Dawlat Yassin

Gothic Elements in American Romantic Literature

Gothic tradition in English Literature started with Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto which was widely imitated by writers  and well-received by readers. This kind of fiction spread quickly to form a new recognizable genre. English Gothic Literature was characterized with dreary castles, dark vaults, haunted physical and mental spaces and usually the discovery of an old mystery or sin. However, American writers prevailed to transfer this tradition into the American setting with its awful wilderness and all kinds of superstitions. Pre-and early American romantic writers invested the American wilderness and its native inhabitants to create their gothic images. Good example of these writers is Mrs. Mary Rowlandson in the “Narrative of The Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” and Washington Irving in “Rip Van Winkle”. On the other hand, some American writers kept the tradition of haunted mental and physical spaces, like Edgar Allen Poe in his tale of “the Fall of The House of Usher” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”.

  In her Midterm 2006, Ashley Huff considered Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative as a picture of “horrifying aspects of reality. The whole event in itself was gothic, because she encountered a constant fear of the unknown while held a captive by the Indians”. Mary Rowlandson was “able to portray a horrific devilish world on earth”.(Anuruddha Ellakkala) She creates  her gothic images both in her house and in the wilderness using contrasting colors especially red and black. The highly literate puritan woman always loaded her images with religious references. Her family and friends are not just humans barbarously slaughtered by another group of humans, but “Christians lying in their blood” and the enemies are merciless heathens, naked hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting”. It is Rawlandson’s strong faith that supported her during her plight. She refers all what happened to her to an infallible Providence and used the scripture in her moments of weakness. She described herself along with those who survived the attack as “standing amazed with the blood running down [their] heels”. After being taken a captive by the Indians, Rowlandson spoke of several “removes” from one place to another in an attempt from the Indians to escape the English revenge. With these movements, the setting of Rowlandson’s gothic narrative becomes the vast wilderness with its fearful dark forests and the hellish sounds the Indians made in their pagan rituals. Rowlandson’s first night with the Indians was “the dolefulest night that ever [her] eyes saw”. She talked how the “roaring and singing and dancing and yelling of those black creatures in the night which made the place a lively resemblance of hell”. The violence and barbarous behavior of the Indians dehumanized them into demons, and their black complexion added to the horror of the scene. On the other hand, the Indian’s ritual might not only be a celebration of their victory, but an expression of internal fear of the unknown latent in the human psyche, or an attempt to appease a wrathful god or spirit that resided close to them in the dreary wilderness. Although, Rowlandson travelled in the “vast and desolate wilderness” with a dying child and a hurting wound, her “spirit did not utterly sink under [her] affliction” and God preserved her the “use of[ her] reason and senses”. 

Like Mary Rowlandson, Washington Irving invested nature to create his gothic images. The very description of the Kaatskill Mountains was given a mysterious tone with its noble height and “magical hues and shapes that changes every hour of the day, and every change of weather and season”. Rip Van Winkle escaped his wife’s anger  by going to the mountains with no companion other than his dog Wolf. In these solitary quiet mountains, the sound of his gun echoed and reechoed back. A deep glen was described as “wild, lonely and shagged, the bottom is filled with fragments from the impending cliff and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun”. Rip Van Winkle was occupied with the idea that darkness would fall before he reached the village, and the terror of encountering his wife when he heard a voice hallooing his name. He saw nothing other than a crow and blamed his imagination. The fear was culminated in the vague apprehension that stole on him. It was a human, an old guy, “short with thick bushy hair and grizzled beard. His clothes were out of date Dutch fashion, as if he was one of the first settlers of the place resurrected from death. An auditory effect again added to the horror of the visual setting, “long rolling peals, like distant thunder, that seemed to issue of a deep ravine. The whole thing raised suspicion of some mystery, some unknown that “inspired awe”.  Other elements of wonder were added to the scene as rip Van Winkle encountered the strange looking men playing at nine-pins and keeping grave faces and mysterious looks. The contradiction between the nature of an entertaining game and the gloomy facial expressions of the players increased Rip Van Winlke’s fear. Their looks made his blood run cold and “his heart turned within him and his knees smote together”. Then, he discovered the source of the thunder-like sound he has heard. It was the noise of this party’s balls “which whenever they roll, echoed along the mountain like rumbling peals of thunder”. Rip Van winkle drank from their liquor and fell to a deep sleep to wake up in another era only to find himself a stranger to his native village and its people. He could not understand the political changes that took place during the twenty years when he was asleep. He went to sleep as a subject of the British king and woke up a free citizen of the United States of America. This political change remained a mystery to him more than to the reader. Images of gothic decay also evolved his house with it’s fallen roof, shattered windows and off hinges doors. He found no sign of any human inhabitants.

Unlike Mary Rowlandson and Washington Irving who placed their gothic tales in the American wilderness, Edgar Allen Poe’s gothic tales took place in haunted mansions. In “The Fall of The House of Usher”, the setting helped develop a dreadful tone of the tale. The place was a haunted mansion and the timing was during gloomy Autumn. The narrative started on a “dull dark and soundless day in Autumn” and ended during a stormy night. Weather also had a role in the gothic tone of the narrative for it started on a dull gloomy day when a whirlwind brought the end by destroying the mansion. The dreadful setting of the mansion with its dark vaults and physically and mentally disturbed inhabitants offered efficient elements to turn the tale into a perfectly gothic one.  Both the exterior and the interior scenes of the house were terrifying. From outside, the walls were bleak, the windows were like “vacant eyes”, and the trees were decayed. Inside the house, the guest entered the “gothic archway of the hall” and passed by “many dark and intricate passages” to his friend’s studio. Everything he encountered inside the house was heightening his “vague sentiments”.  The room where Mr. Usher received his friend was described as “excessively lofty”. The windows were long, narrow and pointed” it was an atmosphere of sorrow and horror.

