LITR 5535 American Romanticism UHCL 2005 sample student research project

LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project 2006

Ashley Huff

11-22-06

A Gothic Study: Origins to American Romanticism

Introduction:

After doing some research for my mid-term I was left with many questions about the Gothic; its origins and emergence into American Romantic Literature. Initially I didn’t like the gothic. I didn’t care to the darkness, ghosts, haunted castles; none of these elements were appealing to me. However, I felt as if this was one of the fundamental aspects of American Romanticism so I decided to overlook my own lack of appeal and delve into this style. Once I started the research I began to see that this is an element that gives flavor or texture, so to speak, to the writing. It allows the reader to become involved in the story, and often feel their skin tingling with curiosity and wonder at what will befall the characters of Gothic novels. I set out on my quest to answer a few questions I had about the Gothic and I am going to share my results with you in this journal. To prepare for this journal I started doing quite a bit of research online. I went through many journal articles and reviewed the student sample writings to find those who wrote about the Gothic previously so I could reference their writings. This was very time consuming, however it yielded a variety of useful information about the Gothic.

My first order of business was to define the gothic for my purposes in this journal. The next most important thing was to get some background on the Gothic and discover its origins. In addition I sought to determine who were the influential people involved in creating and developing the Gothic? What are the elements and key trademarks developed in the Gothic? Who were the influential American Romantic Gothic writers that further developed this style? To uncover so much information felt like a daunting task, but I was determined to discover these answers to help me better understand the exciting and intriguing element of the Gothic!

The Gothic defined:

Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness (especially mad women), secrets, hereditary curses, persecuted maidens and so on (1).

Another explanation is…

A style of novel, especially popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, characterized by mysterious settings, an atmosphere of gloom and terror, supernatural happenings, and often violence and horror, according to the following (2).

Gothic Origins:

The Gothic genre started as a “widespread shift away from the neoclassical ideals of order and reason, toward romantic belief in emotion and imagination” and indeed Horace Walpole “saw his novel as a part of a resurgence of romance against neoclassical restrictions” (Hume 282). It is widely held that Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Ortanto (1764) is the first piece of gothic fiction. It opens many doors and new thought processes when you rebel or turn your back on the notion of order and reason in Literature; especially if you have a creative mind that is dying to break out of the box and try something new. To no longer be set in a rigid form and to be liberated by the Gothic novel that “is part of the new ‘literature of process’ which reflects its creators mind” would seem an ideal situation to many of the writers of the time who took advantage of this new style and took it to greater levels (Hume 282). They seemed to allow themselves to be expressed through their writings in the Romantic Gothic form; they no longer had to write the rational or clear-cut stories to be read. Dealing with the dark and gloomy is as much a part of a person’s personality as the happy and smiling times in life. “The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations” which undoubtedly caused many readers to feel things they had never felt before in a novel. Fear, perhaps even sadness at the things they were awakened to in their own lives. Their own closets with skeletons and indeed their own dark place in their lives that was full of decay were brought to the forefront of their minds while reading this Gothic literature. They allowed themselves to express deep feeling and emotions in their writing which led to a great reader audience who enjoyed these novels and great writers who thrived on the success of their works.

Important Writers of Early Gothic:

Horace Walpole was seen as the first of the Gothic writers; however he was far from the last. It is amazing to note how many of the great Romantic novelists wrote Gothic novels and used this impressive style in their writings. Ann Radcliffe, who was a best selling author in her time with most of the English society reading her works, is the novelist who “created the gothic novel in its now-standard form” (1). She is the one who incorporated a lot of the traditional Gothic elements we associate with this style today. Eliza Parsons wrote a couple of Gothic novels, including, Castle of Wolfenbach (1793) and The Mysteries Warning, a German Tale (1796) which were included in Jane Austen’s parody of the Gothic, Northanger Abbey (1818), and received a revived interest once she used them in her novel (1). Prior to this they had been forgotten and needing a renewed interest to make them popular again, Jane Austen helped accomplish this with her parody. Mary Wollstonecraft was a great Gothic author of feminist texts which are an important part of this Gothic style. Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein is considered an important Gothic writer, because of her writing using Gothic elements. Clara Reeve was another early Gothic writer who wrote in the more sentimental Gothic rather than the frightening style many used. Another short list includes, Beckford, Lewis, Radcliff, and Maturin; however we will not have time to discuss all of these authors they were influential Gothic writers in their time.

