LITR 5535: American
Romanticism
Sample Student Research Project, fall 2003
Sawsan Sanjak
Professor Craig White
LITR 5535
Nov. 22, 2003
Feminine Traditions of Relations and
Domesticity
In the romantic era, masculine
traditions of freedom and the frontier contrasted with feminine traditions of
relations and domesticity (White, LITR 5535). Gender distinction is crucial for
it limits the woman's role within the male's authority. To
highlight up these gaps of gender and traditional notions James Fenimore
Cooper, Mary Rowlandson, and Anne Bradstreet discussed women's traditions of
roles in white and Indian societies. Of these women, there are those who shift
in their feminine traditions due to hardships and captivity, and there are those
who remained within their society's protective and defining boundaries. The
women chosen for this study are: Cora, the rebellious in Cooper's The
Mohicans, the traditional romantic figure, Alice Munro, the independent
female figure, Mary Rowlandson, and the domestic dependent figure, Anne
Bradstreet. The following study will also tackle how Cooper's fictional
characters deal with gender and traditions' problems in comparison to the real
characters Mary Rowlandson and Anne Bradstreet.
Cora in The Mohicans stands for
the mixed blood between the whites and the Indians. She stands for the
possibility of having a new hybrid of the American and the Indian blood. Cora's
portrayal is distinctive for she does not have race prejudice as those who are
purely white or red. Analyzing such a character will take along path than the
other female figures in this study for Cora is the only woman who combines a
hybrid race whereas the others are all white women. However, she is doubly
marginalized due to her cultural background.
Cooper uses Cora's exceptional traits in an active way so that to portray
the new female figure in that era. Being a dark figure, John Mc Williams
suggests that Cora represents the attractions of social rebellion and forbidden
knowledge (68). Such active traits appear in Cora's frank bravery, firmness,
intelligence and self-possession.
The mentioned traits portray Cora as a
strong female figure that stands half way between her femininity and her
male-authored figure. Her rebellion against male's tyranny appears fully when
she objected to be one of Magua's wives. Thus, when she was asked to be a
follower to his tribe, Cora 's answer was "Never!" accordingly, she
demanded her captors to strike her till they complete their revenge (M 178).
Cora's courageousness and self-control reveals her triumph over male's authority
portrayed in Magua's figure and over traditional notions that expect women to be
submissive in such situations. In spite of Magua's tyranny and his warnings of
physical torture to her still Cora is firm and shows no fear. Due to this Magua
tries to over rule her emotionally and that is by capturing her younger sister,
Alice. However, Cora responds to this by sacrificing her life in order to win
her sister's. In fact, Cora's figure is admired since it reveals woman's
capacity to endure physical and spiritual pain. Cora, the new American hybrid
did not fear male's authority or traditions since she stands for a new blood
that combines America's new identity against the old canons in terms of gender
and conservative culture (White, LITR 5535).
Cora being half
white and half red, hence she is capable of participating in both societies.
This advantage enables her to operate beyond the traditional society around her.
She contrasts the traditional role for women being a mixture of sexes and
traditions. Cora can adjust this mixture through her personal behavior. Her
intelligence and strength in dealing with different sexes and different
traditions places her as a flexible character that can cross these boundaries
easily.
Cora's
talents urge men from different traditions to admire her choices without arguing
them. The Indian scout for example, reveals his ability to support her choice in
joining the group through all the possible dangers. In return, Cora asserts
equality between the sexes by saying, "We are all equal...we will follow to
any danger" (M 142). To this the scout compares Cora's courage to
that of men. Again Cora's firmness is appreciated when the white officer, Duncan
considers her firmness in dangers as a gifted thing that her sister Alice lacks
(M172). Cora is a female figure that can change and acquaint herself to
hardships and different circumstances. Being racially mixed, Cora is able to
understand the mentality of both the whites and the reds. For example, when one
of the Hurons was interested in a white woman's shawl, Cora seems to understand
his intentions whereas the white woman who was sunk in her fear quickly wrapped
her child with the shawl. With regard to this, Cora was able to sense the danger
that might attain on that incident. Cora wanted to advise that woman to abandon
the trifle but it was too late and the white woman lost the most precious thing,
her child. Cora's feeling here shows her anxiety towards those who are around
her especially the weak female figures. Though it is known in white communities
that it is man's duty to take care and protect the woman, yet here Cora breaks
such a tradition. She replaces the man's role and carries the burden of her own
sex. This appears also in her continuous fear for Alice and how she takes her in
her arms whenever they face danger.
