Ron Burton

12 October 2008

The Gothic Other

            One of the most intriguing aspects of American Romanticism is the Gothic element.  Darkness and isolation from society or self, “create[s] a terrifying experience…within the reader: a fear of the unknown and great danger lurking at every corner,” plagues the Romantic hero and heroine, as Ashley Huff puts it (“Gothic Nature” 10-05-06).  A particularly interesting facet of ‘fear of the unknown’ resides in the development of “the other” who is characterized in such a way to evoke fear and danger.  It is by personifying gothic elements onto the other that we create real fear.

            In proto-Gothic literature, such as Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” the other, Native Americans, are portrayed as everything that the settlers are not.  The Indians are “barbarous creatures” (119) who horribly and carelessly slaughter Christians; they are “black creatures in the night” (121) that kill innocent children (123).  These descriptions of the other probably did induce fear and an extreme sense of danger, but the narrative adds another element of the Gothic and that is isolation from society—isolation from Rowlandson’s society, that is.  Mary’s predicament is total isolation from all she knows.  Rowlandson is a captive in Indian society, which she paints as a “vast and desolate wilderness” (121).  Her family is either dead or missing and she considers herself a slave among the odd society that “strangely…the Lord provided for” although, her Lord allows her child to die (129).  This introduces the supernatural element found within Gothic literature.  Death and copses are other troupes of the Gothic; they remind us of ultimate isolation and Rowlandson experiences them both in excess.  She portrays the Indians as being the scourge of death and misery to the settlers, but never considers that she is a colonizer who will in effect destroy the lives of those she paints gothic.  Even when the Indians bury her child, a seemingly caring act, it is depicted as cold.   Moreover, the Indian diet is made to sound barbarous “that a hog or a dog would hardly touch,” (129).  It seems clear that the other is the bane in this proto-Gothic tale because Rowlandson exemplifies gothic characteristics as fundamental characteristics of Indians.

One hundred and sixty years after Rowlandson, the Indian is still depicted in gothic terms by Nathaniel Hawthorne in “Young Goodman Brown.”  The danger that lurks behind every tree is a “devilish Indian” and possibly the “devil himself” (606).  The Indians and the devil are linked, although “the devil” in this regard is of Christian mythology in an effort to relate Indians to evil and creating a binary —they live and lurk together in the dark gloomy gothic woods.  Here as in Rowlandson, a binary is created with the other taking on the form of the dark side.  Hawthorne creates this parallel in gothic fashion by creating a sense of fear and isolation within Brown by removing him from his safe and normal home and placing him in the midst of the other, which also corresponds to nature.

The “Indian powwow,” or medicine man, is grouped with witches, wizards, and the devil in the deep dark woods where it is easy to get lost; here again, Indians are aligned with European Christian ideals, stressing the binary of who is evil and who is not (611).  The altar scene is a wonderful example of play on light and dark (a prominent image in Gothic literature), with how the red light from the fiery trees “alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow” (611).  This sensationalized scene draws on elements that show the sinister side of the supernatural and that the other is its proponent, so again, as in Rowlandson, the other becomes the gothic element.

The “Shape of Evil” makes a remarkable summation of mankind—that its very nature is “Evil” (613).  This is a strong statement that ties the tragic Gothic hero, Brown, to the other (both members of mankind), but this also seems to be critiquing (or pointing out a hypocrisy) in the nature of religion and by doing so, furthers the internal strife of isolation of self and isolation from God.  Hawthorne seems to rescue the other by joining him to mankind, but the outcome of that is that we are all evil, particularly the other.  Simply knowing that he is somehow connected to the other, our Gothic hero assumes a fitting end to his life—a gothic death, “they carved no hopeful verse upon his tomb-stone; for his dying hour was gloom” (614).

I have briefly touched on the elements of the Gothic as shown in pre-Romanticism with Rowlandson and how those elements are assigned to the other.  The other receives little reprieve from those dark, isolating components in Hawthorne’s Romantic period; however, a hundred year later: darkness, fear, and isolation still prevail, but William Faulkner turns the tables on the plight of the other as being the gothic element to being the somewhat normal character for which that element is contradicted.

 In  “A Rose for Emily” there is still a clear racial binary—in this case, white and black.  But it is the life of the tragic Emily that resigns in darkness and isolation from society, but the other, her “Negro” servant Tobe, is not the cause of it.  Emily’s home is basically a tomb for the murdered Homer, herself, and in a larger concept, Tradition.  The gothic troupe of death and decay attached to the home takes on a more personal dimension for Faulkner than in Rowlandson and Hawthorne whose characters are in isolation outside of the home.  For Faulkner, the home is fundamental and so to the Southern Gothic that is reminiscent to the Euro-Gothic; he emphasizes this by affixing several troupes to Emily’s home:  the castle-like home—an unbreachable fortitude, societal expectations of the small town matriarch, but most important is the lingering essence of slavery.

  Tobe facilitates Emily’s eccentric lifestyle of isolation by running errands and “going in and out with a market basket” (2219).  He makes possible Emily’s wake and presumably knows about Homer’s rotting corpse, but does nothing to alert society.  This is interesting when compared with the coldness exhibited by Rowlandson’s Indians who buried of her child—both cases facilitate isolation between the other and the narrator.

Emily’s final resting place is dark and gloomy like Hawthorne’s Brown’s, but in both cases, death implies freedom from self isolation—for Tobe, Emily’s death is freedom.  The other is basically nameless and servile, but unlike Rowlandson and Hawthorne, these characters facilitate the gothic in the white characters but seem unattached to it.  For example, the “Negro delivery boy” brings Emily the arsenic she will use to murder Homer and nothing is more is said to explicate the delivery boy except that he is a “Negro” (2221).  The delivery boy is not “barbarous” as Rowlandson describes and he is not “devilish” as with Hawthorne’s Other, although by facilitating Emily the delivery boy plays a minor role in Homer’s death.

The Other in Faulkner’s story are post-slave African-Americans, but he is careful not emphasize that aspect in gothic terms, instead he leaves gothic description for Emily and the townspeople who are presumably all white, while Rowlandson and Hawthorne utilize those same elements to present uncomplimentary images of Indians.  A comparison can be made between the exploitation of both groups of people being described using various gothic elements, but with regard to these three stories it is clear that the other is either catalyst or facilitator of gothic traits onto their counterparts.  Declension narratives have since reversed gothic elements as being characteristic of the other and have attempted to de-emphasize negative attributions.  Writers such as Amy Tan and Toni Morrison for example, use gothic elements to frame a story from the other’s point of view.  The overall use of gothic elements of darkness, isolation, and fear, to name a few, as a means to describe otherness is apparent in the three stories.  The Gothic serves the purpose of exploring the shadowy side of humanity; however, humanity’s dark side is more prevalent in the heart than the skin.