Gothic Elements:

“By Walpole’s account… ‘terror’ is the ‘author’s principle engine’ and serves to grip and affect the reader” (Hume 282). In 1957, several years before Walpole’s novel came out, Edmund Burke, wrote a novel called, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. In this novel Burke used the element of terror which he “stressed as a factor of out emotional development” (Hume, 282). The Gothic seems to have started out as a way to get to the reader’s attention and keep it throughout the novel. By evoking terror in the reader’s the ensured their own success because they knew a reader wouldn’t be able to put it down once they got involved in the story. This is part of that emotional response that the gothic requires of the reader. At first when I kept seeing that Gothic creates an emotional response I thought no way! No one is crying and pouring tears over some sad event that has happened. However fear is just as much of an emotional response as sadness, I just had to rearrange my thinking to allow for this description.

Ann Radcliff, who wrote The Mysteries if Udolpho and The Italian, was responsible for introducing the “brooding figure of the gothic villain, which developed the Byronic hero” (1). It is interesting to see how important pieces of the Gothic were added along the way to get the complete picture of what the gothic is. Ann Radcliff’s contribution is great because, not only did her writing create a widespread audience and popular effect, she also introduced one of the most interesting characters of the Gothic. The brooding villain that will later become the Byronic hero is one of my favorite aspects of the Gothic. This depiction of a villain-hero, as we learned in class, is intriguing. The part I like the most about the Byronic hero, male or female, is that they have their own code of morals which they live by. They are not horrendous people per se, but they value and work toward preserving what is good and important to them, and not the whole of society. They are dark and perhaps dangerous; yet in some ways and to some people considered heroes.

In addition to the Byronic hero, the portrayal of the other characters in Gothic literature is also very interesting to study. Many point out crazed or mad people as a necessity to a Gothic novel and indeed this seems to be the standard in much of the writings. It makes things much more interesting when you have an unpredictable character to watch and try and figure out their next move or what kind of trouble they will create. It helps give the story a sense of suspense that engages the reader’s attention until the problem is resolved at the end, or at least the story is over. Also with the Gothic, I find myself remembering and thinking about these stories long after I have read them. They stick with you in your memory almost as if you are not supposed to forget about them and they are supposed to be a reminder of something.

Hume points out that “Gothic novels display the reactions of their characters to trying or appalling situations…but their heroes and heroines are not subjected to trials merely for the sake of exhibiting fine feeling,” in fact as Clara Reeve does in The Old English Baron her hero is “truly a trial of the readers patience” (Hume 283). This ties into my point about the mad people also. There is this great conflict between these heroes, villains, and mad people. The reader cannot stop until the situation has been taken care of. You have to know that the hero has prevailed unto the end, as if this will make you somehow feel better to know that he is fighting the source of evil and darkness. The use of heroes as not just “exhibiting fine feeling” I think is an important part of the Gothic, because they want their characters to be more than just a name on the page. They want them to come to life for you and draw you into their story. Because of this they have to make them so much more interesting and develop them into this fascinating being that you are drawn to whether you like it or not. Gothic novels increasingly “attempt to involve the reader in a new way” in which the “reader is held in suspense with the characters, and increasingly there is an effort to shock, alarm, and otherwise rouse him” (Hume 284). Indeed the Gothic novels accomplish this easily with their great writing skills and amazing creativity in utilizing these gothic elements for story telling.

Gothic novels use a lot of supernatural aspects, which has created some criticism. However, Walpole gives a good defense for its use in Gothic novels; “when [we see] a mortal, fresh from the impression of that terrible appearance…we feel no great difficulty in yielding temporary belief to any, the strangest situation of thing” (Hume 284). Indeed the supernatural is a big part of the Gothic and I like Walpole’s defense of its use. By experiencing the shock of what could have happened to the character, you allow yourself to go to that place and be shocked too. You can believe that something supernatural happened by the way the writer creates the response to the supposed event. And even if you don’t necessarily agree with supernatural things, in that moment you can allow yourself to believe for the sake of the character and the story. It also seems that the use of the supernatural is a great step against the order and reason of the Neoclassical. The writers took leaps and bounds to distance themselves from the previous style of writing to set themselves apart and engage the reader’s in these emotion-evoking novels.

In addition to these elements of the Gothic the one that seems most obvious are the gothic places represented in these novels. The Gothic style is a response in part to the architecture of the time that was in the Gothic style. However the writers went further with their development of the Gothic surroundings. This is where we start to get the dreary castles, the dark rooms, the dungeon, cellars, and all the dark creepy places far away from anyone who can help you. According to the final exam sample on the varieties of the Gothic, "the European-style Gothic relies on imposing exterior facades, such as the 'mansion of gloom' or claustrophobic interior spaces" (4). By creating these dark places it allows the reader’s imagination to run wild. I’m reminded of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow when Ichabod has let himself listen to so many ghost stories that he can’t separate fact from reality. This is what these gothic surroundings emit in Gothic novels. The reader can see shadows lurking at every corner, a dim light in the middle of a huge room that is falling apart before your eyes, and the spookiness of a large haunted castle with the spirit of some long forsaken patron waiting around for revenge. The haunted houses and the ghosts create such an atmosphere of the Gothic and just plain spookiness that you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. This is what makes Gothic literature great; it’s scary, but it moves you out of complacency for the text and allows you to get in there and be a part of what is taking place.