Through Cora's character, Cooper
presents the limitations of society's traditions and gender boundaries. Cora
stands beyond these boundaries since she descends from a mixed blood, hence she
does not find herself in either race. This double identity enables Cora to
survive in the wilderness instead of collapsing like her opposite female figure,
Alice Munro. Alice is the fair sister that descends from a pure white blood. Her
presence in Cooper's work is to highlight the difference between the whites and
the Indians. Cora's character wins its success through the presence of Alice. It
is then when the reader makes a comparison between the two and becomes aware of
Cora's dominancy over Alice. Cora possesses authority over Alice since the
latter is trapped in her traditions of roles as a dependant female figure.
If
Cora manages to fight by the side of man in the wilderness then Alice is the
romantic female figure who cannot fight by the side of man. Alice is the white
female figure that is possessed and fought for. Hence, by surrendering to her
protector, Alice denies her independence and scarifies it through her complete
dependence on man such as when she addresses her father, "Come to us,
father, or we die!" (M 177). Cora, in contrast, is a tougher female
figure where her words speak for her such as when she tells Alice, "save thyself. To me thou canst not be of further
use." (M 177). Cora sounds stronger in facing dangers whereas
Alice's words sound more like a childish cry that demands paternal protection.
Nina Baym considers Alice's weakness
as her strength in the white world for it inspires men like Duncan to fight for
her (77). It seems that a woman like Alice is only useful when she is protected.
The tenderness that Cooper gave her fits only to be watched for. However, such a
character does not fit in the Indian society for she would be a heavy burden on
others. The Indian society probably needs women like Cora whose strength enables
her to bear the burdens of the wilderness.
Cooper's portrayal of Alice is
exaggerated for she fits to be in a fictional world rather than to be in a real
world. Her weeping attitude in hardships is a passive one and would be
disastrous if in real life white women are compared to such a helpless figure.
This does not mean that Cooper's portrayal of white women's weakness is
something to be condemned. However, it would be better if he did not concentrate
on this issue as well as on Alice's "freshened beauty" (M 130)
in order to make her look lovable and acceptable to the reader. Hence, Cooper's
portrayal to Alice is incomplete for it highlights her physical beauty and
minimizes her intellectual talents.
In
Cora's case, Cooper presents a strong female figure that is admired for her
intellectual talents. Hence, he portrays the white female figure in two
fictional characters where each conveys a completely different extreme. Alice,
the fragile and naïve figure in parallel to Cora, the firm and intelligent
woman. Since they stand in parallel to each other this indicates that they
cannot be united, as the white and Indian traditions cannot meet.
Cooper's female figures can exist in a
fantasy world rather than in reality for they do not possess moderate aspects to
make them look real. Alice is more or less an angel whereas Cora is a super
woman. The latter wants to build a bridge of closeness between the whites and
the Indians through her love to Uncas. However, since such a relation is not
acceptable in a white society, hence Cooper finds himself in an edgy situation
for reaching this critical point in his portrayal to Cora's character. So in
order to avoid such an interaction between the whites and the Indians, Cora has
to die. As Cora dies, Alice survives. It is clear through this ending that
Cooper rejects white women interaction with Indian men, thus white women have to
remain within their white society and there is no way for them to survive beyond
its limits. Alice and Duncan signify the good matching couple in Cooper's
fiction for they stand for the pure unmixed race. Though in the very beginning
of Cooper's fiction, Cora is admired for her ability to merge between the white
and the Indian societies, yet as the work moves on Cooper seems unable to pull
her back from blending in the Indian society. Due to this, her relation with
Uncas has to die in order to avoid having another new hybrid different than hers
since Uncas himself is not a real Indian like Magua.
