Ayme Christian

October 6, 2008

The Intertwined Vines of Sensuous Desire and Moral Loss in American Romanticism

            In Danny Corrigan’s March 2005 paper he wrote that the American immigrants came “out of the desire for a better life, one free from the burdens of the past and filled with bright prospects for the future. It is a universal human desire to start life over again and return to a state of pure grace.” While there may have been some truth to that statement in the past, currently I would refute this as a desire, at least on the part of the majority of Americans, for “more, more, more.” If you don’t believe me, look at how far in debt Americans are; as individuals, and as a nation. The longing for more, more than we currently have, more than our neighbors have, more than someone at church or the office has is not something new. The longing for something else, the lack of contentment with our current circumstances, can lead down treacherous paths, and while ambition is fine and commendable to some extent, it must be analyzed and kept in check to avoid becoming a by all, end all obsession. The writers of the American Romantic period are also familiar with this temptation, and they have carefully intertwined the themes of desire and loss associated with our objective 1a, with 2e, the competition of sensory and material gratification versus a moral, spiritual, or idealistic mission. This intricate relationship and correlating results can most easily be shown by analyzing the works Charlotte Temple, Young Goodman Brown, and Ligeia.

            Corrigan writes that “In her desire for worldly experiences and to explore the unknown, Charlotte loses her Garden of Eden, her innocence, and the love of her parents.” However, this is erroneous in several ways. Charlotte’s desire is for Montraville, the man, not the unknown or worldly experiences. She does say that she will happily endure all if she is with him, but he is the key factor, not the adventures they will be having. Also, Charlotte isn’t entirely innocent. Corrigan has placed her in an environment similar to Eden, as is suited to his paper comparing Charlotte’s tale with Genesis. However Charlotte’s actual environment, although somewhat isolated and protected, isn’t Eden and Charlotte isn’t as innocent as Adam and Eve before the fall. She can’t be, thanks to those characters themselves.

The main problem with desire and loss in this tale isn’t Charlotte’s; it is that of Charlotte’s parents. Their desire to keep their daughter tied to them forever, rather than equipping her to leave and survive on her own, or, as would be more expected and acceptable in the time period this is written in, to survive with her husband. Although it is certainly a parent’s job to protect, the Temples, in the co-dependent environment they have placed their child in, haven’t equipped her to handle any decisions on her own. Susanna Rowson writes that she wants to be of use to those “without the least power to defend themselves” but she neglects to mention the necessity of parents advising their daughters about the dangers of the world. Perhaps this is the reason she is writing her tale, in order to advise young women of situations that they may easily avoid if only their parents had acquainted them with a few dire possibilities. We must assume, as often as Charlotte’s innocence is mentioned, that it is in comparison with the innocence of others in her era since complete innocence is impossible.

 The dominance of Charlotte’s parents is implied in several places, by the Temple’s own words, by the observations of those around Charlotte, even by Charlotte herself. Mrs. Temple points out that Charlotte is “the only child we have” while discussing party plans with Mr. Temple. Although Mr. Temple implies that Charlotte will be spoiled, he willingly goes along with his wife’s plan. We can surmise two things by this simple conversation, first, that Charlotte will be spoiled, whether it is in the best interest of child-rearing or not, and that also this is due in part to her being an only child. Only children certainly can be spoiled or doted on and they can also be loved with an almost cloying devotion that doesn’t allow them to develop into productive individuals. This seems to be the case with Charlotte, and in her parents desire to keep her in her filial duty to them, they neglect their own obligations and responsibilities to her. Unfortunately, they are rewarded accordingly with the total loss, both physically and morally of their daughter, to her detriment and their own.

Mrs. Temple repeatedly uses the word little in reference to Charlotte. The “little alcove,” the “little scheme” and Charlotte’s “little friends.” She neglects to mention the fact that by isolating Charlotte so much, they have also ensured that she has a “little” mind. Mademoiselle DuLac asks her if she has “a mind to be in leading strings all your life time” and encourages her to “judge for {her}self” but Charlotte isn’t equipped/prepared to do this as she has never had to do it before. Later Mme. DuLac accuses “you never know your own mind two minutes at a time” and Charlotte herself speaks of her “torn heart” questioning “how shall I act?” As is normally the case where weak wills are involved, there is someone around to decide for them and Montraville is only too willing to decide for Charlotte. This tale of American Romance is true to form in that the author’s attitude criticizes the selfish desires of Charlotte’s parents to keep her dependent on them for all decisions by rewarding them with the loss of Charlotte in both body and spirit. Although it is certainly a parent’s job to protect their children, it is also their privilege and duty to equip them to deal with the world.

