LITR
4232: American Renaissance
University
of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2002
Index to Student Research Projects
Lori Gouner
LITR 4232
Dr. White
April 18, 2002
The
Individual and Nature during the American Renaissance
“Romanticism is thus a way of looking at
reality that places the self at the center of all existence, and serious
romantic narrative tends to be preeminently a record of the dramatic experience
of the individual personality encountering society and nature and exploring the
depths of its own being,” (Todd Lieber).
In this discussion we will be exploring the romantic individual’s
encounters with nature and society in nineteenth century American texts.
The primary authors we will be discussing are Henry David Thoreau, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and also the poetic experiences of Walt
Whitman.
Thoreau
deals with the theme of man’s relationship with nature through resistance to
culture. “Let every man make
known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one
step toward obtaining it” (Thoreau 1673).
Here we see the heroic figure in motion, both physically and
psychologically. Thoreau speaks on
both action and principle throughout his essay.
In his comparison, between economic views and man’s role in nature seem
to seek similar harmony “It is truly enough said, that a corporation has no
conscience; but a corporating of conscientious men is a corporation with a
conscience” (Thoreau 1673).
Today
the role of corporations in the United States economy is defined by a global
economy of multinational corporations. In
the United States, corporations have the same legal rights as people; they are
incorporated for the benefit of people. Corporations
are managed solely to make a profit for their stockholders.
Thoreau makes a statement about the legal rights granted to corporations
by the government. Essentially they are given them the same rights as
individuals. Thoreau argues that
men should not let such laws govern them, but join together to form a new
corporation of mankind where the shares are shares in humanity.
“ The mass of men serve the States thus, not as men mainly, but as
machines, with their bodies” (Thoreau 1674).
Government reduces man to the state of an automaton; he is a machine.
“I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on
my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they
were really all that was dangerous,” speaking on his civil disobedience in
spending the night in the Concord jail. (Thoreau 1681). His mind transcends the
presence of the jail; it is not his body that is dangerous to society.
Man’s ideas are his weapons. In
his meditations he rebels against society, “His success comes in fleeting
moments of imaginative vision” (Lieber viii).
The
individual cannot be forced into obedience because he is being disobedient on a
higher plain. He is serving a
higher law of man, nature, or God; it is unclear which but it is a law that
exerts itself above the law of the state, “What force has multitude?
They can only force me who obey a higher law than I,”
(Thoreau 1681).
“When I meet a government, which says to ‘Your money your life,’ or
me why should I be in haste to give it my money?..I am not responsible for the
successful working of the machinery of society.” (Thoreau 1681). It is impossible for the individual to be separate from
society but what Thoreau is advocating is a distance from a society that is
governed by a standard that is in opposition with the individual. Money and material wealth inside society implies a certain
standard of living while what Thoreau is arguing falls into the realm of quality
of life.
The
United system has always been a mixed system with financial incentives and
disincentives to modify production. Distribution
and consumption have been deemed necessary for the public good by the national
government. This means regulations
and taxes, on human and corporate systems of welfare are determined by the law
of the state. According to David
Potter, most nineteenth-century Americans were self-employed; most were engaged
in agriculture; most produced a part of their own food and clothing.
These facts meant that their well being did not depend on the goodwill or
the services of their associates, but their resourcefulness in wrestling with
the elemental forces of Nature.
When speaking in terms of government and the individual throughout
political history, individuals have been categorized into groups. In this
particular section of Thoreau’s debate one can trace tendencies towards
laissez fair politics and individualistic nature.
When Thoreau leaves the jail he proceeds to his daily routines and
returns to nature, “in the midst of the huckleberry field, on one of our
highest hills, two miles off; and then the State was nowhere to be seen”
(1683). He goes on to say,
I
refuse to pay it. I simply wish to
refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually.
I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could till it buys a
man, or a musket to shoot me with, -- the dollar is innocent, -- but I am
concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance.
(Thoreau 1683).
Again, we see
that Thoreau is conflicted with the idea of the individual in society and the
individual in nature. Thoreau sees
passing a dollar as a major concern, similar to the passing of allegiances.
For every dollar spent someone pays, whether it is a slave in the south
or a man such as Thoreau rebelling against property tax.
Thoreau
did not want to invest himself financially or emotionally in a government that
he disagreed with, he responds by returning to nature.
Freedom, for Thoreau, is a state of mind, a reaction against conformity,
a natural state of man, “If a man is thought-free, fancy free,
imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to
him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him” (Thoreau 1684).
In Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” the individual invests
himself with ideas of freedom and the notion that man is directly linked to the
natural world, a world in opposition to the laws of the state.