Cooper's
fictional work managed to avoid a possible marriage between Cora and Uncas and
hence his story maintained traditional differences between the two races. Even
when Cooper gives Cora a male's authority he seems to limit it within the
matters of the wilderness. He even stresses the idea of her mixed blood to draw
attention that the change in her feminine role is genetics and does not have to
do with woman's rebellion against gender distinction or traditions. A close
match to Cora's role is Mary Rowlandson's real experience in captivity and how
the latter was forced to change her feminine position due to hardships and
captivity.
Michelle Burnham suggests that
Rowlandson's cultural contact with the Indians was characterized by a conflict
between the English culture she left behind and the Algonquin one she was forced
to inhabit. Her extended habitation of the Indian culture "makes her
narrative a history of transculturation and a subjectivity under revision"
(13). Like Cora, Mary Rowlandson was able to adapt herself in the Indian
community. Her captivity made her a storyteller of the experience she passed
through. Hence, her historical narrative marks the influence of the English and
the Indian cultures on her. If Cora could not avoid the influence of the mixed
blood on her, Rowlandson too could not resist the psychological influence that
marked her personal contact with the Indian culture. However, Rowlandson's
captivity experience reshaped her feminine identity from a domestic dependent
woman into a workingwoman. Christopher Castiglia mentions that by entering the
Indian economy, "Rowlandson transforms herself from an object of exchange
in a trade conducted between men to an agent of exchange" (47).
This shift into an independent producer did not stop at her captivity
period it continued till after her captivity, and so she recorded the history of
events that she passed through in what she called her captivity narrative.
In fact, captivity allows Rowlandson to become
an independent workingwoman. Her motherhood is replaced by her economic activity
and so she explores her economic freedom away from man's authority. Cora on the
other hand, experiences her motherhood through her love to her sister since she
cannot marry and hence she cannot acquire the wife's figure. Both Rowlandson and
Cora managed to produce their love and their hidden potentialities in useful
ways either emotionally or economically. However, even when Cora could not play
the role of the mother, still she managed to find a substitute for such a love.
Also Rowlandson though she was away from her children and could not practice her
motherhood, she managed to substitute this role through occupying herself in
manual work. June Namias admires Rowlandson's ability to adapt, survive, and to
learn to live among the Indians. Namias considers Rowlandson's captivity
experience as a renewal to her personality as well as a renewal to her faith in
God (25).
In fact, Rowlandson's narrative
affirms Puritanism, yet there are places in her narrative where she reveals a
hidden contradiction to the meaning of Puritanism. For example, she tries to
insist on the idea that not one of the Indians ever practiced chastity on her
neither in words nor in actions (Norton Anthology 148). Here, she tries
to defend herself against any possible seductions she might have been exposed
to. Rowlandson wants to look as a good puritan wife, yet when she talks about
her role as an economic producer she seems to like it though it contradicts her
puritan role. In other places, she mentions that the Indians "made use of
their tyrannical power whilst they had it; but through the Lord's mercy, their
time was now but short" (NA 144). Being a puritan, Rowlandson keeps
asking for God's mercy with regard to the Indians' tyranny. Yet, when she
receives the generosity of an Indian she does not praise it, she just considers
it as God's kindness (NA 143). Rowlandson's narrative presents a clear
contradiction in her judgment on events and on people. For how can she condemn
the Indians' tyranny as well as deny their goodness?
