Nancy Gordy
LITR 5535-White
American Romanticism
September 24, 2003
Midterm Exam

The Sublime, Pain and Pleasure:

 Boundaries Between Nature and Society

             Exploration, colonization, rebellion, and revolution during the Age of Reason advanced upon the industrialization of America and emphasized the self-reliant individual alienated or separated from society. Laced with mystery, the unknown frontier served as a literary epoch for which nature produces the boundary between the individual and society. In Romantic terms, natural events and the mixing of pain and pleasure serve as an avenue for developing the sublime. Romantic literary genres found their root in the early writings of pre-romantic authors such as John Smith, Mary Rowlandson, Thomas Jefferson, and James Fenninore Cooper whose literature focus on the alienation of the individual from society undergoing a series of sublime experiences mixing in emotions dealing with pain and pleasure combined.

The sublime is a literary concept that denotes a mixture of pain and pleasure leading to transcendent state of lofty emotions beyond normal state of mind. According to Michelle Glen, “the time period that American Romanticism spans is rather vast and referred to as the ‘Romantic Spirit,’ and consists of principles such as idealism, rebellion, individualization, nostalgia, sublimity, and most importantly, desire and loss.” Pioneers during the colonization of America settled for change and inquiry rather than subtly of life in Europe. It is the quest or path that an individual takes away from civilization into the wilderness that leads us into the sublime elements of nature beyond the boundaries of society, where security is within and danger and mystery on the outside. Exploration requires novelty. Those outside in the wilderness are labeled as “savages and barbarians”  (Smith 48), as they represent the unknown.  Due to the fact that they are not understood, ugly stigmas are placed upon the Algonquian Indians.

An early example of contrasting pain and pleasure in the sublime is in John Smith’s captivity, General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles The Third Book. In Romantic terms, John Smith’s captivity narrative interweaves the  development of the sublime and yields to the Romantic spirit. According to his accounts, Smith’s captivity, serves as a rite of passage into the world of the unknown wilderness and subjected to nature’s elements far from the confines of Jamestown. The unfamiliar practices and rituals of the Indians, Smith notes that the Indians, “cast themselves in a ring, dancing is such several postures and singing and yelling hellish notes and screeches; being strangely painted.” At one point Smith recalls wondering if the Indians, “ would fat him to eat him” (Smith 49). 

This atmosphere described by John Smith invokes fear, but also pleasure through the anticipation and excitement of his extreme ordeal. The very notion of being prisoner at the hands of a potential enemy is arousing in some sense of the word. According to the biography in Norton text, John Smith enjoyed “tales of exploration, piracy, and military adventure stirred his imagination.” Additionally, “he must have had the air of someone deeply experienced in the skills that the quasi-military venture would require” (43). If one of the goals of Romanticism is to escape the “here and now” it is certainly accomplished.

Time of rebellion and revolution denotes change. Embarking on novelty under the new governmental system, Thomas Jefferson discusses the sublime in “The Natural Bridge,” from Notes on Virginia (1784-85). The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson. In his narrative, Jefferson states, “the view from the top be painful and intolerable, that from below is delightful in an equal extreme.” The view from below is described as delightful and Jefferson is at awe at the extremities. But until curiosity gets the better of him and he climbs to a precipice and feels uneasy feeling looking over the edge, saying, “few men have resolution to walk to them and look over into the abyss. Jefferson’s venture out to this incredible site gives us a glimpse of this strong figure in American history accounts his experience away from society. 

Jefferson’s “Natural Bridge,” resembles Wordsworth’s poem, “A few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” Similar to Jefferson, Wordsworth also experiences sublimity while lifted high above society, the town, and the abbey. A church represents allegorically, God, and yet for a moment the poet is high enough to be in God’s sphere. On the same lines, Jefferson concludes that the most sublime of nature’s work is on the “ascent of a great hill, which seems to have been cloven through its length by some great convulsion.”  The view from the height of the bridge caused Jefferson brief pain, a headache relieved in short pleasure. He describes the bridge as a beautiful arch, “elevated” representing height, the feeling of loftiness. Both painful and pleasure combine and arise from the sublime for what Jefferson calls, “impossible emotions and rapture.”

In Last of the Mohican’s, Cooper describes the same sort of sublime experience in nature that Thomas Jefferson described at the extreme height of the bridge. Similarly, Cooper uses this description of the wilderness to incorporate sublime moments for his characters in their quest to return to the safety of Fort Henry. “When the travelers reached the verge of the precipice, they saw, at a glance, from that dizzy height, the holy lake the valley that marked the spot, beneath with lay the silent pool of the bloody pond.” (140).

Edmund Burke, refers to the sublime as any emotion that evokes of danger or pain, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1759).  Cooper combines plenty of pain and pleasure in Last of the Mohicans.  Cooper’s novel operates analogous to terror, and is a source of the sublime.  Reason being, it is “productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” The integration of the English struggle with Indian aggressive attitudes towards colonization embarks on the perfect setting for the sublime. First of all, the area chosen is rugged, untamed (during this time period) and full of strange peoples of varying customs dissimilar to the English.

