in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writings "Young Goodman Brown"
and "The Minister's Black Veil", while bringing in new information from primary
and secondary sources that can help prove Hawthorne's writings to have sublime
elements.
“In Hawthorne’s fiction, as we shall observe, this convergence occurs at
points of emotional excitement, when the framed landscape can no longer contain
the emotions of awe, wonder, and fear.” (Levy 392) Leo B. Levy discusses
Hawthorne’s fiction in his excerpt titled
Hawthorne and the Sublime. Levy discusses Hawthorne’s unique non-traditional
style of sublime writing as being “circuitous and indirect” showing the immense
awe the sublime can pertain to (Levy 392). One sublime example Levy provides is
the “ray of glory” found in Hawthorne’s work “The Great Carbuncle”. Levy claims
light “is the oldest of the symbols of sublime” and has a sense of forbidden
power and splendor in Puritanism, the faith Hawthorne was accustomed to (Levy
394). Hawthorne makes the light uniquely sublime by having the characters in
“The Great Carbuncle” Matthew and Hannah witness the light but choose to reject
it. While many may view this divine light with wonder and awe, in Hawthorne’s
context it “evokes the specter of the terrors and rigors of Puritanism (Levy
394). To understand more on Hawthorne’s style of sublime Levy draws from the
work of Washington Alliston who Hawthorne drew ideas from. Alliston defines the
sublime as and “infinite idea” or somehow “beyond the grasp of the mind”. Any
defined feeling or one that can be forced upon oneself is the “false sublime”
(Levy 396). Hawthorne places the sublime context in his scenery adding
fascination to everyday landscapes that invoke emotion “beyond the normal range
of his powers of perspectives” (Levy 401). The example Levy gives pertains
Hawthorne’s text “My Visit to Niagara”. At first, Hawthorne does not feel the
sublime and extreme emotions felt by the power and beauty of the great
waterfall. Hawthorne repeatedly tries to excite himself about the waterfall but
fails to do so. Hawthorne concludes the sublime experience comes “in the
simplicity of his heart suffering the mighty scene to work its own impression”
bringing the mind to a “perfect unison with the scene (Levy 401-402). This
correlates well with Jefferson “The Natural Bridge”, where fear and danger
invoke the extreme emotions correlated by the sublime. (White: Web) Hawthorne’s
emotions are not invoked by the waterfall, and sublime emotions are beyond his
power of perspective. Hawthorne describes two children making a perilous
movement toward a rock emerging from the waterfall as “children of the mist” who
achieve in a sense a sublime certificate (Levy 402). Hawthorne knew forcing
himself to feel genuine emotions would be in a sense a “false sublime”. Levy
concludes by stating Hawthorne “would not be deceived by counterfeit emotions”,
Hawthorne’s “emotional genuineness gives him the achievement of being able to
properly use and identify the sublime (Levy 402).
Examples of Hawthorne’s sublime context can be found in two of the
Hawthorne readings from our American Renaissance class, “Young Goodman Brown”
and “The Minister’s Black Veil”. An example linked to the sublime in “The
Minister’s Black Veil” occurs during Mr. Hooper, or the minister’s, sermon.
