LITR 5535: American Romanticism
Sample Student Research Project, fall 2003

Thomas Parker
Litr 5535: American Romanticism
Dr. White
11/21/03

Cora and Race
in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of The Mohicans

            Romanticism, and "Dark Romanticism" take on different characteristics when they are transported to America from Europe.  The emerging identity of the new nation calls for new ways of reflecting its unique experiences.  James Fenimore Cooper, one of America's early authors, exemplifies these differences.  Cooper did not wish to follow in the style of the "feminized" romance novels of his day, yet some compromise had to be made with regards to his reading audience (X).  Hence, the dual nature of The Last of the Mohicans which seems to be a hybrid adventure story/romance.  While he utilizes romantic conventions of his day throughout the novel, he does so with certain  "Dark Romantic" or gothic twists.  The heroine, Cora Munro, is atypical.  She is beautiful, courageous, strong, intelligent, and also tragic..  In Mohicans, Cooper deals with the complexly related racial makeup of the emerging nation:  In his insightful introduction to the novel, Richard Slotkin, Olin Professor and director of American Studies at Wesleyan University, comments on the relevance of the title, subtitle, and epigraph, to the key elements of the novel:

The title page focuses our attention upon the elements of the novel.  The subtitle places us in a specific historical time. . . . while the title and the epigraph refer us directly to the underlying theme of race. This allusion is well chosen, referring us to a play in which the central conflicts concern the racial and sexual as against the cultural or religious identities             of the characters, and the appropriateness of marriage between moor and white, Jew and Christian. . . .(XV)

            The setting of the novel is the dark forbidding wilderness inhabited by demons, other wise known as Cooper's "bad Indians."  In order to play out the drama of his characters Cooper utilizes a gothic convention; he moves them in to a wilderness world inverting the social roles they must play by having them cross the border between the civilized and uncivilized world:

. . . the "normal" order of sexual and social values is inverted-the faint-hearted British soldiers hang back, while the women who they ought to protect go forward, led by one of the despised Americans. (Slotkin XV)

This allows Cooper to display Cora's virtues.

            Cora also fits well into G.R. Thompson's description of the Dark Romance in his introduction to the collection of essays The Gothic Imagination:  Essays in Dark Romanticism:

The word Romantic usually evokes an ideal world, infused with internal energy and dynamically evolving toward a yet higher state, in which the single, separate self seeks unity with Nature, itself symbolic of the aesthetic harmony of the cosmos.  Adding the adjective Dark may evoke an image of the lonely isolated self, pressing onward despite all obstacles while either indulging in or struggling with an internal evil, the very conflict a source of energy. (1)

In Mohicans, the ghosts are psychological specters.  Cora's "evil" influence is her mixed race.  She is a gothic heroine with a secret surrounding her birth who transcends the borders of her sex, while haunted by the shadow of her mixed race mother.  She is also strong, intelligent, and brave in the face of danger.

            Cora has her father's utmost respect.  He looks to her for guidance rather than the other way around, and he states as his preamble to the revelation that she is of mixed blood, "Cora Munro is a maiden too discreet and of a mind too elevated and improved to need guardianship, even of a father" (Cooper 157-158).  As Munro relates his story to Duncan, he makes it clear that he feels no shame in Cora, but rather in the institution of slavery itself:

'There [the West Indies] it was my lot to form a             connexion with one who in time became my wife, and the mother of Cora.  She was the daughter of a gentleman of those isles, by a lady, whose misfortune it was, if you will,' said the old man proudly, 'to be descended, remotely, from that unfortunate class, who are so basely enslaved to administer to the wants of a luxurious people'.  (Cooper 157)

When Munro realizes that he has mistaken Duncan's intentions, which are for Alice, not Cora, his defense of his eldest daughter touching and shows the great extent of his admiration.  He dares Duncan to think ill of Cora because of her mixed race:  "You scorn to mingle the blood of the Heywards with one so degraded-lovely and virtuous though she may be?" . . .(Cooper 157).  Clearly, Cora's father does not think of her as his slave, but rather treats her as an equal, remarkable because of her sex as well as her mixed blood.