In
much the same way we will see how Frederick Douglass’ slave narratives heroic
figure invests themes of the natural world into his own psychological views of
freedom. The lifting of the
environment into expression is a continuous theme of romantic writers but in the
slave narrative, the attainment of freedom and the meaning of freedom through
nature is an entirely different focus. When
we read Douglass’ excerpts on nature it is important to think of the relation
of form to matter in his literature.
Our
house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was eve
white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful
to the eye of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts to terrify and torment
me with thoughts of my wretched condition (Douglass 1852).
In this stanza
the heroic figure is standing in opposition of what he wants both physically and
metaphorically. To Douglass the
natural world was something cut by boundaries, the north was an area where he
could be free whereas the South was geographically a place where he was changed
to slavery. The vessels of freedom
that he talks about are vehicles that can carry him both to the North and to
freedom. However, as he expresses
them as ghostly and haunting in the passage above is because he feels trapped in
a nightmare that he cannot escape.
Nature,
to Douglass, meant freedom but the nature of his slaveholders meant something
else, it meant the fallible nature of man.
He saw in the natural world a place to escape to and a landscape to
project his own idealistic view of freedom onto. “You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast
in my chains, and am a slave! You
move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip!
You are freedom’s swiftwinged angels, that fly round the world; I am
confined in bands of iron!” (Douglass 852). HE
sees the ships passing by as a fleeting moment where he can see freedom but not
obtain in any part. Although he is
an individual trapped in slavery as he stands on the border of his natural world
on the hilltop overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, he is free in his consciousness.
Alexis de Tocqueville said in his work “Of Individualism in Democratic
Countries,” that the modern mind believe the nation existed for the
individual, for the guardianship and education of everyman, “Ours is a
revolutionary age, when man is coming back to consciousness,”
(Matthiesen 6).
Douglass was thinking in terms of images and symbols of freedom in nature
and the American landscape. There
is both hope and despair in his imagination of nature. What we see inter-linked
in this excerpt are man, nature, and society.
The individual on the hilltop has a direct connection with the Bay yet
the man-made vessels are what seem to break the unity of his vision apart.
The
vessels sail on by him, “I would pour out my soul’s complaint, in my rude
way with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships” (Douglass 1852).
Ships are commercial entities, what brought man to America and what
helped him connect the different ports and coastlines in trade.
After he goes north and escapes slavery he sets to work on the shipping
wharves as a calker, thus he moves from the society of the plantation to the
society of the city.
When
he arrives in New Bedford he is once more confronted with the images of ships,
“I visited the wharves, to take a view of the shipping.
Here I found myself surrounded with the strongest proofs of wealth.
Lying at the wharves, and riding in the stream, I saw many ships,”
(Douglass 1874). When he
sees the multitude of ships again in New Bedford, Douglass sees that his
struggle for justice, humanity, and freedom will continue. He goes to work once
more at the shipyard, not as a slave but as a black man feared and discriminated
by the white workers he is in labor competition with.
“There
is an episode when white workers showed themselves to be more afraid of free
blacks than of slaves, was the beginning of Douglass’s realization that the
problems of black people in white American would not be at an end once they were
all out of slavery,” (Herreshoff 112). There
is an instance when he is observing all of those ships, symbolic of wealth, as a
revelation of free labor. The idea
of free labored seemed at first, truly free when he saw the ships sailing by.
The full sails symbolized his hopes, inspiring him with what the northern
landscape held; however the reality of that world was different.
Work
implies mastery over the external world, bordering between pleasure and plain.
Overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, Douglass sees the vastness of nature and
the movement of the ships weaving together as in a portrait.
In his language he describes an underlying promise offered by the ships,
they seem to be traveling to a place where work liberates rather than enslaves. His mind is in one realm hoping, his body in another “fast
in its chains”, the natural world seems to be that middle ground playing
fantasies that entrance.
Similarly,
Walt Whitman also focuses on ocean-going ships of men in his poem “Crossing
Brooklyn Ferry” however his view of ships and the sea is different than that
of Douglass. There are images of
wharves, ships, and harbors as seen through the eyes of the speaker, or
passenger of the ferry.
I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of
beams,
Looked at the fine centrifugal spokes of light
round
the
shape of my head in the sun lit water…,
Looked toward the lower bay to notice the
arriving
ships,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were
near
me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops,
saw the
ships
at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging, or out
astride the
spars…
In
this instance Nature touches Civilization through the individual. Leslie Fiedler says of Whitman, “land is for Whitman the
island dweller’s land, never removed from the sound of breaking waves or the
sight of the mastheads of ships”. For
Whitman the city was a spectacle of life, something to celebrate.
Perhaps, Douglass' view of the city was influenced how the city looked at
him. Although, most
northerners welcomed ex-slaves they didn’t embrace the strain that it put on
their labor forces.