As a reader, Rowlandson's narrative
seems to merge between her puritan background and her Indian inhabitation. Her
puritan background considers the Indians as "barbarous creatures" as
she mentions in The First Remove. However, she compares the dancing and the
yelling of the Indians to hell. She seems to misinterpret the Indians customs of
celebration and relate them to some hellish acts that contradict with her
cultural background. Hence, according to her puritan notion, the white contrasts
the black, as her civilized society contradicts the savageness of the Indians.
With this her narrative moves between her Puritanism that contrasts feminine
traditions of role with that of the male, and the Indian culture that through it
she had her independent identity.
Mary
Rowlanson's narrative cannot be trusted as a clear picture for what really
happened during her captivity. Her analysis conveys one person's judgment. Its
subjectivity shifts more to the side of her puritan background. Even if
captivity allows Rowlandson to escape from the puritan patriarchal authority,
still she cannot be frank about these advantages since she has recorded her
narrative after her release from captivity. So in spite of the fact that her
story is a real one still she has to be aware of how her narrative might be
received by the puritan society. However, Rowlandson cannot write nice things
about the Indians whom her people despise.
Rowlandson in her history narrative
seems to be aware of cultural differences, that is why she pays clear attention
to it. Unlike the fictional character, Cora, who appears ignorant of such a
cultural distinction. Cooper's characters do not possess a psychological body
they are rather elements of social bodies. Hence, when Magua tries to let Cora
recognize the truth about her father's interest in the Indians' lands, Cora
responds passively. She relates the whites injustice to a personal ground rather
than to a cultural conflict. Though her passivity here is similar to
Rowlandson's denial of the Indians' generosity, but Cora's ignorance here is not
intended whereas Rowlandson's is purposely done in order to nourish her
Puritanism.
Rowlanson
crosses physical boundaries in order to transform her feminine role, on the
other hand, Anne Bradstreet in "A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon
Publick Employment" transforms psychologically and within the boundaries of
her own puritan household. Jimmie Carol Still Durr (as referred to by Raymon F.
Dolle) believes that "[...] Bradstreet combined the traditional feminine
role with the revolutionary role of woman writer...Bradstreet struggled to adapt
the conventions of the masculine literary tradition, thus starting the tradition
of American women poets [...]" (Xxiii).
In fact, Bradstreet's power of
transforming into a woman writer comes from the inside, from her family. The
family is an important unit to the puritans and so to Bradstreet. The puritans'
patriarchal law seems to be of good interest to Anne Bradstreet's poetry even if
it diminishes the status of her own sex. Indeed, Bradstreet in "A Letter to
Her Husband" seems to place her husband to a high value, a value that
reaches above the light of the sun for he is her light. Hence in his absence her
light is gone. Now her limbs chill for she needs "His warmth" to melt
her cold. Bradstreet here is like the trembling Alice who had to be carried by
Duncan since captivity made her helpless. It seems that both need physical
attachment in order to revive. Accordingly, through her children "Those
Fruits", Bradstreet sees "living Pictures of their Father's face"
(NA 126). Like Alice Munro, who sees the image of the parent in her
future husband, Heyward Duncan as she tells him, "give me the sacred
presence and the holy sanction of that parent" (M 260).
However, these two traditional women
seem to meet in their physical need to the patriarchal image. Alice clings to
Duncan "with the dependency of an infant" (M 80). Thus, Alice's
constant need to be watched over is her strength to win the protection of a
puritan male. Similarly, Bradstreet gains her success in becoming a woman writer
in a male-dominant culture by reconciling herself to her community's God. Her
physical need to the husband is shaped in a sexual intimation to him when she
refers to her children as the fruits which through his heat she bore. Again, she
refers to this sexual need in the last concluding lines, "Flesh of thy
flesh, bone of thy bone" these words convey Bradstreet's adoring love to
her husband, to whom she wishes to be united. The words in the last two lines
have been preceded in the beginning of the poem by words like head, face, and
eyes that also refer to physical wholeness between the two. For example, she
wishes to see the face of the distant husband whom she calls her "
head". According to puritan notion, the husband is the head of the house.