            From the very first glimpse Cooper gives us of Cora, he is hinting at her mixed blood.  He does so not only with her physical description, but her reaction to the Indian runner as well.  These clues are found in the language Cooper uses to describe her, and in the description itself:

The other [Cora] who appeared to share equally in the attention of the young officer, concealed her charms from the gaze of the soldiery with a care that seemed better fitted to the experience of four or five additional years.  It could be seen, however, that her person, though molded with the same exquisite proportions of which none of the graces were lost by the traveling dress she wore, was rather fuller and more mature than that of her companion.  As they traversed that short distance, not a voice was heard among them; but a slight exclamation proceeded from the younger of the females, as the Indian runner glided by her; unexpectedly, and led the way along the military road in her front.  Though this sudden startling movement of the Indian, produced no sound from the other, in the surprise, her veil also was allowed to open its folds, and betray an indescribable look of pity, admiration and horror, as her dark eye followed the easy motions of the savage.  The tresses of this lady were shining and black, like the plumage of the raven. Her complexion was not brown, but it rather appeared charged with the color of the rich blood that seemed ready to burst its bounds.  (Cooper 19)

Cooper refers to Cora as "the other", and her physical description seems distinctly un-European; with the description of her color, being "not brown," but rather, "charged with the rich blood" and her hair as being "shiny and black like the plumage of a raven."  She is shown as being more vital than her sister, as well as more compassionate.  Cora is able to see in the Indian runner a certain kinship which is indicated by her "indescribable look of pity, admiration and horror, as her dark eye followed the easy motions of the savage." 

            The first words she speaks shows a sympathy with Magua of which her sister and Heyward (who will certainly do as representatives of white European civilization) are incapable and she responds to Alice's questioning of Magua, "'Should we distrust the man, because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?' coldly asked Cora" (Cooper 21). 

            Cora is brave where her sister Alice is faint, and strong where Alice is weak.  Yet it is Alice who survives the novel, ostensibly to live happily ever after in the bosom of white civilization, while Cora must die because she has no place in the emerging society.  Duncan, as a representative of his world thinks less of Cora when the fact of her "taint" of African blood is revealed to him.  Yet despite all the virtues with which he imbues Cora, Cooper justifies this reaction on Duncan's part, upon Munro's revelation and accusation against him:

'Heaven protect me from a prejudice so unworthy of my reason!' returned Duncan, at the same time conscious of such a feeling, and that as deeply rooted as if it had been engrafted in his nature.  (Cooper 157-8)

It is not Duncan's reason which betrays him, but rather his nature as a white man.  Cooper's unmistakable use of language suggests that it is Duncan's "nature", as a white man to feel so towards Cora's mixed blood, and no fault of his character.

Due to her faint taint of African blood, she holds no place within the society of her era. Marriage for her, though she is the beautiful eldest daughter of a general, is tricky.   As Abbey H. P. Werlock states in her essay "Courageous Young Women in Cooper's Leathersotcking Tales:  Heroines and Victims," it seems as though Cooper imagines Cora and Uncas to be an ideal match, but ultimately they are a match whose very existence is not possible:

A union between the two could have been ideal: Cora is a mixture of black and white blood.  Uncas, symbolically, of red and white. . . Cooper tells us that Uncas is notably ahead of his own people in his refinement, his civilized attitude, his intelligence, and his courage--all of which qualities he shares with Cora. . . . .Their union might have been the ideal American one, but. . .the time for such a union has not yet come.

            Though the fact is not listed among Samuel Clemen's "The Literary Offenses of Fenimore Cooper," it is unlikely when one considers the facts discussed in Barbara A. Mann's essay "Whipped Like a Dog;  Crossed blood in The Last of the Mohicans" that Cora is "remotely" descended from a slave:                                                                 

In the early years, only a tiny number of the Africans carried off into Caribbean slavery were women. Typically, women lasted less than the three-year minimum required for a profitable balance sheet. Besides, they performed heavy labor poorly--unless it was the heavy labor of childbirth.  Pregnancy was frowned upon as an all-around profit loser during which both the unproductive mother and baby usually "died." Concubinage--i.e., throw-away sex slavery--was a luxury indulged in by planters only after the triangle trade was well underway, between 1660 and 1680 in the British West Indies.  Domesticity--i.e., sustained child-bearing concubinage--only became common two generations later. . . .Based on grandparentage, quantum-counting was a technical-sounding way to enforce racist imperatives.  For example, a quadroon and octoroon designated 'one-fourth' and 'one-eight' African heritage, respectively.  Much of the system was a ruse, however, with cross-bloods like Cora Munro claiming the lightest 'taint' their skin tones could justify.  (4)

Cora, in all likely-hood, was a "quadroon" or one-fourth African.  It is reasonable to assume that Cooper understood this, but felt that his reader would more readily accept a distant cross in a Romantic heroine.