“There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said, at least, no violence, and
yet, with every tremor of his melancholy voice, the hearers quaked. An unsought
pathos came hand in hand with awe” (Hawthorne Par.14) This falls right between
the class website’s definition of sublime as elevated sense of danger or fear,
and Hawthorne’s perspective of sublime as an emotionally genuine response beyond
human perception. (Web and Levy) Despite having no reason to fear Mr. Hooper,
his black veil brings “a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things”
(Hawthorne Par.6). The dark aspect of his veil brings the community to quake
during his sermon without Mr. Hooper intentionally doing so. There is no direct
reason why the black veil brings such awe and angst, and is thus beyond the
community's Puritan and individual perspectives. The black veil brings so much
fear and mystery to the community that they fear to even question why Mr. Hooper
is wearing it. The veil even seems to invoke sublime responses from Mr. Hooper
himself, “In truth, his own antipathy to the veil was to be so great, that he
never willingly passed by a mirror, nor stopped to drink at a still fountain,
lest, in its peaceful bosom, he should be affrighted by himself.” (Hawthorne
Par.53) The veil is proven to bring about sublime feelings for members of the
community and Mr. Hooper himself. Even as a reader, I feel a sense of fear and
awe towards the black veil I cannot fully comprehend. Unlike many stories in
Romanticism with happy conclusions the minister is buried still wearing the
black veil. "What but the mystery which it obscurely typifies has made this
piece of crape so awful?” (Hawthorne Par.67) The veil remains a symbol
surrounded by mystery and darkness that cannot be defined, bringing about
extreme emotional responses from fear, an important aspect of the sublime. In
“Young Goodman Brown”, examples of sublime concepts occur throughout the story.
The course website gives examples of sublime phrases that occur "when people
can't find words for what they're feeling" Examples given are "I'm speechless,
I'm overwhelmed, I don't have words, bodacious, and over the top" (White: Web).
In one scene from "Young Goodman Brown", Brown is running through a haunted
forest seemingly lost in a dark wilderness. Brown comes across a red light
leading him to a congregation in the woods. The light "bedazzled" Brown, and
during one of the congregations hymns the words "expresses all that our nature
can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at more (Hawthorne Par.54 & 56).
Hawthorne using the word "bedazzled" in the text shows a sense of Brown unable
to find words for how he's feeling (Hawthorne Par.56). The cause of this
bedazzlement is a red light, which connects with Levy's motion on page 2 that
light is one of the oldest symbols of the sublime. Another example of the
sublime in "Young Goodman Brown" occurs when a pink ribbon falls down towards
him seemingly from the Faith girl he is dangerously journeying to through the
forest. "My Faith is gone! cried he, after one stupefied moment". Brown is
"stupefied" by the pink ribbon causing a strong emotional reaction that is for a
moment beyond his comprehension, a sublime moment (Hawthorne: Par. 50). In
reality a person with a black veil, or a walk through a dark forest are only as
frightening as the imagination allows them to be. It is Hawthorne's use of the
sublime along with other fundamental aspects of American Romanticism that create
a heart-wrenching tale. Hawthorne creates a dark veil that shake's the morals of
an entire Puritan community, and a dark forest that prays on the faith of
Goodman Brown. (Hawthorne: Web)
In The Cambridge Introduction to
Nathaniel Hawthorne by Leland S. Person,
"Young Goodman Brown" is considered by critics to be Hawthorne's attempt to
comprehend the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Person describes Hawthorne's use of
the forest as "an underground where dark impulses rise from the unconscious"
(Person 42). Person also finds "Young Goodman Brown" remarkable for providing "a
vision of social and domestic evil that would shake faith in the integrity of
others" (Person 43). The Salem Witch Trials were undoubtedly a phenomenon mixed
with danger and threat on an elevated scale, and threatened the comfort zone of
Salem's strictly Puritan society. The phenomenon of danger and threat creating
extreme and overwhelming emotion are examples of the sublime (White: Web). How
can anyone perceive witchcraft without drifting into the sublime? Hawthorne
himself is subject to the sublime if Persons claim is true that Hawthorne is
attempting to comprehend the Salem Witch Trials using "Young Goodman Brown".
(Persons 42) Edmund Burke describes the sublime as "whatever is fitted in any
sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger". (White: Web) Although Hawthorne
was not alive for Salem Witch Trials the ideas of pain and danger associated
with the trials provoked sublime emotions in Hawthorne extending to samples of
the sublime in "Young Goodman Brown". While Persons never uses the term sublime
to describe Hawthorne's writing of "Young Goodman Brown", the sublime aspects
surrounding the writing appear throughout Persons evaluation.