When
we study Whitman, Thoreau, and Emerson’s perspectives on the city we rarely
see the themes of freedom that Douglass deals with although we do see an urge to
“awaken their willingness to dispense with their dwellings rather than
submitting to imprisonment of them,” (Weimer
21). This goes back to Thoreau’s ideas on civil disobedience.
Whitman’s themes are that of a city dweller interacting with nature and
the kaleidoscope of civilization, not of being confined.
He introduces the idea of the city; it’s roots and its promises to
American poetry.
“Whitman
identifies it principally with the Indoors that we are urged to quit.
It means ‘the old smooth prizes,’ the arbitrary limitations,
artificiality, pleasure, disease, convenience, shelter, repose and custom- as
opposed to the Outdoors of the heroic opportunity, expansiveness, freedom,
health, self-fulfillment, love, joy, the untried and difficult, ‘active
rebellion” (Weimer 19).
Again we see the whole of nature as a metaphor for the human mind.
Throughout the texts we’ve discussed there is an underlying theme that
the act being outside fills the individual with a sense of freedom and
inspiration.
So
far we’ve seen Thoreau, Douglass, and Whitman accomplish something uniquely in
the development of themes in nature, especially those of adventure,
individualism, freedom, and heroism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson is preeminent in influencing American thought on
nature. In both Nature and
in Self-Reliance Emerson tackles
themes of the individual in nature, as well as, the individual in society.
Here, in his essay Nature, Emerson reflects on man’s unity with nature, “Not the
sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of
delight; every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state
of mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight,” (Emerson 1518).
This is a man at one with nature. His
views of nature are a projection of his own mind, as he states above that the
natural changes correspond to states of mind.
He personifies nature as something that can be breathless and emotionally
grim.
However,
Emerson had very strong views on society’s alienating effects on the
individual “the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel
at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us,” showing that
society can be a stifling, uncomfortable thing to the individual. Hypocrisy arising within the social sphere, especially mass
society, is a subject explored in the works of Thoreau and Douglass.
However, Emerson’s view of hypocrisy within society seems more extreme.
He goes on to say that “the great man in the midst of the crowd keeps
with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude,” implying that his ideal
views of man and nature are a dichotomy that has little to do with society.
(Emerson 1559).
Todd
Lieber takes on Emerson’s views; “Emerson recognizes no middle ground.
When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. The hero
is he who imposes his own imagination on the world,” (19). Writers of
nineteenth century American repeat routines and similar patterns in their works.
We have explored and deconstructed the romantic individual’s views and
expressions on nature. We have
discussed society’s influence on man. However,
the question remains, where does man fit between the conflicting forces of the
natural world and the societal world? F.
Scott Fitzgerald once wrote “for a transitory enchanted moment man must have
held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic
contemplation he neither understood nor desired, fact to face for the last time
in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder,” showing
how the aesthetic contemplation of American consciousness becomes synonymous
with that of the American landscape. (189).
Emerson, Douglass, Whitman, and Thoreau have effectively shown us the
vastness of nature, the vastness of man’s imagination, and the vastness of
America’s promise, “so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back
ceaselessly into the past,” (Fitzgerald 189).
Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.”
The Heath Anthology of American Literature.
Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston:
Hougthon Mifflin Company, 1998.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The
Heath Anthology of American Literature.
Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston:
Hougthon Mifflin Company, 1998. 1516-1542.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
“Self-Reliance.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature.
Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston:
Hougthon Mifflin Company, 1998. 1555-1571.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
The Great Gatsby. Ed.
Matthew Bruccoli. NewYork: Simon
& Schuster 1992.
Herreshoff, David S.
Labor into Art: The Theme of Work in Nineteenth-Century American
Literature. Detriot:
Wayne State University Press, 1991.
Lieber, Todd.
Endless Experiments: Essays on the Heroic Experience in American
Romanticism. Columbus: Ohio St.
University Press, 1993.
Matthiessen, F.O. American
Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1957.
Potter, David. “The Quest for National
Character.” Individualism and
Conformity in the American Character .
Ed. Richard Rapson. Boston:
heath and Company, 1967. 59-72.
Thoreau, Henry David.
“Resistance to Civil Government.”
The Heath Anthology of American Literature.
Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Hougthon
Mifflin Company, 1998. 1672-1686.
Tocquevile, Alexis D.
“Democracy in America.” Individualism and Conformity in the
American Character . Ed.
Richard Rapson. Boston: heath and
Company, 1967. 1-14.
Weimer, David.
The City as Metaphor. New
York: Random House, 1966.
Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.”
The Heath Anthology of American Literature.
Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston:
Hougthon Mifflin Company, 1998.