copy of final exam

Sample Answers to Question 4.
 

Review and evaluate varieties of the Gothic encountered this semester.

Ron Burton

The Gothic Other (Single-Essay Option)

            One of the most intriguing aspects about American Romanticism that I learned is the Gothic.  Before, I considered gothic as a vast enigma that was more like a feeling rather than a subgenre of the larger Romantic Movement.  Images of dark European castles, damp musty bogs, fantastical creatures, and of coarse, Goethe’s Mephistopheles, are what I considered true Gothic, but as the course narrowed the American Gothic experience to its elements, I became more aware of a truly distinct heritage from our own writers.  I see American Gothic as primarily having a more realistic human struggle at its core than its European counterpart—one that speaks about the American experience with regard to race relations.  And the element within Gothic narratives that is closely related to race is the contrast of light and dark, which engages the opposition between light and darkness as a struggle between good and evil, respectively.  The contrast appears in pre-Romantic, Romantic, and post-Romantic literature; however, the use of the contrast evolves as the genre develops, eventually inverting the original meanings for both light and dark where darkness is shown in a good light.

The Gothic utilizes this contrast in three forms: first is physical atmosphere, literally day and night or usage of light and shadow; although this is not uncommon in any genre to find characters set in lighted or darkened atmospheres, the Romantic’s use seems to envelop a character as if the surrounding atmosphere is part of the character itself.  Second is the internal struggle between passion and reason; Romanticism refines the contrast from being mere binary opposition to an artful eloquent expression of human emotion and questionable morality.  The final and most distinct use of light and dark in American Romanticism is a culmination and expansion of the first two, which is found in the creation of the “other” (non-Christian / non-European heritage) whose physical appearance and expressive characteristics are both defined in terms of darkness, making the other the one to be feared.   

In pre-Romantic (proto-Gothic) literature, such as Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” the struggle between light and dark is most poignant in Mary’s description of Indians as “black creatures in the night” (121).  This correlation of skin tone and atmosphere of night creates an immediate stereotype for Mary’s captors—one that will be repeated as gothic traits develop in later writers.  Rowlandson’s depiction of the other as being dark and evil is in sharp contrast to the image of a sunlit sky that surrounds Mr. John Hoar, a fellow Christian sent to negotiate Mary’s emancipation and this comparison clearly shows the dichotomy of good and evil with regard to white and black (127).  Rowlandson mentions that she is “in the dark” while among the Indians and this darkness is the reason for “fears and troubles,” which translates the darkness into an emotional eclipse caused by a reversal in her position in the contrast (128).  Rowlandson’s use of light and dark, as a means of giving insight into her own predicament, gave me a foundation for which I was able to interpret her emotional perception and her conclusion of the other.  This negative image of darkness associated with the other carries over into the period of Romanticism as seen in Nathaniel Hawthorne in “Young Goodman Brown.” 

Like Rowlandson, Hawthorne’s tale is distinctly American in that its fanciful Gothic characters are not mere whimsical creations, but rather, Native Americans.  Hawthorne cloaks his story in night where Brown’s very presence contrasts the dark gloomy gothic woods, and the danger that lurks behind every tree is a “devilish Indian” and possibly the “devil himself” (606).  Here as in Rowlandson, the other takes on the form of darkness, and therefore is presented as threatening Brown’s side of the contrast.  But Hawthorne seems to metaphorically redeem the other later in the altar scene where red light from the fiery trees “alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow” (611).  This sensationalized scene draws on elements that begin to show a more enamored relationship between light and dark, as the forms seem to tease each other’s existence, yet coexist in some sort of playful harmony.

Hawthorne’s use of darkness, however, becomes more refined as a Romantic in “The May-Pole of Merry Mount” where he begins to blur the line of contrast by bringing the other out of darkness and into “Midsummer’s eve…[touting] silken banner, colored like the rainbow” (615).  The description of revelers draws from European Gothic ideals by recreating a Bacchus festival that adds lightheartedness and innocence to those characters who would otherwise be regarded as dark in Rowlandson’s time, and in the same instance, Hawthorne counter-represents Rowlandson’s would-be heroes as oppressors, thus there is a beginning of reversal in the contrast of light and dark seen not only in atmosphere, but in humans as well.  This reversal becomes even more apparent in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Stowe uses atmosphere as a means to affect her character’s emotions; she imagines daytime as a fearful place for Eliza and her son who are “so white as not to be known as of colored lineage” (768).  It’s interesting to consider daytime as dangerous, even for someone like Eliza who passes, but this idea gives me a new perspective that may add new meaning to contemporary works by authors like Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and others.  Unlike Hawthorne’s white characters, such as Faith and the revelers, who are willing accomplices to the dark, Eliza originates from the dark stereotype and fears her contrasted side.  This is a complete reversal in characters’ perspectives up to this point; the reversal gives readers the other’s point of view, and in the process, attempts to reverse negative stereotypes associated with darkness and dark people.

Harriet Jacobs expands on this idea in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by promoting darkness as being a time for slave families to enjoy each others company in safety (806); a complete turnaround from Rowlandson and Hawthorne’s portrayal of darkness and night being the stage for evil.  Jacobs’s use of atmosphere and skin color is reminiscent of Rowlandson’s depiction of Indians, though, completely opposite.  Jacobs’s slave narrative is a great example of America’s unique Gothic that crafts darkness to equate good.   Jacobs and Stowe expand Romantic ideas of light and dark by reversing the meanings and this concept follows into post-Romantic writers, like William Faulkner, who continue to work the light / dark contrast.

In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner emphasizes a clear racial binary between white and black, but reverses stereotypical meanings of the two to where black is good or helpful and white is not necessarily bad, but in some sort of moral decay.  It is the tragic Emily that resigns in darkness while her servant Tobe has full access and freedom in daytime “going in and out” (2219)—far more freedom than the blacks in Stowe and Jacobs and far less threatening to the white community than the Indians in Rowlandson and Hawthorne.  Darkness for Faulkner occurs in Emily’s eccentric isolation and moral decay.  Like many before him, Faulkner uses atmosphere to relate Emily’s emotional state by setting her in darkness.  The post-Romantic Faulkner uses elements of light and dark, which have evolved through his predecessors to become much larger in meaning and definition and far less as clear-cut binaries.

Before this course, I never really considered the origin of the Gothic in American Romanticism, or how Gothic elements still play a role in contemporary and modern literature.  Sadly, modern culture wants to call anything that is dark and frightening gothic, falling back to original stereotypes. I fell into that trap out of convenience of simplification and a lack of knowledge about the literary Gothic.  There will always be a contrast between someone of light and someone of darkness; this Gothic element of Romanticism serves the purpose of exploring all of humanity in both forms.