Bradstreet declares this without any feeling of weakness similar to Alice when
she asked Duncan for patriarchal authority.
When Bradstreet declares her husband's
authority being the head of the house, her tone sounds clear and direct to the
reader. On the other side, when she refers to her sexual need, there her voice
is silent and she uses instead biblical allusions to refer to that need. In
spite of the fact that she is a woman writer still Bradstreet is limited to her
puritan role and she seems to silence her voice when it has to do with woman's
emotions. However, as Rowlandson was conscious of cultural differences,
Bradstreet too seems to be aware of gender distinction. Thus, in "Her
Letter to Her Husband", Bradstreet conveys her emotions in a careful way so
that not to contradict her role as a good puritan wife. Being traditional women,
both Anne Bradstreet and Alice Munro succeeded in winning the male's authority
to their side through their submission to that authority either in actions or in
words.
Cooper's, Rowlandson's, and
Bradstreet's works convey a hidden message and that is, the possibility of
having a new social body that involves cultural interaction. All view women's
future on the side of man either in work or in the battlefield. Yet, in applying
these new social changes, Cooper's fiction seems to retreat and any possibility
of conveying gender or cultural interaction proves a failure as Cora dies. Her
death reveals the failure of Cooper in transforming this fictional character
into reality.
On the other hand, Rowlandson's
history narrative comes to life since the character Rowlandson is a real one.
Hence, her captivity experience nourishes her into becoming an independent
woman. Rowlandson succeeds in crossing the boundaries of different cultures. She
breaks the boundaries of captivity by transforming herself from an object into
an active producer. Again her transformation continues till after her captivity
when she breaks the boundaries of her puritan society and writes her captivity
narrative. As to Anne Bradstreet, though she remained within the boundaries of
her household, however she conveys the potentiality to cross the physical
boundaries between her and her husband in order to be with him. Her hidden
feelings of love to her husband shaped her psychological and emotional
transformation. Thus she grows psychologically into becoming a poet producer.
Her love to her husband inspired her to cross gender distinctions and to break
the convention of having only male poets.
As the women above managed to free
themselves from the male's authority and the traditions boundaries, Alice Munro
seems to run to these boundaries so as to attain protection. Her feminine role
does not transform, she only moves from paternal authority to that of the
husband. Alice's purity and simplicity cannot fit in the real world since she
cannot stand by herself and hence she needs man's protection in order to
survive. In fact, her survival is limited to her marriage. However, her marriage
is Cooper's only way to transform her from a fictional character into a real
one. With this Cooper's fiction does not succeed in carrying gender distinction
to a safe shore, he only exposes such an issue without really offering a good
cure to it. Whereas Rowlandson's and Bradstreet's works carried women's real
experiences in life and that is why they survived in changing their feminine
traditions of roles.
Works
Cited
Baym, Nina. "How Men and Women Wrote Indian
Stories". New Essays on The Last of The Mohicans. Ed. Peck,
H. Daniel. Cambridge University Press.1992.
The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
W.W. Norton & company, Inc. 2003.
Burnham, Michelle. "Captivity, Cultural Contact,
and Commodification". Captivity and Sentiment. Trustees of
Dartmouth College. 1997.
Christopher, Castiglia. " Her Tortures Were Turned
into Frolick: Captivity of Patty Hearst". Bound and Dermined. The
University of Chicago.1996.
Cooper, James. Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans.
Viking Penguin Inc.1986.
Dolle, F. Raymon. Anne Bradstreet: A Reference Guide.
G. K. Hall & Co.1990.
Mc Williams, John. " Race and Gender". The
Last of The Mohicans: Civil Savagery and Civility. Twayne Publishers.
New York. 1993.
Namias, June. " White Captives: An
Introduction". White Captives. The University of North Carolina
Press. Chapel Hill & London. 1993.
White, Craig. American Romanticism LITR 5535: Course
Objectives (2). Fall 2003.