Leigh Ann Moore

October 2, 2006

The American Gothic

One of the most famous examples of Gothic architecture is the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, finished around 1200 A.D.  This gothic style is known by its massive, bulky countenance and pointed arches.  It is also characterized by flying buttresses, dark spaces, and imposing statues and sculptures, such as gargoyles.  This style of architecture, termed gothic, has a literary equivalent in literature of the American Renaissance.  Literature written by American writers, such as Washington Irving, Mary Rowlandson, and James Fenimore Cooper, recreate these gothic spaces on the pages of their stories.  These writers move the gothic ideal out of the European cathedral or castle and into the American wilderness.  By relocating the gothic to the American landscape, these American authors create new spaces and characters for their literature. 

            A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, written by Mary Rowlandson, has gothic descriptions in the account of her captivity.  Although Rowlandson comes well before the American Renaissance, her writing informs that of future writers.  Rowlandson uses the colors of black and red to depict the attack of the Indians on the settlement of Lancaster: the black often representing evil, decay or hell and the red representing passion.  Rowlandson states, “It is a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, and some there, 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” (Rowlandson 137).  The blood (red) and the hell-hounds (black) representing passion and evil or hell gives the reader a dark and disturbing picture of the slaughter taking place.  Rowlandson uses similar wording when describing the actions of the Indians: “Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell” (Rowlandson 138).  This description of the Indians compares and even insinuates that they are demons from hell.  Mary Brooks points out in her midterm essay that, “Once she believes that the Indians and their actions are dictated by something beyond human comprehension she no longer has to consider the possibility that any of their actions can be merciful.  That her captors could be motivated by anything other than their devilish intentions is simply incomprehensible to her” (Brooks).  Portraying the Indians as devils and the use of light and dark color play adds to the gothic feel of the description.  Rowlandson has relocated the gothic to the American wilderness. 

            Although Rowlandson represents the gothic using descriptions of the Indians and their actions, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper represent the gothic in descriptions of the landscape.  Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow uses gothic colors and ideas in describing the countryside in and around Greensburgh (Tarry Town).  Irving writes, “He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond.  … and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone” (Irving 2110).  This vision of the “church dimly glaring” (dark) and the “flash of fire” uses the contrast of dark and light.  Irving also combines the gothic and the sublime in describing parts of the small town, making it more wilderness than town:

The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds hid them from site.  …  In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark.  Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air.

                                                                                     (Irving 2108) 

This combination of gothic and sublime truly moves the reader from a dark, deserted castle to the American wilderness.  From the dark night to the gnarled and fantastic tree, Irving uses gothic colors and language in new ways.  Irving has a way of applying emotion to the landscape and creating an environment his reader can picture and feel.  His literary innovations in using the gothic influence other writers such as Poe in his poem “The City in the Sea.”  Although Poe was born and died during Irving’s lifetime, influences on Poe’s writing can be seen in this poem.  Irving, like his predecessor Rowlandson, has influence on future writers.  The height of all of these influences come together in James Fenimore Cooper.

            This use of the gothic culminates in Cooper’s works:  The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer.  Cooper is firmly entrenched in the middle of the American Romanticism period and is the epitome of the romantic gothic and sublime.  In The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper uses the gothic in many different and unique ways.  Cooper uses the idea of secret as gothic in describing the path taken by the adventurers; “When they reached the spot where the Indian stood, pointing into the thicket that fringed the military road, a narrow and blind path, which might, with some little inconvenience, receive one person at a time, became visible. ...  The route of the detachment is known, while ours, having been determined within the hour, must still be secret” (Cooper, Mohicans 21).  One facet of gothic is colors but another is the idea of secret paths or chambers.  Hidden places are part of the gothic because they suggest dark and secret circumstances, whether represented in physical space or mental subconscious.  Cooper uses another aspect of the gothic when talking about the blockhouse where Hawk-eye and company hid; Cooper writes, the hill is “crowned by the decayed block-house in question.  ...  Such memorials of the passage of struggles of man are yet frequent throughout the broad barrier of wilderness, which once separated the hostile provinces, and form a species of ruins …, which are in appropriate keeping with the gloomy character of the surrounding scenery” (Cooper, Mohicans 125).  In this description, Cooper expresses the gothic by using decay and gloom.  Another aspect of this is the story behind how the hill was raised “by the bones of mortal men” (Cooper, Mohicans 126).  This description of landscape, death, and decay, all bringing in stories of the past, combines to give an exceptional example of the gothic.  An additional aspect of the gothic that Cooper is fond of is air and vapour.  Cooper writes, “Here and there, a red and fiery star struggled through the drifting vapour, furnishing a lurid gleam of brightness to the dull aspect of the heavens” (Cooper, Mohicans 190).  Cooper uses color, vapour, and words such as lurid and dull to create a gothic scene.  Cooper carries his mastery of the gothic into The Deerslayer.