            Cora is the forbidden offspring of a taboo relationship.  She must not reveal her true ancestry, less she be subjected to social ostracism and possibly even slavery:

Any person of African Descent, 'remote' or otherwise, was considered a slave unless legally manumitted in court. . . .In America, therefore, Cora Munro . . .was offcially classified as a slave.  Even had Colonel Munro legally emancipated his daughter, she would have been cast out of white society and been liable to "capture" and re-enslavement at any time.  (Mann 5)

She is very much an example of the egg laid by a rooster as described by Zora Neal Hurston in her book of folklore from 1934,  Tell My Horse:  Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica.

Jamaica is the land where the rooster lays the egg. . . . [T]he mulatto has prestige no matter how he happened to come by his light skin. . . .When a Jamaican is born of a black woman and some English or Scotsman, the black mother is literally and figuratively kept out of sight as far as possible, but no one is allowed to                  forget that white father, however questionable the circumstances of birth . . .Black skin is so utterly condemned that the black mother is not going to be mentioned nor exhibited.  You get the impression that these virile Englishmen do not require women to reproduce.  (7-9)

This same instinct toward "blackness" appears in Cooper through Cora's mother, who is little spoken of.

            Through her mother, Cora has inherited the sin resulting from the taboo nature of her origin.  This reflects not Christian moral doctrine, but a vulgar superstition which formed around it.  The taboo that she has transgressed is moral, social and racial

            Diversity is an intrinsic characteristic of the American experience.  With the arrival of the first Europeans to this continent mixing began, and redefinition of racial as well as social class.  With further settlement came more Europeans, and the slaves they brought in chains from Africa.  Living in America has always meant exposure to unprecedented diversity.  Inevitably, races will intermix, and when there is no established aristocracy, but rather a certain abhorrence to any aristocracy as was present in colonial America, social class will become more elastic than the European model.  This diversity is dealt with in our earliest literature.  The racial tension in Mary Rowlondson's captivity narrative is palpable.  She perceives the "otherness" of her captors and paints both them and their wilderness world in inhuman colors.  With these elements in play race and social class have become the mutable attributes they are today.

            In many ways Cora is the ideal American woman. Her vitality, intelligence, adaptability, charm, and gentility, are all characteristics that would have been idealized at the time and are still idealized today.  But it is the secret of her origin that makes her a tragic figure.   Ultimately in Cooper's version of America there is no room for Cora or Uncas:

The mythology of race, and its linkage to a larger concept of progressive history, provide Cooper with a resolution to the contradiction between democratic or egalitarian ideals and the perceived need for subordinating one social class (or race) to another. The Last of the Mohicans reaches out to link sexuality to race and class, and through a deliberate act of mythogenesis it becomes the first comprehensive rendering of his perception of American history. (Slotkin XIV)

Cora simply is an unacceptable outcome of the American experiment.  Today there are many places where she would find acceptance and admiration, but things have not changed to such a degree that she would not face, as everyone does who is somewhat different or deviates from the norm, some prejudice.

Works Cited

Cooper, James Fenimore.  The Last of the Mohicans.  New York: Penguin, 1986.

Hurston, Zora Neale.  Tell my Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica.  New York: Harper and Row, 1990.

Mann, Barbara A.,  "Whipped Like a Dog:  Crossed Blood in The Last of the Mohicans."  The James Fenimore Cooper Society Website.  1999. James Fenimore Cooper Society.  11/12/03             [http://www.oneonta.edu/-cooper/articles/1999suny-            mann.html.]

Slotkin, Richard.  "Introduction to the 1831 Edition."  The Last of the Mohicans.  James Fenimore Cooper.  New York:Penguin,             1986.   IX-XXVIII.

Thompson, G.R.  "Introduction:  Romanticism and the Gothic Tradition."  The Gothic Imagination:  Essays in Dark Romanticism.  Ed.G.R. Thompson.  Pullman:  Washington             University Press, 1974.  1-10.

Werlock, Abbey H.P.,  "Courageous Young Women in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales:  Heroines and Vicitims."  The James Fenimore Cooper Society Website.  1987.  James Fenimore             Cooper Society.  11/12/03 [http://www.oneonta.edu/-            cooper/articles/1986suny-werlock.html]