Matt Richards

October 11, 2008

The Evolution of the Gothic Style

            Americans as a culture have been familiar with the gothic style in architecture, but often are unaware of the gothic movement in Literature.  In her 2006 midterm “The American Gothic,” Leigh Ann Moore says, “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.”   The ideal did help redefine Literature in America for centuries and continues to do so.

The Gothic style is not one specific period in Literature nor does it have a particular author that defines it.   The Gothic is a style that contains many aspects or qualities, which often vary from author to author and time period to time period.  The Gothic story could simply be about the grotesque side of life or be as complex as a tale that plays with light and dark, the creepy, and the extreme desire and loss of something.  The list of authors includes Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, and William Faulkner.   The Gothic contains many different elements, which change from author to author and often the period in which the story was written.  Elements of this style first appeared in the 1600s, but didn’t fully evolve into what we call the gothic until the mid 1800s.  The purposes of this essay are to look at how the gothic style has evolved and discuss what affects the use of the gothic has on Literature.

            This style first appeared in the world of Literature in the 1600s in New England.  The gothic had not yet become its own style, but elements of it started to appear in the narratives of Jonathan Edwards, John Smith, and Mary Rowlandson.  John Smith’s narrative that includes the Native American Pocahontas is a story that most Americans are familiar with, but not many people know that the story does have elements of the gothic in it.  For example, when Smith is describing the Indians he says, “A good time they continued this exercise and then cast themselves in a ring, dancing in such several postures and signing and yelling out such hellish notes and screeches; being strangely painted” (Norton 49).  Smith is describing one of the Powhatans’ native rituals.  He sees them as evil because they are doing things that his culture would deem to be of the devil.  He seems to be terrified at seeing these people do this ritual and sees these people as grotesque.  The interplay of the dark figures and the fire represents the play of dark and light.  Another example in Smith’s narrative is when he describes another of the Powhatan Indians’ rituals.  Smith says,

            With a hellish voice, and a rattle in his hand.  With most strange gestures and passions he began his invocation and environed the fire with a circle of corn meal; which done, three more such like devils came rushing in with the like antic tricks, painted half black, half red, but all their eyes were painted white and some red strokes like mustaches along their cheeks.  Round about him those fiends danced a pretty while, then came in with three more as ugly as the rest, with red eyes and white strokes over their black faces (Norton 51).

            Smith describes their ritual dance in terms of the grotesque and he places emphasis on the fact that they painted themselves, which shows the interplay of dark, light, and red that is commonly a characteristic of the gothic. 

            Another example of a pre-gothic narrative is “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.”  In the narrative, Mary Rowlandson is taken captive by a group of Native Americans who have invaded her Puritan village of Lancaster, Massachusetts.  The first example of the gothic element in the story is at the beginning when the invasion had just begun.  Rowlandson says, “he begged of them his life, promising them money (as they told me) but they would not harken to him but knocked him in head, and stripped him naked, and split open his bowels” (Norton 119).  She is watching the Native American invaders viciously kill her fellow Puritan men.  The slitting open of the stomach and bowels is a very grotesque sight to see, but it is an element of the gothic that is in the story.  She talks about how these people came into her village and are killing her neighbors.  Rowlandson also uses the image of blood being everywhere, which is often a symbol of the gothic writing.  She even calls them “hell hounds” (Norton 120). 

Another reason that Rowlandson’s captive narrative is an example of the pre-gothic is because of the way she describes her surroundings.  She says on page 121, “But now, the next morning, I must turn my back upon the town, and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness” (Norton 121).  The words “vast” and “desolate” show how distraught Rowlandson is when she realizes that she will have to leave her village and go with the tribe that invaded it.  She will be taken into a place where no one that she is familiar with would be.  This shows how she is already losing hope of ever getting away from them and back to the life she led before this happened. 

The Reverend Jonathan Edwards is another figure whose writing contains elements of the pre-gothic style.  His personal narrative doesn’t have many examples of the gothic element, but his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ does have some of these elements in it.  For example, at the beginning of the sermon, Edwards is talking about the nature of people and says, “That they were always exposed to destruction; as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall” (Norton 194).  Edwards is using a very death driven type of speech; in other words, he is trying to scare his congregation by telling them that they are always in a position to fall into the darkness of sin and death.  He continues his talk of their fall into sin by saying, “It implies that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction” and later by saying that “There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment” (Norton 194-95).  He uses the fire and brimstone type of language that leads the congregation to imagine a very dark, gloomy, and grotesque place that they will go if they do not watch their step and remain faithful to God.   Edwards almost makes God sound like he is a deity that doesn’t care if his people go to heaven and a being that can put people in hell at a whim.  Clearly the writings of Edwards, Rowlandson, and Smith contain the pre-gothic element that will later evolve in the American Romantic period.

The American Romantic Literary period was from the late 1700s to the 1800s, however, authors like Hawthorne and Poe who were not necessarily part of the period still wrote in that particular style.  The American Romantic period was full of many different types and styles, but perhaps the most famous of these was the gothic style that had now evolved.  The major authors of this period were Washington Irving and William Faulkner.