            In The Deerslayer, Cooper reasserts some of his techniques used throughout The Last of the Mohicans.  Cooper has a way of setting the feel of the environment such as when he says, “The calm of the evening was again in singular contrast, while its gathering gloom was in as singular unison with the passions of men” (Cooper, Deerslayer 238).  The words gloom and passion give the feeling of the colors black and red.  Even in seemingly simple sentences, Cooper is able to evoke gothic images.  When Hurry and Hawk-eye are searching for the ark, Cooper describes the landscape, “As the canoe slowly advanced, sucked in by the current, it entered beneath an arch of trees, through which the light from the heavens struggled by casual openings, faintly relieving the gloom beneath” (Cooper, Deerslayer 53).  This is a particularly clear vision of the canoe, going from a peaceful drift on the lake to being “sucked in by the current” and disappearing behind trees, which caused a gloomy darkness.  Cooper has the ability to not only paint a beautiful picture of the American wilderness but also alter that description quickly and unexpectedly so the reader can feel the change in minute detail and experience the landscape intimately along with the characters.  The beautiful description of the lake that took place earlier was too vivid to be ignored; “the surface of the lake being as smooth as glass and as limpid as pure air, throwing back the mountains, clothed in dark pines, along the whole of its eastern boundary, …, while the bays were seen glittering through an occasional arch beneath, left by a vault fretted with branches and leaves” (Cooper, Deerslayer 39).  This vision of nature, almost as if he is speaking about a church with images of arches and vaults, can be described as reverent.  Cooper’s ability to take the reader from the glorious description above to the vision of being “sucked in by the current” and seeing the “gloom beneath” is one of his greatest talents, all at once seeing the majesty and the dark side of the wilderness. 

            The use of the gothic by writers such as Rowlandson, Irving, and Cooper expands throughout the Romantic period.  Rowlandson’s gothic describes people, their actions, and the resulting struggles.  This application leads into Irving’s use of the gothic to describe the American landscape, locating emotion in the surrounding scenery.  Irving’s use of colors and emotion to create a gothic countryside is innovative; this style allows Irving to describe a quaint town and turn it into a gothic wilderness in which the reader is invested.  The darkness and mystery of the European castle is truly relocated to the American wilderness with Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer.  Taking the gothic even further, Cooper adds a layer of secrecy.  This additional facet of the gothic adds the possibility of secret places, whether physical or mental.  Cooper brings in the use of past stories involving death and decay to locate the reader, mentally, in the wilderness.  This consistent development of the gothic, each author adding another layer or facet, is what makes this literature so enticing.  This relocation of the gothic to the American wilderness adds new dimensions to traditional settings and language.

Works Cited

Brooks, Mary.  In the Space Between Rests the Sublime.  February 28, 2005.  Dr. White Class Website, Litr 5535.  http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/hsh/Whitec/LITR/5535/
models/2005/midterms/mt05brooks.htm.

Cooper, James Fenimore.  The Deerslayer.  New York:  Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005.  39, 53, 238.

Cooper, James Fenimore.  The Last of the Mohicans.  New York:  Penguin Books, 1986.  21, 125, 126, 190. 

Irving, Washington.  “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in The Heath Anthology of American Literature Fourth Edition.  Ed. Paul Lauter.  Boston and New York:  Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.  2108, 2110.

Rowlandson, Mary.  “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” in The Norton Anthology of American Literature Shorter Sixth Edition.  New York and London:  W. W. Norton & Company, 2003.  137, 138.