Charley R. A. Bevill
Dr. Craig White
LITR 5535
30 September 2003

The Romantic Journey Toward Transcendence

Being an avid reader and movie-goer in my youth, I was exposed to many genres, but not more than Romance. I poured over the romantic novels of the 1970s and 1980s, reading such authors as Rosemary Rogers and Danielle Steele. The film that received most of my spending money was Grease, my having seen the film in the theater fourteen times.

What these novels and films had in common was the personal transformation that took place in one or more of the characters. There was often a subjective experience, some type of personal journey that ended with characters rising above problems or exceeding their own idea of who or what they were. These characters rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after. Although not always the case in the novels, the characters at least were removed from whatever difficulties they had faced.

Romance narratives were everywhere. Book stores were full of them topping the best seller lists. And Hollywood cashed in on the trend. For myself, these romances showed me that I could one day transcend the place I was in and become more than I was. But I never considered how this type of story came about, where the formula began.

In American Literature, it began in a small way and then exploded into a genre all its own. There were several works prior to the American Romantic movement that demonstrated features which later became important aspects of American Romanticism. As it progressed, it took on elements of other genres, but the essential elements still remained: a “quest or journey towards transcendence.”

Of our reading this semester, Anne Bradstreet and Washington Irving depict characters that make such a journey. Their Pre-Romanticism works exemplify this quest or journey which converges in James Fenimore Cooper’s Romantic work, The Deerslayer.

In Anne Bradstreet’s lyric poem, “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” found in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6^th edition, the narrator tells of her love for her husband and the love she receives in return from him. [Her] “love is such that rivers cannot quench, / [his] love is such [she] can no way repay” She feels there is no greater love between a woman and a man on Earth. But she feels this is not enough. She writes that “while we live, in love let’s so persevere / That when we live no more, we may live ever” (125). Their love must transcend Earth; transcend this life because it is so extraordinary. The only way it can become more is in the after-life.

In “Rip Van Winkle,” Washington Irving’s title character, however, does not esteem his wife so. In fact, he is a “henpecked husband” that regularly ventures into the woods near their home in order to escape from work and “the daring tongue of this terrible virago” (452). He wishes to be a man of leisure, able to sit for hours in the company of friends, with no responsibilities and possibly no wife. “If left to himself, he would have whistled life away, in perfect contentment; but his wife kept continually dinning in his ears about his idleness, his carelessness, and the ruin he was bringing on his family” (451).

“Van Winkle is “reduced almost to despair” (452). In what seems to be an overnight trip into the woods, Van Winkle has several drinks of a mysterious draught that causes him to fall into a deep sleep. This sleep is so deep that he sleeps through his life for the next twenty years. When he awakens, he finds that the world he knew has changed. His overbearing wife has died, his children are grown and he is finally a man of leisure. His daughter Judith takes him to live with her and her family. “Having nothing to do at home, and being arrived at that happy age when a man can do nothing with impunity, he [takes] his place once more on the bench, at the inn door, and [is] reverenced as one of the patriarchs of the village” (459). Had Van Winkle not slept through the last twenty years of his life, he would never have arrived at this place. He would have continued his old habit of not working when he should and he and his family would have suffered greatly. If he had survived without his twenty year absence, he also would not have been so revered. Van Winkle transcends his meager, disappointing, and unfulfilling existence by sleeping it away.

The theme of transcendence is abound in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer, the last installment in the “Leatherstocking Tales.” Most of the characters make the journey on some level, but no two more so than Hetty Hutter and Nathanial Bumppo, also known as Deerslayer and Hawkeye. In her Fall 2000 midterm, Sheshe Giddens writes in reference to Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, “Hawk-eye, embodies the ideal American romantic hero. He is an individualist who rejects civilization, embraces nature, coexists with Native Americans.” This can also be said about the younger version of Hawkeye in The Deerslayer.

At first, Deerslayer is on a mission to help rescue Hist, the kidnapped beloved of his best friend Chingachgook. But war breaks out and he finds himself helping the family of Thomas Hutter. He becomes an accomplished warrior, helping to save Thomas Hutter and Hurry Harry March. In this endeavor, Deerslayer receives the name he will become known as. The first Native that Deerslayer kills gives him this new name. “[Deerslayer,] that good name for boy – poor name for warrior. He get better quick. No fear there […] eye sartain – finger, lightning – aim, death – great warrior, soon. No Deerslayer – Hawkeye” (89). Deerslayer does become a great warrior. He goes so far as to return to the Native camp for torture and possible death because he gives his word that he would return. In the process, he transcends his own culture by carefully integrating the best of the Native American culture with that of his own.

Hetty Hutter hears all of her life that she is dimwitted. She constantly repeats the belief of her family and others as if it is her mantra. “‘I am not full-witted, they say. Father often tells me this; and so does Judith, sometimes, when she is vexed; but I shouldn’t so much mind them, as I did mother. She said so once; and then she cried as if her heart would break; and so I know I’m not full-witted’” (136). But in reality, Hetty proves herself quite capable of many things. She has remembered many passages from the Bible and calls them up as need arises. She can travel in and out of the Indian camp and no one harms her, realizing that she is special.

Hetty’s greatest journey toward transcendence begins when she realizes that there is more to her. She says, “‘Sometimes I think I’m not half so feeble-minded as they say I am’” (180). Although Hetty dies at the end of the novel, she knows that she shall meet her mother and that one day her sister Judith and Deerslayer will meet her in the hereafter. Their love and understanding will transcend the Earth and venture into Heaven.

In these works, the characters experienced some type of personal journey, a  personal transformation. Each of the characters rose above their own problems and exceeded the idea of who or what they were.

Works Cited

Baym, Nina, ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 6^th ed. New York: Norton, 2003.

Bradstreet, Anne. “To My Dear and Loving Husband.” Baym 125.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Deerslayer. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1995.

Giddens, Sheshe. “The Development of The Last of the Mohicans as a Representation of a Normative American Romance.” 2000.

Irving, Washington. “Rip Van Winkle.” Baym 448-60.