Combo answer: One student wrote one long essay combining question 2 (post-Romanticism) with question 1 (desire and loss)

Combination of two essay questions: How has American Romanticism continued or changed in post-Romantic American literature? And  Why do “desire and loss” re-appear so frequently in American Romantic texts, both as driving forces in the “romance” narrative and as indexes for Romantic values?

Romanticism Lives On: Humanity’s Insatiable Desires

            The period of American Romanticism has ended; however, romantic elements remain in literature.  Post-Romantic writers and poets, such as Ginsberg, Fitzgerald, James, Twain, Black Elk, and Roethke have built upon the traditions of Romanticism and have reinterpreted romantic themes to represent the changing social construct of America.

If we are to understand why America still longs for romance, then a brief review of historical happenings at the end of the Romantic period is necessary.  The period of American Romanticism ends around the Civil War. At this time America understood the previous mystery of the West, had conquered much of the wilderness, subdued Indian groups, and the population was moving from a rural existence towards an urban one.  With these changes in America the population began to focus on other issues, such as the struggle for equal rights by minorities and women.  These “cultural changes oftentimes brought about social situations that authors yearned to transcend in their writing” (Sample Final [M.M.]).  As a result of the desire to transcend social situations the spirit of Romanticism remains evident in works long after the Civil War.

The desire to transcend, not only social situations, but also all boundaries and constraints, is the reason for the longevity of the Romantic theme.  Humans constantly long for something more.  Our appetite for romantic themes is insatiable because human desires are endless.  “In another sense, people have a desire to return to a primitive time where they believe life was simpler and pristine. This driving force of desire and loss allows the Romantic writers to create a distortion of the current reality, and an ideal belief of a better world” (Sample Final [B.H.]).  This better world, which we constantly crave, is always a step beyond our reach, so that the desire is never quite fulfilled.

One of the most apparent changes in Post-Romantic American Literature is the addition of more diverse authors.  Minority groups are more fairly represented, gender and sexuality has been rethought, and a new romantic vision of future America is being written.  The inclusion of more writers has helped to balance the perspective of early American Romanticism, which was written primarily by white males for a white audience.  With the inclusion of Romantic era minority writers, such as William Apess, it serves to remind “white readers of their shared genetic blueprints, and the concurrent absurdity of racial prejudice” (Sample Final [M.M.]).  The inclusion of a more diverse group of writers balances the perspectives of early Romantics who often had a “natural repugnance” of the American Indian and other minority groups.

            With the inclusion of American Indian writers romantic themes are not lost.  Romanticism continues into the modern period - albeit with a slightly different perspective.  Themes that preserve the past and continue cultural traditions exhibit characteristics of Romantic Literature.  Black Elk and Simon Ortiz both recall traditions of American Indians and write stories set in a sublime landscape.  The use of folklore, the continuance of an ideal way of life, and the reverence of nature are all traits of romantic literature. 

            Authors who may have been previously excluded as a result of their sexuality have also used Romantic language in modern times.  Ginsberg’s straightforward representation of homosexuality and condemnation of capitalistic society contains romantic language.  He effectively uses Gothic descriptions for Moloch who “bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains” as a critique of greed, capitalism, and the “unobtainable dollars.”  Ginsberg used Gothic imagery to depict negative images of greed and capitalism, but he used other romantic techniques to highlight actions in a positive manner.  For instance, he uses the romantic notion of the quest.  By evoking images of sailing across uncharted oceans he effectively portrays homosexual sex as Western, timeless, and loving when he writes of “those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love.”

            We can contrast Ginsberg’s use of the Gothic to portray negative images with that of Roethke.  In his poem I Knew a Woman, Roethke offers a reverse image of the gothic where the woman “casts a shadow white as stone.”  The fact that everyone casts a black shadow, and that black is commonly used to signify evil and death accentuates the pure goodness of the woman.  This woman is so perfect that she defies nature with her unique white shadow.

            The use of romantic imagery in the post-Romantic era is not limited to previously excluded groups.  Mark Twain, who viewed himself as the champion of Realism, often wrote prose that was Romantic in scope.  William Wolfe’s class research project postulates that much of Twain’s work is Romantic in nature.  Wolfe eloquently defends this theory by citing examples of Twain’s work that include: a strong connection between the individual and the natural world, a strong sense of desire, loss, and sacrifice, as well as a supernatural and mystical element.  These are all elements of romantic fiction.

Romantic language is used extensively, even after the American Romantic period ended.  The ideals of Romanticism remain in the Post-Romantic period.  This suggests that Romantic ideals are a part of the collective conscious of Western civilization and “pieces of its principle ideologies will always be woven in with the fabric of American identity” (Sample Final [M.M.]).  The Post-Romantic period can be described as an ongoing process of change and Americanization.  At times it is easiest to describe that process using romantic language.

            Romantic themes are a large part of American identity due to our constant desire to obtain something more.  We constantly desire to transcend our current boundaries and reach a new level.  It is desire that lies behind human motivation to succeed at every endeavor.  “This is especially true in the United States, a country either colonized or conquered, (depending upon your view) by poets, dreamers, explorers, and visionaries, with none of them content with merely living the status quo” (Sample Final [D.C.]).  This tendency of constant desire and a quest to always obtain more is in our collective conscious.  Human desire existed long before the Romantic Movement in literature and continues to modern times.

            With the existence of desire in American Romantic texts we must also have loss.  American Romantic texts exhibit both desire and loss “because the basic romantic impulse is a desire for something beyond the here and now and this desire in many cases cannot be reached by those pursuing it” (Sample Final [M.B]).  Once we succeed in satisfying a desire it becomes lost and then we find a new desire to be sought after.  In some cases the desire is for an object, but not all objects of desire have a physical presence.  The desire for innocence, love, and human transcendence are often present in Romance narratives.

            For example, in Winter Dreams the main character desires a woman, named Judy, but the desire for that woman is based on abstract ideals of lost youth and love.  “The character’s desire for Judy is more about her representation of the love and youth lost to the past than it is about her as a specific person” (Sample Final [M.B.]). 

            Daisy Miller also desires a non-physical object.  “Daisy desires not one man throughout the story; instead she seems to desire fun” (Sample Final [J.T.]).  Contrast this with the love story of Gilded Six-Bits.  Missie May is happily married and in love with Joe, so it is shocking when we learn that she has slept with another man.  At first, it seems absurd that she sleeps with Slemmons to gain his supposed wealth.  She does not desire the physical object of money, but “she wants to present the money to her husband, the man she passionately loves” (Sample Final [J.T.]).  Thus, her desire is to satisfy her husband’s longing for wealth, which, ironically, leads her to sleep with Slemmons resulting in a loss of innocence and a damaged relationship with Joe.

A desire for the unobtainable or the “ungettable get” (Brooke patented catch phrase) and the tale of lost innocence has been told since Adam and Eve left the garden. Each person who reads a tale of lost innocence will remember his or her own life experiences.  As a result, the themes of desire and loss are universal and timeless.  They are ideas that were present prior to the American Romantic era and remain in modern times.  The ideas are significant to humanity and embedded in our collective unconscious.  The universality and significance of the desire and loss theme is the reason that romantic elements are found throughout American literature and continue today.