            Perhaps the most poignant example of desire and loss can be seen in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown. Goodman Brown is a misleading character that must be examined closely because at first summation, he appears to have a desire for the moral, spiritual, and ideal. After all, he tries to draw back from his covenant with the devil, and is appalled at what the devil reveals to him about his peers in the town of Salem, a well-chosen locale for this colorful narrative. However upon closer examination, Goodman Brown’s true desire is revealed. He wants all of the blessings of his faith, with none of the responsibilities. He desires perfection and submission to God in those around him but doesn’t require the same of himself. Goodman Brown has entered into a covenant with the devil at some point, to meet him in the woods this night, and even though his new young wife appeals to his duty as husband and protector “A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts, that she’s afeard of herself, sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year!” (605), the young man abandons her in order to keep his meeting with Satan. He justifies himself with the thought that “after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven” (606). Not a very admirable resolution for one whose job is to be the leader, physically, mentally, and certainly spiritually. Not only does Hawthorne scoff at Brown with this fact but also at mocks him when speaking of his resolve to then make MORE haste “With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose” (606). In other words, since I’m going to do good in the future, I need to hurry up and do bad right now, rather than turning aside from this vile mission entirely. 
       As Goodman Brown meets Satan and agrees to journey further, we see him repeatedly falling back on the faith of others for his salvation, rather than his own personal relationship with a savior. Brown tells the devil “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him” here he is relying upon the faith of his ancestry, not his own. When Satan topples that theory, Brown relies upon his religious institution, that of the Puritans stating that “We are a people of prayer” (607). When that too fails, he turns to “that good old man, our minister” (608) holding up the shield of an individual of power and prayer. Lastly, when that hope abandons him, Goodman Brown grasps for his helpmate, his wife, Faith declaring “With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil” (610). In each situation the devil is easily able to defeat him, whether by rumor or hallucination and Brown is gullibly entrapped for the simple reason that he has no faith, no relationship of his own. So that, once he loses the excuse of his wife he cries “My Faith is gone…there is no good on earth…” (611). Certainly there is not for him because he has tried to ride the coattails of everyone else into heaven, rather than having his own personal relationship with God. Not only that, but he has expected a perfection from them, that they may be constantly above temptation themselves, that he has not required of himself. When his desire is not met, as it is a ridiculous and unattainable one, he falls apart and dies a miserable old man whose “dying hour was gloom” (614) rather than the zenith it could have been.

       In Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligeia the title character’s reality is thrown into suspicion from the very beginning. Not only are her origins unknown, her beloved can’t even remember exactly how they met. She is also repeatedly compared to mythological characters and statues, and we are told that “In beauty of face no maiden ever equaled her” (2462) and that she reminded him of “the beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth” (2463). So even when she was alive, Ligeia’s reality is called into question: is she animal, vegetable, or mineral? Mortal, angel, or demon; or perhaps, like Helen of Troy, a bit of them all? We must assume that she is, for the most part, mortal, because she does in fact, die and this is where we see the strength of her desire come to bear.

Before her death, we see the strength of her desire and in fact, a certain devotional quality, when she says “O God! O Divine Father!...Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who-who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will” (2467). Indeed as the story goes on we discover that Ligeia’s will is not at all feeble or weak. Her desire to live, to be fully alive once again shatters the boundaries of death and hell. The narrator speaks of Ligeia’s appetite for life: “I would have soothed – I would have reasoned; but in the intensity of her wild desire for life, -- for life – but for life – solace and reason were alike the uttermost of folly” (2465). One would think that the narrator, being in love with Ligeia, would have the same wild desire for her to live and be real that Ligeia herself did, but apparently even he found it a bit excessive and, in fact, terrifying. Ligeia must use her desire to fight to become real, and she must combat not only immortality and the grim reaper, she must defeat another life, that of the narrator’s second wife, to creep again into the reality of the mortal world. She must commit murder, which legends say will cost a part of her immortal soul, in order to live and become real again. Yet her thirst for life is so strong that she doesn’t hesitate to do this. In fact battles for it, not in one brief struggle, but for days, possibly weeks, in order to regain her place by the narrator’s side.

Rowena, the narrator’s new bride first seems uneasy, but this mood is attributable to the “Gothic” atmosphere she is in and the fact that all second wives, whether the wife of a widower or a divorcee, feel the shadow of previous loves at some point. Fortunately for most of us, we have the willpower to banish the shadows. Not so the narrator’s new bride. She grows repeatedly ill and the sicker she becomes, the stronger a mysterious presence in the house becomes. First a stirring easily mistaken for that of a draft or wind, next a penumbra, described as “the shadow of a shade” (2470), next a foot-fall and finally a force potent enough to commit murder, to drop “three or four large drops of a brilliant and ruby colored fluid” (2470) into the new bride’s wine.  Presumably these drops are poison. Rowena dies and the narrator begins the death-watch only to find himself witness to some sort of revolting semblance of rebirth.

Ligeia has murdered, now she must will herself into Rowena’s body, back into the real world, to assume her previous place; and apparently this isn’t an easy thing to do. Her desire, already strong enough to murder, now must be fierce enough to cast off the entangled chains of Death itself. We see the corpse sob, and sigh, and sob again “time after time, until near the period of the gray dawn, this hideous drama of revivification was repeated…a struggle with some invisible foe” (2471). Indeed it was a hideous struggle. Her struggle for life is a matter of her desire alone. She does indeed triumph as the narrator shrieks in the last sentence “the LADY LIGEIA” (2472). Her desire has triumphed over death, at least temporarily, but at what cost? The cost of the narrator’s second wife, Rowena, assuredly yet Poe has subtly furthered the Romanticist’s view of desire gone wrong with moral loss. The lover she has returned to will never view her the same way that he did, and she has lost her own soul in the process.

Each of the characters in the stories above has qualities that we can relate to. The Temples want to keep their daughter forever young and dependent on them. Which of us, as a parent, have not struggled with this temptation? The temptation to continue to make choices for our children because we know what is best? Young Goodman Brown wants the assurance of heaven that his faith gives him, without the personal relationship and responsibilities that it entails. Is this not familiar to all of us? Who hasn’t shirked a responsibility but still wished for the privileges of the position that come with that responsibility? And Ligeia. Ligeia wants immortality. This may seem a bit extreme in some ways, but with the expanding market promoting anti-aging products for everything from Botox to wrinkle cream, not to mention plastic surgery, apparently this is something that is prevalent in our society as well. Yet the American Romanticism movement reminds us that there are remaining questions to be asked. Mainly, at what cost? At what cost the permanent dependency of a child? At what cost the shirking of responsibility? At what cost the desire for immortality? In each case, the response supplied has been negative. In each case, some of Romanticism’s greatest authors have shared their belief that the vine of sensuous or selfish desire is closely intertwined with the smothering vine of moral loss. And in each case, it is based on the choice of the individual.