Kristen Bird

October 2, 2006

The Idealization & Heroism of Women in Romantic Literature

            Women in Romantic literature offer a unique character study to readers.  At times, they are heroic and bold; other moments portray them as vulnerable, the victims of fainting spells and indecision.  The female roles are often placed in one of two molds: the ultimate femininity or the formidable heroine.  Most Romantic works stay within these boundaries, although the characteristics may overlap at moments during the story.  Two such stories that portray these extremes are Mary Rowlandson's A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and Susan Rowson's Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth.  This idea is also evident in the classic Romantic narrative by James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, when two extreme characters are placed side by side, interacting and forging the wilderness together as sisters.

            When examining female characters in Romantic literature, it is best to begin early in the period and move forward.  Thus, we start with Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth, a bestseller at the time it was written in 1791.  Rowson's purpose for writing is explicit in the preface, where she expresses the gratification she will feel if "the following tale should save one hapless fair one from the errors which ruined poor Charlotte, or rescue from impending misery the heart of one anxious parent." (Rowson 1) Soon after, one of Charlotte's first references as the idealization of the ultimate femininity is given in her physical description.  She is a "tall, elegant girl" who blushes as she passes and wears a blue bonnet and looks through "a pair of lovely eyes of the same colour." (Rowson 2) And the gentle outward features seem to be only a mirror of her inward innocence, as her mind is described as "pure and innocent by nature, it thinks not of the dangers lurking beneath those pleasures, till too late to avoid them."  (Rowson 2)

            In Romantic literature, the character that embodies the ultimate femininity is not necessarily spared the effect of evils around her.  Instead, as in the case of Charlotte, she encounters an obstacle and tries to bravely face it, but often ends up fainting instead.  Charlotte's experience is not much different.  The instigator of her potential demise takes the form of a charming young lover named Montraville.  Her interactions with him prove intriguing, but acting in character, Charlotte battles first against her own naivety and then against her sense of duty before finally succumbing to Montraville's evil intentions.  But perhaps the real villain of the story takes the form of Charlotte's teacher and mentor Miss La Rue, who seems to have once been a virtuous and unsullied ideal, but chose to take her own scandalous social journey to become a liberal and flaunting lady.  It is Miss La Rue who convinces Charlotte to first go against her filial duty by reading a letter from Montraville.  It is also Miss La Rue who eventually convinces Charlotte to meet Montraville, knowing she will be essentially forced to run away with him.

            Charlotte, as the ideal of femininity tries to fight against her own desire, submitting to family duty, as a good daughter should.  She tells Miss La Rue, "My resolution is fixed.  I will sacrifice love to duty." (Rowson 11)  But another key aspect of femininity seems to be a weak will.  Charlotte confesses the best intentions, but when pressed, easily gives way.  The culmination of this is when she finally agrees to meet Montraville in order to tell him she has come to make a final farewell.  He takes her in his arms, subjects her will to his own, and as the chaise drives away, carrying her dignity and respect into a dismal future, her only recourse is to shriek and faint.  Charlotte Temple helps teach that the ultimate femininity may offer a soft form and even a good, gentle attitude, but a strong will is not one of the key elements.

            Cooper's famous portrayal of the ultimate femininity in The Last of the Mohicans is found in the character of Alice, who like Charlotte, has a "dazzling complexion, fair golden hair, and bright blue eyes." (Cooper 18)  Cooper compares her to nature - a significant aspect of Romantic literature - saying, "the flush which still lingered above the pines in the western sky, was not more bright nor delicate than the bloom on her cheek." (Cooper 18)  Softness and brightness pours from Alice.  Even after nights of sleeping in the wilderness, she is described awakening and speaking with "soft, silvery tones" in "all the loveliness of her freshened beauty." (Cooper 130)  Matted hair, foul breath and a groggy morning voice are far removed from the picture of the seemingly enchanted wooden nymph.

            After Alice's final capture, Hawk-Eye and Duncan repeatedly refer to Alice as "the gentle one," describing her appearance as much as her spirit.  This spirit is evident in the religious remarks she makes throughout the story and particularly in her emotional attraction to the character of David Gamut, who is certainly the most gentle man and the most spiritually focused persona in the story.  In one of her first meetings with David, Alice is naturally drawn to his musicality, doing what "her pious inclinations and her keen relish for gentle sounds, had before so strongly urged." (Cooper 58)  This attraction to the gentle and institutionalized is in stark contrasts to her sister Cora's natural affinity to the wilderness and freedom.

            Alice's interactions with her sister also exemplify her dependency on others.  Cora continually acts as a support, in part because she is older, but in larger part because she is the stronger, heroine figure upon which the ultimate femininity must rely.  Alice struggles to make decisions for herself and to sustain herself in the midst of crisis.  Even as the white captives are in the midst of the Delawares, Cooper notes that Cora entwines her arms with Alice, "keeping her eyes fastened on the pale and anxious features of the trembling Alice." (Cooper 295)  The irony is in the fact that Cora is about to nobly meet her death, but still supports a fearful - and weak - Alice.