Desire and loss, pain and pleasure, and the sublime all result from being separated from the familiar causing pain and a longing for the past, yet the past is gone and the new is to be faced.  Mary Rowlandson’s Captivity, takes place in the rugged wilderness similar to Cooper’s setting and John Smith’s. Rowlandson’s narrative portrays the concept of the sublime derived through pain and pleasure. Rowlandson account at times during her capture came too close to terror, where the events were just horrible. She was literally ripped away from the security and happiness of her family and witnesses the truly horrible murders of her friends at the hands of the local Indians. Rowlandson writes, “this was the dolefulest night, the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures of hell.” This selection displays pain and suffering at too close a glance to be considered sublime. Again, Edmund Burke quite clearly states that “when dander or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible.”

However, the Wampanoag attack on Lancaster, Massachusetts on February 20, 1676, no doubt influenced the titles, ‘Removes’ Rowlandson chose for the chapters in her captivity narrative. She was physically removed from the town and saw many of her “dear friends, and relations, lie bleeding out their hear-blood upon the ground.” Later she continues to describe the ordeal, “it is a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood like a company of sheep torn by wolves, all of them stripped naked by a company of hell hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out, for there were twenty-four of us taken alive and carried captive.”  Although the experience was painful, the sounds and frightful images evoke the sublime through pain and pleasure for somehow there is a security in reading about Rowlandson’s account, since we are separated at enough of a distance to appreciate her capture.

Donald Ringe of the University of Kentucky describes Mohican’s as the “American border romance.” The sublime through pain and pleasure is prevalent in James Fennimore Cooper’s, The Last of the Mohicans. The novel is a classis work of Romanticism at its prime, and contains elements of the sublime, pain and pleasure.  Although subtle, with closer examination, Cooper’s text, the setting provides the stage for the sublime. The setting is near the Hudson River basin in the remote wilderness of New England during the French and Indian War. The battle over land rights and ownership for commercial means were in constant struggle. Instead of focusing on the realities of war, Cooper widens the view to encompass areas of romance, rebellion and adventure.

In order for the romance novel to work, a mixture of pain and pleasure and the sublime all must be present.

James Fennimore Cooper takes advantage of the scenery as opportune tool for the sublime elements but through anxiety that mixes both pain and pleasure. The book opens near the shores of the Horican, or “Holy Lake.” There are many moments of intensity where Cora Alice, Hewyard are dependent on Hawkeye, Chinkingook, and Uncas’ help in outrunning and hiding from the Iriquios and Montcalm. The wilderness provides the boundary in Last of the Mohicans for Cora and Alice Thomas Cole of the Hudson River School concludes that Last of the Mohican’s contains, a harsh antisocial, “masculine” arena with rugged landscape and feelings of awe at sublimity in nature and threatening objects, and agreeable horror which is primary the scope of Cooper’s work.

In Mohican’s, Cooper turns aristocratic, wealthy characters into “fugitives.” The very word suggests anticipation, the struggle to exist without being caught. Cooper drives this path the whole way through the novel. At every turn, Hewyard, Duncan, Alice, and Cora, are having to hide in the most humble of places. Each place they hide at, seems to incorporate the American Spirit, Michelle Glen referred to, the blending of nature with the normal vision of shelter. The thing is, is the shelters are not just a building which would be common setting in Europe, like a dark castle or mansion. In America, the sheltered area is in the woods, surrounded by natural objects.  In each instance, whether a cave, grove, or haunted ruins, they are all located in the woods. Additionally, the scouts, Uncas, Chickingook, and Hawkeye are from the realm of the wilderness.   When “he encountered the females, who awaited the result of the conference with anxiety, and not entirely without apprehension, so dark and savage, in itself excite fear and a nod of Alice with a look of open pleasure. Living on the edge, the boundary between safety and harm is thin. For instance, at the block-house hideout the “savages were so near” that even the slightest breathe or movement meant betrayal. Mark Twain complained that Cooper resorted to using too much the sound of a snapping twig to break the ice of anticipation.

Another detail I noticed is that the hideout is a blending of bushes and dense thicket and an old house in ruin. The place chosen by Hawkeye, was also apparently said to be haunted by the spirits of those who died. The ruined temporary shelter and thicket caused the Hurons to be directed to the object but showed “reverence that was deeply blended with awe, the apparitions of the dead issue from its silent walls.” The area has a past, one that was fraught with hardship prior to Cora and Alice arriving there out of sheer desperation for reprieve.  Atmosphere is important in creating setting for the sublime and in this scene and countless others Cooper utilizes the concept of pain and pleasure with the sublime in creating anxiety. 

 Cooper incorporates pain and pleasure with the anticipation by placing his characters into danger. In order to escape danger, they have to encounter danger. The anxiety, and the sublime by being placed within the boundary of the wilderness at the mercy of nature or things in nature, as the Indians represent.  The mountain region is the setting that represents the boundary between society and nature where pain and pleasure mix to create the sublime. This border is the gateway into the development of the American renaissance. As Cooper, Smith, and Rowlandson point out, the American frontier was unforgiving but created the opportunity for great American Romantic literature.