Michelle Gooding

1 March 2005

The American Gothic: A New Individual and Space

            John Smith, Mary Rowlandson, and Washington Irving tend toward the romantic in their writings, but the genre is finally realized in James Fennimore Cooper's work: The Last of the Mohicans.  This can be particularly seen in the gothic aspect of romanticism.  The gothic is often recognized by a contrast between light and dark, spectral images, imagery of hell or decay, and the gothic color scheme: black, white, and red or yellow.  The black symbolizes evil or decay, the white, innocence or purity, and the red/yellow, anger or passion.  Two of the gothic modes used in The Last of the Mohicans are the gothic space and the gothic individual.  Through Smith and Rowlandson, we see the emergence of the gothic individual in the American romance, particularly the American Indian.  Irving shows us the uniquely American gothic space: nature.

            John Smith gives a memorable account of how he was almost killed by Powhatan's tribe until Pocahontas (the chief's daughter) came to his rescue, though it is thought now that this may have just been a harmless adoption ceremony.  It is clear, by Smith's descriptions of his captors, that he was not convinced of his safety:

Then they led [Smith] ... to the King's habitation at Pamunkey where they entertained him with most strange and fearful conjurations:

As if near led to hell

Amongst the devils to dwell.

... presently came skipping in a great grim fellow all painted over with coal ... 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 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, and then came in three more as ugly as the rest, with red eyes and white strokes over their black faces.  (N 50)

The reader immediately sees the gothic color scheme at play in this description as well as the interplay between light and dark because of the fire.  Smith likens the Indians to devils and fiends—the most common spectres with which they are associated—and believes he is nearing hell itself.  He even says that Powhatan was “more like a devil than a man, with some two hundred more as black as himself” (52).  This is right as Powhatan comes to tell him they are friends, and that he will regard Smith as highly as his own son.  Apparently no amount of kindness was enough to soften the impression that the Indians' appearances made on Smith. 

            Cooper carries on the gothic color scheme and terrible war paint depictions for his Indians in The Last of the Mohicans.  Specifically, it can be seen his descriptions of both Magua and Chingachgook.  Magua is portrayed in the wild, terrifying way of the “devils” in Smith's work, but taken even a bit further: “The colours of the war-paint had blended in dark confusion about his fierce countenance, and rendered his swarthy lineaments still more savage and repulsive, than if art had attempted an effect, which had been thus produced by chance.  His eye, alone, was to be seen in its state of native wildness” (Cooper 18).  Notice that there is no white in this description.  There is certainly “dark” (black) and the red of his skin, but he contains no innocence, no purity, and therefore has no white paint to speak of.  Cooper does not actually call Magua a devil yet, but rest assured, he takes that idea to the extreme with Magua: “At such moments, it would not have been difficult to have fancied the dusky savage the Prince of Darkness, brooding on his own fancied wrongs, and plotting evil” (284). 

            In Chingachgook, we see a different sort of description, since he is a “noble savage.”  The gothic color scheme is still used for him: “His body, which was nearly naked, presented a terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled colours of white and black” (29).  The red, of course, comes from his skin to complete the gothic look.  His paint contains a mix of black and white, because Chingachgook is noble, not wild and cruel like Magua.  However, he is still associated with death, and it is shown many times in the novel that he can be quite fierce, terrifying, and able to deliver that death of which he is such a striking emblem. 

            Mary Rowlandson also describes the gothic individual in the narrative of her captivity.  She tends to focus more on their actions and sounds than their appearance.  Recalling the day her family was killed and captured she writes: “Thus were we butchered by those merciless heathen, standing amazed, with the blood running down our heels,” and “It is a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, and some there, like a company of sheep torn by wolves, all of them stripped naked by a company of hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out...” (N 137).  Once again, the Indians are compared with the inhabitants of hell, but Cooper takes the imagery of hell and the descriptions of bloody battle to new heights in his gothic depiction of the massacre of William Henry:

Death was every where, and in his most terrific and disgusting aspects.  Resistance only served to inflame the murderers, who inflicted their furious blows long after their victims were beyond the power of their resentment.  The flow of blood might be likened to the outbreaking of a torrent; and as the natives became heated and maddened by the sight, many among them even kneeled to the earth, and drank freely, exultingly, hellishly, of the crimson tide.  (176)

Cooper takes the notion of the fiendish, bloodthirsty savage to a level beyond what Rowlandson depicted or experienced.  He turns them into demons without souls but that belong to the Devil himself, whom we have discovered to be our very own Magua.