            Cora's courage and readiness is one primary aspect of the frontier woman's heroism, and evidence of it may be found on numerous and difficult occasions.  Each time Cora is faced with peril, she encounters the danger head-on, without any evidence of a weak will or fainting spells.  One of the first examples is recounted when the band of travelers is first threatened by the Maquas.  Cora entreats the men to fly to the woods or float down the river to escape impending death.  Next, she gives evidence of her wisdom and diplomacy, which also pervades the book, by instructing Hawk-eye about the explanation to give to her father after her and Alice's seemingly certain death.  Hawk-eye's responds by saying, "There is reason in her words...and they bear the spirit of Christianity." (Cooper 78) And when Uncas determines to stay regardless of the consequences, she convinces even him, speaking while "lowering her eyes under the gaze of the Mohican, and, perhaps, with an intuitive consciousness of her power." (Cooper 79)  Cora indeed exudes power again and again with acts of heroism consistent with her character.

            Cora's connection to Uncas is only hinted at throughout the work, until the end when they are brought together through death.  But Uncas is obviously fascinated by the dark-haired maiden whose ancestry is revealed to be a mix between African and European roots.  He tends to Alice in much the same way as he does her sister, but with Cora, "in performing the same offices, his dark eye lingered on her rich, speaking countenance." (Cooper 56)  Cora's flavor fascinates him in a way that Alice's whiteness can never.  Perhaps it is the inherent color in her lineage that also attracts Magua to her throughout the novel.  He desires that Cora be his prized possession, his chosen bride.  But it is Cora's heroism that keeps her from choosing his way of life, inevitably being awarded death in its place. 

Indeed, Cora exudes readiness throughout the work - readiness to protect and support her sister, readiness to face the tomahawk in battle and readiness eventually to discard of her own life.  Two of the most remarkable moments of this readiness are evident in the first and last scenes in which Magua asks her to choose to be his wife.  In the first instance, although appalled at the prospect, Cora answers with self-command, attempting to reason with him.  When that fails, she answers that she would rather die.  And at the end of the narrative when Magua demands that she choose death alone or life with himself, she leaves herself in the hands of God, ignoring Magua entirely.  She kneels, stretches her arms to Heaven and says meekly, "I am thine! Do with me as thou seest best!" (Cooper 337)  Her readiness to do whatever is needed overlaps with a confident spirituality, which is a characteristic of Romanticism most likely due to the predominantly Christian spiritual climate of western (European/Caucasian American) civilization of the time.  Mary Rowlandson's A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is another example of this type of strength through spirituality.

Mary Rowlandson is a notable heroine of American Romantic literature.  She loses part of her family, her home and her community of friends in one act of Indian violence.  She is then taken away with her sick child, who eventually dies while in captivity.  In the midst of the chaos, it is clear why no physical description is ever offered, but even still, this is in direct contrast to the depiction of a character portraying the ultimate femininity.  Instead of comfort and relief (which the ultimate femininity would necessitate) after all these horrific circumstances, she receives little consolation from the world around her.  For example, after the twelfth remove she states, "I told them (the Indians) the skin was off my back, but I had no other comforting answer from them than this: that it would be no matter if my head were off too." (Rowlandson 143)  Mary Rowlandson's concrete strength, not being found in anything outside of herself, is attributed then to her spiritual fortitude.  Reflecting on the death of her six-year-old child, she says, "I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that distressed time." (Rowlandson 140)  She continues on through twenty removes altogether, becoming a necessary commodity to the Indians in order to survive.  Her heroism is evident in the fact that she sustained through the entire ordeal while many around her perished, and this heroism is rooted in deep spirituality, a characteristic that Romantic literature seems to readily accept in heroines.

Despite the fact that Charlotte Temple and Alice, as the ultimate representation of femininity, seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum as Cora and Mary Rowlandson, they each share a common aspect of Romanticism: the theme of desire and loss.  Kina Siriphant-Lara in her essay entitled, "The Recurrent Element of Desire and Loss for Women in American Romanticism," states,

As evidenced by the texts of Rowlandson, Rowson, and Cooper, desire and loss is an extremely prominent aspect of both pre-Romantic and Romantic American literature.  What is interesting about these particular authors is their ability to use female characters who possess such strong desires and who suffer such great losses.  The fact that these women all inevitably lose something significant – whether that be a child, a relationship, or even their own life – while striving to attain their desire for love proves that the element of desire and loss is a substantial and recurrent theme for female characters in American Romanticism. (Fall 2003 American Romanticism Course)

Charlotte Temple desires happiness with her lover, but instead is forced into a social scandal, in which she ends up pregnant, without a husband, and eventually dying.  Alice and Cora desire to reach their father safely, but their goal is only half-realized with the death of Cora.  And finally, Mary Rowlandson desires health and safety for herself and her family, but encounters harm and unrest instead.  The desire must remain unmet in some way in order for the Romantic spirit to prevail.  Despite their many differences, the two ultimate feminine and the formidable heroine are essential to American Romantic literature.