In addition to the surface meanings of the Gothic, one cannot forget all the interesting underlying things that the gothic represents. The battle of good verses evil that is displayed by the light verses dark contrast represented in this stories. Also there are the psychological aspects of the dark spaces in the human mind. The final exam sample question states that the Gothic “utilizes familiar tropes such as haunted physical and mental spaces, the threatening shadow of death, and images of dark and light in physical, psychological and moral manifestations” (4). Many, if not all Gothic novels deal with this sense of a haunted person in addition to the haunted castle. There is indeed an importance in discovering the dark places of humanity and bringing them forth for the world to see. This can be used as a wake up call for all the darkness in the world, or even an awareness to the conditions of humanity that create this dark place in each of us.

Gothic Styles:

Howard Hume suggests that there are a variety of Gothic styles of novels. He points out the sentimental-gothic novels which, “utilize ghosts and gloomy-castle atmosphere to enliven sentimental domestic tales” such as The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve. There is also the terror-gothic which is “the most nearly pure ‘pure’ gothic novel” for example Ann Radcliff’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. And last of all the historical-gothic, “in which the gothic atmosphere is used in a historical setting” such as Sophia Lee’s The Recess (Hume 283). However Hume doesn’t really consider the historical-gothic to be actually gothic, given that it is only borrowing one aspect of the gothic and creating a story that is not gothic, but contains some Gothic elements.

In addition there is the Female Gothic. I am amazed at how many of the writers of the Romantic Gothic were women. There are numerous women who contributed to this fascinating genre of the early Gothic. Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliff, Sophia Lee, Mary Wollstonecraft are just to name a few. In an article about the Female Gothic it states that this was a way for women to show that “for women of all classes, life really wasn’t the way it was depicted in sentimental fiction-a series of insults, humiliations, deprivations, beating fantasies and fatal or near-fatal disasters” (Hoeveler 30). Quite simply these women, as Mary Wollstonecraft did in her story, Mary, A Fiction (1788) basically wanted to get out of that box of helplessness and women as inferior and write some great literature with great female characters. To show their great characters the women of the Female Gothic taught “The lesson that gothic feminism teaches is that the meek shall inherit the Gothic earth; the Female Gothic heroine always triumphs in the end because melodramas are constructed that way” (Hoeveler 31). Indeed this was probably a radical idea of their time, but you have to admit it was justified for them to want to be viewed as humans and equals and not a passive being that just let things happen to them with no control. They seemed to have the greatest reason and motivation for writing.

The style of American Romanticism Gothic that we've studied thus far in class has been by far the most interesting. In the final exam sample question on the Varieties of Gothic the writer defines the differences in some of the American Romanticism. Such as, Jonathan Edwards, Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Robinson, Washington Irving, James Fennimore Cooper, and many more that we learned in class. These authors transformed the old traditional style of the Gothic and created their own terms of dealing with it in their writings. They moved away from the dreary and haunted houses and old dark mansions and moved it into the landscape of America.

This landscape was a one of a kind and it created a place for much gothic interpretation. Probably the best was James Fennimore Cooper, although his book, The Last of the Mohicans was long, it had so many great Gothic elements. The first element that sets it apart is its use of gothic nature. I wrote about this in my mid-term and I still find it very fascinating. Cooper could literally give you goose bumps with his descriptions of the vast forest. The woods that encircled them at all times and you felt great suspense in wondering what would befall these characters. Cooper uses language that evokes an emotional response that was a requirement of early gothic fiction. It wasn’t the terror aspect that many of the early Gothic novels had, but it was a definite fear of the unknown and a haunting of your past in Cora’s character. In addition to the Gothic surroundings, Cooper included a Byronic hero in Magua. According to one of the previous student papers he is a Byronic hero. I can see how he is a dark and moody person. He is also a definite villain to the reader, but as suggested in class, he was probably a hero to his people. Even if he doesn’t fit perfectly he still fits the bill of a brooding and dark character that is for sure a villain.