In Jane Lundblad's critique
on "Hawthorne and the Tradition of Gothic Romance", Lundblad describes the term
Puritanism as a tool "employed on account of its very haziness" Lundblad also
talks about how Hawthorne has been referred to as a Puritan and a Romanticist
(Lundblad 9). Hawthorne relentlessly critiques the Puritan faith throughout his
works while living in a Puritan America, and being labeled as a Puritan himself.
In a sense Hawthorne's writings could be considered his personal tools to
discover himself. In Lundblad's section on
Nature as pertaining to Hawthorne,
she writes nature is "for the purpose of evoking sensations of terror", and that
Hawthorne regularly used phenomena is his writings (Lundblad 21). Once again,
this connects to our course websites definition of the sublime as a "phenomenon
whose beauty is mixed or edged with danger or a threat" (course website). Also
defined by the course website is Aesthetics, which serves as the part of
philosophy that explores the beauty and ugliness of nature. "The sublime is a
central concept in Aesthetics" (White: Web) Both Lundblad and Persons in the
paragraph before accurately describe the use of the sublime in Hawthorne's works
without using the term sublime in their critiques.
Understanding the sublime is somewhat impossible unless experienced
firsthand. One cannot truly feel the excitement and fear felt by standing over
Jefferson's Natural Bridge, without
going to the bridge itself. A personal experience with sublime emotion came from
skydiving out of an airplane. As I looked to the ground thousands of feet below
the plane my heart quenched, and an overwhelming sense of fear and excitement
overcame my rational thought, then I jumped. The sublime seems to be an
invaluable tool of Hawthorne that gives his writing an extra sense of awe, fear,
and excitement, that add to the Romanticism of his stories. Hawthorne's use of
items such as a dark veil in "Ministers Black Veil" and dark forest in Young
Goodman Brown" gives the reader a glance into the terror and darkness nature
provoke the fear, terror, and extreme excitement from both environmental nature
and human nature. These brief moments of phenomena in the text allow the reader
to witness the sublime effects on the characters in Hawthorne's stories. Whether
Hawthorne is doing this simply to evoke the terror and awe of Puritan life as
Levy and Lundblad discuss in their analyses of Hawthorne is up to personal
interpretation. Personally, I love elevating the simplest of phenomena in my
writings, including getting out of bed,
to be a terribly sublime and dangerous venture filled with fear and
angst. Hawthorne provides examples of this sublime style of writing in every
Hawthorne reviewed. In conclusion, I agree with Burke's quote that pain invokes
more emotion than pleasure. That being said, Hawthorne does an excellent job of
mixing the two into a subliminal context easily overlooked in his writings.
Hawthorne's use of the sublime elevates his writings by bringing out the extreme
emotions felt by Hawthorne's characters in a way that encourages the reader to
explore the extremes of their own emotions and reactions to nature.
Works
Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Minister's
Black Veil. 1836. Online Reading Text. American Renaissance 4232 Course
Website. Accessed November 4th 2016.
<http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/RomFiction/Hawthorne/MinsBlkVeil.htm>
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman
Brown. 1835. Online Reading Text. American Renaissance 4232 Course Website.
Accessed November 4th 2016.
<http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/RomFiction/Hawthorne/YngGmnBrown.htm>
Levy,
Leo. American Literature, Vol. 37.
“Hawthorne and the Sublime”. Duke
University Press. 1966. Accessed online October 30th 2016.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2923134.pdf
Lundblad, Jane. Nathaniel Hawthorne and
the Tradition of Gothic Romance. "Nature". Harvard University Press.
Cambridge, Mass. 1946.
Person, Leland. The Cambridge
Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Young Goodman Brown". Cambridge
University Press. New York, N.Y. 2007.
White, Craig. "The Sublime". University of Houston Clear Lake. American
Renaissance 4232. Course Website.
<http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/Whitec/LITR/4232/research/termsthemes/sublime.htm>
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