            These gothic individuals were novel because they were specific to America, whose authors were still adapting their literature to this changing, new world around them.  The gothic space also must undergo some changes from the European gothic to fit the American landscape.  In the European romantic, the gothic space was almost always an architectural space, complete with gothic arches, spires, and haunted buildings that seemed to have eyes of their own.  America, however, did not have this architectural base for her literature, so “American authors were forced to create a new gothic effect by using the lush untapped natural settings of their young country” (Rieck's essay 2003).

            The transition to the natural gothic, particularly the gothic in the forest is seen clearly in Washington Irving's “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  Irving seems to even give a hint of the progression as he tells us that Ichabod liked to spend the evenings with the Dutch wives of Sleepy Hollow in order to “listen to their marvellous tales of ghost and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses...” (H 2098).  Of the four haunted spaces listed, the first two—the field and brook—are completely natural.  The bridge is man-made, but it is still outside in nature, and the house is listed last of the four, indicating its sinking importance. 

            The gothic space in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is the forest surrounding the church and its graveyard.  This architectural space is far from gothic: “its decent whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement” (2107).    Reading a bit further, we see that the gothic has moved out into the surrounding nature:

On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees.  Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime, but occasioned a fearful darkness at night.  (2107)

The “deep black” of the stream and the trees that “cast a gloom” are what make this scene gothic, rather than any part of the architectural setting—the bridge is only frightening because of what is above and below it.  Also, descriptions like “broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees” give the reader the notion of ancient decay that adds depth to the gothic scene.

            Cooper uses similar methods to describe his woods.  For example, when Heyward is trying “to pierce the gloom that was thickening beneath the leafy arches of the forest,”(45) or when the Hurons “left the soft light of the moon, to bury themselves in the gloom of the woods” (133).  Of course the reference to “gloom” in both examples and the transition from light to dark  contributes to the reader's sense that he is entering a gothic space.  Another, more subtle indication that these woods are gothic is “the leafy arches.”  This is the European gothic arch, moved into nature, and thus adapted for the American gothic romance.

            While the forest and its “gloom” is a major part of the setting of The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper has more in his arsenal to keep the gothic scene going.  He has his own graveyard: “Heyward and the sisters arose on the instant from the grassy sepulchre; ... The gray light, the gloomy little area of dark grass, surrounded by its border of brush, beyond which the pines rose, in breathing silence, apparently, into the very clouds, and the death-like stillness of the vast forest, were all in unison to deepen such a sensation” (126).  The Indian graveyard is complete with “gray light” and “gloom,” as well as extraordinarily tall pine trees, which seem to attend the dead respectfully “in breathing silence.” 

            Cooper also uses a “vapour” to add to the gothic effect of a scene, as well as the classic idea of a season change, when the men return to the field of the massacre of William Henry: “A frightful change had also occurred in the season.  The sun had hid its warmth behind an impenetrable mass of vapour, and hundreds of human forms, which had blackened beneath the fierce heats of August, were stiffening in their deformity, before the blasts of a premature November” (181).  It is a classic gothic convention to accompany death and decay with autumn and winter, and the use of the “vapour” to block out the light and heat of the sun makes this scene very classical in its gothic effect.

            Irving took the gothic outside, but it was still tied to a town nearby, with the church within sight.  The closest Cooper ever comes to an architectural space is the cavern, which is built by nature, and the run-down block house, which is built by his most natural characters, Hawk-eye and Chingachgook.  He actually took the gothic completely away from architectural structures, to firmly place the American gothic in the wilderness and forests. 

            While Smith and Rowlandson showed America excellent prototypes of a gothic individual and Irving moved the gothic space out-of-doors, Cooper is the one who brought these ideas together and wrote a uniquely American gothic work.  Smith and Rowlandson lacked the depth of gothic scenery that Cooper provides, which is part of why their works only tended toward Romanticism, instead of being fully engulfed in it.  Irving, on the other hand, set a spectacular gothic scene for a comic character.  He is too detached and satirical to be seen as a romantic.  Cooper finally gave America a true gothic romance: gothic characters surrounded by a gothic space, both unique to America.