Another great Gothic author was Edgar Allen Poe. His surroundings were not easily identifiable as the American landscape, however they were certainly Gothic. In The Fall of the House of Usher it is easy to recognize the gothic elements. The old house which had a haunted feel to it along with the evidence of decay, and quite simply just a spooky place to read about. Just the descriptions gave you an eerie feel that you weren’t sure where to place. In addition to the darkness represented in the structures the characters have a sense of darkness to them. They are not normal per se, and leave you in suspense at what is going to happen and how things are going to come to an end.

William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily is certainly a gothic and spooky story. The reader is left with a great sense of suspense at what in the world is going on in that house. Not only is the structure gothic, but it has a dead body in it, which is a sure sign of the gothic. In the student sample the author mentions the use of smell that is present to exhibit this heinous smell of the death and decay. In simply reading the story you are drawn into the story as if you can almost smell the decay and death that is present in the house. It creates a response of almost horror at what you fear is going on in the house. This is a classic element of Gothic literature that wants to evoke an emotion in the reader. The most notably gothic element to this story is the darkness and decay of the human mind. Emily was crazy and certainly fits in to the element of haunted mental and physical spaces that is an aspect of the gothic.

Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is another fabulous gothic story that involves a gothic nature surrounding and elements of darkness that create suspense. The American landscape surrounding the story of Ichabod Crane and his town of Sleepy Hollow is very dark and creates a sense of suspense and fear in the reader. It is a page-turner to determine Ichabod’s fate at the hand of this ghost rider. This story combines dark surroundings, dark characters, ghosts, basically the whole works of a gothic story. Obviously the actual ghost, a headless one at that, in the story is a gothic element that creates a fear, and a sense of terror that was popular in the early gothic works. The ghost stories the characters sit around telling also adds to this sense of fear of the unknown and creates suspense in the reader’s mind. The walk home and the bridge that Ichabod almost gets to save himself from the ghost create a sense of the evil and haunted places of this nature that captures the story.

What I learned:

To determine the things I’ve learned in doing this research journal have been more than I expected. In looking for the answers to these questions I simply wanted definitions and to connect what I learned to the stories we read in class. The gothic elements are obvious and the gothic style in general is so unique. This is what I love about how the gothic can take a story line and develop it into a story of horror, terror, darkness, evil, ghosts, and the psychological darkness and haunting of humanity. I think this is so interesting to me because all humanity has a dark place within them. Certainly skeletons haunt every human’s virtual closet, and it is through these gothic stories that we can touch that place in our lives from a safe distance. It is as if we can live vicariously through these elements of darkness and fear and put aside our own haunted mental spaces. I think the most important thing I learned through this was the definitions of the gothic. Its use as a tool to evoke emotional response intrigues me because that is exactly what happens as I read through these gothic novels. The emotions of fear, terror, a premonition of bad things to come, and the suspense that is created in these gothic works are what allow me to connect to these stories on a deeper level. Also by going back to the origins of the gothic novel it is interesting to see how over time the gothic has developed into the great genre it is and to see the impact the European Gothic has on the American Romanticism Gothic novels discussed in class this semester.

Further Analysis:

With all the things I learned about the Gothic there are some questions I still had about this genre. One thing that is interesting to me is that the Gothic was developed in response to the order and rational of the Neoclassical style, and Realism was a response against Gothic Romanticism. From what little research I’ve done on the Neoclassical style it sounds a lot like the elements of Realism. Order and rationality seem to be important aspects of Realism. My question is why was Romanticism sandwiched in between two styles of order, rationality, and reality? Is there historical evidence to support why Romanticism and the gothic thrived in certain years and was replaced by Realism? Or what happened prior to Romanticism that created this desire to flee the Neoclassical style and embrace Romanticism? I think this is very interesting and I would like to learn more about the reasoning behind these shifts in Literature.

Conclusion:

I have really enjoyed this journal technique which allowed me to explore areas of interest that I have in American Romanticism Literature. I feel as if I have expanded the knowledge of the Gothic from the nature aspect I first explored in my midterm. Going through research and defining, researching, and connecting the things I learned about the Gothic has been beneficial to me as a student. Although there is no way one can determine every detail of every gothic work or even every gothic author; I think I have touched on enough aspects to give me a good understanding of this field. The Gothic style is a great representation of literature and should be respected for its contributions to literature. Indeed the Gothic has become one of my favorite elements of Romantic Literature despite my initial distaste for the darkness that surrounded it. I have learned a lot and come to accept this style as a work of genius and I am very glad to have had this opportunity to study.

Works Cited

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_novel

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_novel

3) Hume, Robert Gothic Verses Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel PLMA 84.2 March 1969 pp282-290

4) http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5535/

5) Hoeveler, Diane Long. The Construction of the Female Gothic Posture Wollstonecraft’s Mary and Gothic Feminism. Marquette University 2004. p30-44