Washington Irving is an author that was part of the early Romantic period.  His style of gothic writing falls into the colonial gothic style.  Irving’s stories focus on the gothic element of dark and light, haunted houses, and ghosts.  Ghost stories were often very popular in the colonial New York region and it is no surprise that most of his works involved ghost or out of reality tales.  His most famous work is “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which is a story about a young man named Ichabod Crane and the legend of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow.  This story shows a better developed gothic element than what was seen in the pre-gothic.  For example, Irving’s descriptions of Sleepy Hollow are creepy, play toward the dark, and tell of the supernatural forces that are among the people in that village.  At the beginning of the story, Irving lays out his gothic tale with his spooky descriptions.  He says, “A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor,” (Handout).  Irving is setting the scene of the village by using words that are indicators that this society is far removed from reality.  The word “dreamy” suggests that the people in the village live in a dream world that is far from the reality of a normal Puritan village.  In fact, the village is secluded from the rest of their neighbors because the haunted, gothic happenings only take place in Sleepy Hollow.  Irving makes it look as if the surrounding places have no idea what is going on in Sleepy Hollow.

Another thing that evokes the gothic style in this story is the situation that is going on in village.  The fact that these people see “visions” and “are subject to trances” is a bit on the strange side, but that can still be played off as someone having drank too much.  The “Hessian Trooper” or the headless horseman is not an element in the story that can be pushed aside so easily.  The horseman is the gothic style in human form.  He is dressed in all black, but is very pale in skin color so you get the interplay between the worlds of the light and dark.  The horseman is searching for something that he has lost, his head.  The horseman has a strong desire to find his head that was taken from him, but it seems that even though it is an impossible task; he will not stop his search because find his head will bring his soul peace.  The horseman’s loss of his head shows the extreme longing and desire for something that may not ever see fruition.  Because this story focuses on being a tale of the supernatural, desire and loss, and the grotesque, it is an excellent example of the gothic style that was in the early Romantic period.

The next evidence of the evolution of the gothic style also takes place in the Romantic period, but unlike Irving this story doesn’t involve ghost or things that are haunted.  This new form of the gothic is called the southern gothic style, which usually has a southern setting that is very reminiscent of the European Gothic.  This style is often used as a social commentary, but not always.  This style also seems to be one of the major forms of the gothic style of Literature that people are familiar with and it is no surprise because the author that best defines it is Edgar Allan Poe.

The author Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most famous writers in the history of Literature and is known as the poster child of the gothic style.  Even though Poe is mostly famous for his long poem “The Raven,” his other stories are popular as well.  His brand of gothic stories includes many of the elements that are evident in the fully evolved gothic style.  For example, in the story Ligeia, Poe plays with the image of bringing back the dead and plays with light and dark imagery.  This is most evident in the narrator description of Ligeia.  For example the narrator says, “The skin rivaling the purest ivory, the commanding breadth and repose” and a line later says, “and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses” (Norton 680).  This type of description is clearly both sublime and gothic because of the interplay of the dark and light features of Ligeia and the fact that the narrator barely can find the words to describe his obsession. 

Another reason that the reader can tell that the story contains the gothic element is because the narrator isn’t able to see Ligeia anymore.  This loss of his seemingly perfect lady shows the reader the extreme loss that the narrator feels and the desire that he has to get her back.  Then there is the fact that he brings her back from the dead.  This is a gothic element because it is an action that is far removed from reality.  It is fairly clear that the narrator doesn’t live in the world of reality because he actually believes that he has brought Ligeia back from the dead. 

“The Fall of the House of Usher” is another of Poe’s stories that displays the gothic style that he was made famous for.  Poe again uses a narrator to tell us the story. The first example of the gothic in this story is in the way the house is portrayed.  The narrator says,

I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that around the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity – an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and gray walls, and the silent tarn, in the form of an inelastic vapor or gas- dull, sluggish, faintly discernable, and leaded-hued (Norton 690).

This description is set up to distance the House of Usher from reality.  The narrator is convinced that what he is looking at can’t be real that it must be some sort of dream.  The house is a gothic symbol because it is not part of reality and it is apparently haunted by the members of the Usher family that died there.  The haunted house or supernatural is often a signifier of the gothic.  The house is in stages of decay, which is symbol of the physical decay of the two remaining members of the Usher family and it foreshadows the collapse of the house at the end of the story. The story also contains some mystery that cannot be explained such as, were Roderick and Madeline lovers?  This would be incest, but it wasn’t uncommon in Poe’s time.  Also, the reader doesn’t actually know if Roderick and Madeline are two different people, they could be the same person.  If this is true then Poe would have set the stage for movies like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.  This type of gothic style leaves a lot of details to the imagination of the reader, which is a quality of Romanticism.

The Gothic style has changed quite a bit over the years.  The style started out as an element that would often show up in the writing of pre-Romantic authors such as John Smith, Mary Rowlandson, and Jonathan Edwards.  The term changed with the arrival of the Romantic Period with authors such as Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  In today’s world the style has developed into a genre of its own, but is still heavily associated with American Romanticism.