In addition to all the above physical gothic elements, a madness ran in the Usher family. This defect brought about the end of their race for Roderick and Lady Madeline were the last living of the Ushers. Both suffered an incurable physical and mental illnesses. Physicians could not understand the nature of Lady Madeline’s sickness, but they knew it was a life threatening one. The fear of loosing his sister caused Roderick to lapse into a series of hallucinations that culminated after her death and caused him to decease too.

The narrator was a friend invited by Roderick Usher to help alleviate the latter’s spirits. All the narrator’s attempts at cheering Roderick’s spirits were in vain; rather Roderick’s disturbances seemed contagious. The narrator entered under the spell of superstitions the moment he arrived at the house. He described the effect of the house on him: “When I again lifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy, a fancy so ridiculous, indeed had I mention it to show the vivid force of the sensation which oppressed me”. The narrator is infected with Roderick’s “wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions” which started creeping upon his soul. The guest started suffering insomnia and hearing strange sounds through the pauses of the wind. He was “overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, yet unendurable”. The resurrection of Lady Madeline which the narrator told of at the end of the story might be nothing more than the work of his sick imagination.

Roderick was too much changed with the affliction of his malady that manifested itself in the form of “morbid acuteness of the senses”.  This kind of malady locked him a prisoner of the darkness of his house, deprived of enjoying anything apprehended by the senses. The abnormal acuteness of the senses made him see and hear things that had no existence. He had a horrifying fear of the unknown. Moreover, he was saddened by the possibility of loosing his sole companion, his sister. The guest started suspecting his friend wrestling with a secret in order not to disclose. However, even if there was a secret, it died with Roderick. Roderick’s horrors culminated after the death of his sister when he got obsessed with idea that he had buried her alive. Many a mystery in “The Fall of The House of Usher” remained undiscovered. First of all the reality of the relation between the brother and sister, and why  does the brother imagined that he buried her alive; was it a mischief he has done  her in her life and caused him to  suffer the burden of guilt as long as he lives, we can not tell. Another question is why the guest would not be allowed to see the sick woman alive, and whether there was a secret that Roderick feared she might make known before she died. No explanation or even insinuation of what kind of sin or secret brought about the end of Roderick, and with him the end of the Usher race in this horrifying fall of the house of Usher.

The idea of madness running in a family reoccurred in William Faulkner’s narrative “A Flower for Emily”. Mrs. Emily’s great aunt went completely mad. People of Emily’s community recollected the madness of Miss Emily’s great aunt each time they saw a strange behavior of Miss Emily. The gothic tone of the tale could be detected in the style of narration where the narrator uses the pronoun “we”, thus setting Emily on one side and the whole community of her village on the other .This intensified the idea of her seclusion  and the existence of a mystery about which  the whole community was curious.

The physical description of the house as a “big squarish” one might not be enough to make it a gothic element in the story, but the life of Miss Emily inside the house, or to be specific, the last forty years of her life were a real gothic experience. Mrs. Emily spent her life in utter loneliness except for the presence of a servant black man. She refused any social connection with the people and repulsed all kinds of guests. She also refused to pay taxes as if she was not living under the government, but had her own independent kingdom inside her forbidden castle. When her father died she denied his death and refused to bury the body for three days, and when the local authorities thought of forcing her to do it, she consented from herself.

One suspicious incident happened and heightened the sense of mystery surrounding Miss Emily was her purchasing rat poison. People thought that she would kill herself, but she did not. This incident happened when she was forlorn by her sweet heart to whom she was preparing to get married. After this incident, she got sick for a long time and when she was seen latter; she had grown fat and had cut her hair short. Nobody ever saw her sweet heart after once he was seen to be received into the house through the kitchen. A bad smell developed in her house, but no body dared ask her about it. On the contrary, the local authorities  took much consideration either to Miss Emily’s feelings or to the stubbornness with which she used to confront them. They secretly cleaned up and deodorized the place during night.

However the mystery of Miss Emily’s life was solved after her death when a room in the upper floor of her house was opened to show the skeleton of a man on a bridal bed. Beside the man laid a long strand of Miss Emily’s hair. At that moment the people knew for what purpose the rat poison was purchased, and what was the nature of that bad smell.

            Two factors might have played a role in Miss Emily’s behavior. First, the Madness running in her family and second, a long tormented soul longing for love. Love and normal life were denied her for she belonged to the Griersons and “none of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such”. This idea is indicated in the title of the narrative “A Rose for Emily”. She had waited for a love rose and a wedding, but why she killed her future husband just after she prepared for the wedding is not answered in the tale. We have had a hint earlier that Mr. Homer Barron “like[s] men”. She might have fallen into a neurotic kind of despondence to know that he was gay when she thought the moment of her happiness had finally arrived. Since she could not posses him as a male lover and husband while living, she might thought of killing him and utterly possessing him while dead! She received her rose on her funeral.

 Elements of horror, mystery and a discovered crime made the above studied romantic works a unique kind of gothic tradition that was brought from Western Literature and adapted to the American environment. Some gothic scenes are located in the vast American wilderness and others within haunted mansions and sickened minds. We had heroes who faced the unknown with fortitude like Mrs. Rowlandson and others who fell victims of their sickened fantasies.  Each writer carried out his/her gothic tale in their own unique way that could raise suspense, fear and wonder, but all of them belonged to a unique American Gothic tradition.