American Literature: Romanticism Sample Final Exams 2013 final exam assignment Question 4: the Gothic

Daniel B. Stuart

Distortion of the Commonplace: A Gothic View

          One of the more pedestrian but watchable movies of the 1980's was a low budget creeper/comedy called The Burbs about residents in a neighborhood confronting a possible mass murderer living on their street. Starring Tom Hanks and Carrie Fisher, the film centered on a cookie cutter American subdivision in which a new family of oddball characters has moved in to a rickety wooden house where the previous family has seemingly vanished without a trace. It's not long before curious developments intrigue some of the more precocious neighbors who begin to theorize about various (mostly nighttime) goings-on in the basement of home where strange lights and eerie sounds have been noticeable. The action builds to a somewhat anticlimactic denouement, not quite meeting the suspenseful and quite well-conceived premise of its earlier content. It's not necessarily the ending which makes the film a memorable experience, though. It's the creation and sustainment of an aura and atmosphere which inspires such an engendered sense of fascination about the story that it’s almost enough to relish the anticipatory elements and leave the conclusion alone. The picturesque suburban street with its quaint domestic veneer is--and wiser viewers will catch this right away--largely too good to be true right down to its curving lane, dogwalkers and lamp posts. Yet that's why the situation is cultivated so brilliantly--the almost dreamlike facade threatened by the one unit (in this case the one lot) not in line with the rest of the pack enhances the appeal. This is where we see the Gothic so readily apparent; not in characters or characterization so much as with plot and setting. The power and consistency of the Gothic lies in the distortion of the commonplace to such an abstracted dimension that the imagination and elements of the sublime can be fully realized. Regardless of the variety within the genre--European, American Wilderness or Southern Gothic--the resonating themes all operate within this rhetorical device.

          The Burbs is somewhat farcical even by Gothic standards. Yet we as the audience can appreciate the efforts it makes to create at least the possibility for a good story. Of course herein lies a major flaw of the Gothic as a genre: its inability to capitalize on the manifestations of mood, suspense, terror and grandiose settings. Much like nostalgia largely exists as a manufactured illusion about the past, the Gothic is most prominently realized as a place in the mind permanently separated from reality. Our sensibility to Gothic tropes and themes comes largely as a result of this intentional misperception. Its appeal is its ability to conjure a sense of and curiosity (at a darker level) which can only exist and flourish in this suspended reality. The cover art for Gothic romances is so good at exploring this aura of mystery  and secrecy that it's almost a disappointment to actually read the text. We don't know the girl in the picture but we make guesses and create suppositions based on that Gothic place in our mind. Authors of course employ these elements by reverting back to these same themes of shadows, decay, brooding characters, ominous discoveries. They too shroud their stories in a fanciful world where the setting, mood and premise (absent the ending) are the primary instruments of appeal. Almost always this world is very commonplace with little to disturb it other than the primary Gothic element intruding on the scene.

          We meet Goodman Brown as he bids adieu to his wife and embarks on what we sense is a perilous outing. The "dreary road" he takes is "darkened by the gloomiest trees of the forest." The dense foliage virtually envelops him into its depths, sealing the way back as the trees "closed immediately behind." His journey is a solitary one, "as lonely as could be" (Hawthorne 640). The imagery being what it is, the reader is unlikely to think of clumps of trees off to the side of the highway, walking trails or even typically wooded areas. We don't need any music or moving pictures to think of the man on his journey into the forest at night; in fact, those things might be unnecessary or superfluous, diminishing the place in our thoughts, the visualization and corresponding emotional connection to the man's circumstances. Moreover, we don't know much of Goodman Brown. We find out that he seems to be a pious man, something of a holy fool oblivious to fallen man's propensities toward evil. It's not just any sins which are chiefly involved either, but the mystical occult which confronts the protagonist. As well it should be; the place in our mind would find it hard to maintain the same depth of intrigue the vices were mere lack of "temperance" or gluttony.

          The Gothic in Young Goodman Brown is capitalized by the inclusion of perhaps the most tantalizing character in all literature. The devil and his faustian proposal make the story a classic. To emphasize the concept of the distortion of the commonplace, we should state that the story is not a fantasy. Biblical allusions--and generally without regards to age or time period--are credible sources of Gothic material, likely the most credible sources. Science Fiction, fantasy, mythologies and pagan religions are all well and good, but they don't contain the authority which Western Civilization associates with the Bible. Consequently, our place in the mind becomes all the more well-realized when Biblical themes and allusions are incorporated. Even among the non-practicing, the Bible is such a pinnacle of the western canon, that emotional integrity of the Gothic ambience still remains strong. To use a modern day example, think of the readers of popular vampire novels who genuinely yearn for vampirism to be real, to have a tinge of authentic origins; the Gothic mood is not as complete without it and thus vampire stories can run the risk of merging into pure fantasy. Bram Stoker was able to avoid this pitfall by connecting the vampire legend to a real person, Vlad Tepes. Thus his Gothic novel was able remain as a distortion of the commonplace (more conceivable) rather than a pure fairy tale requiring more of a suspended imagination (less concievable).

          Poe may have written one of the most Gothic of statements  in "The Fall of The House of Usher" when the narrator asks why he's so "unnerved" at the daunting estate as he approaches it. In reply, he states that "it was a mystery all insoluble, nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I considered" (Poe 702). Everything is here: physical elements pointing to decay, uncomfortable mood, solitary figure, as yet untouched secrets shrouded in mystery and the "fanciful" compulsion to engage all of it. The narrator is hardly a character; Poe's rhetoric stays concentrated on the mood of the place, the demeanor of Usher, a creeping madness and the hinted at secrets involving dejection and despair. Though we have supernatural elements, they are so consistent with the Gothic mood that we're hardly surprised or disillusioned at their occurrence. The climax is energetic but the tone is still the same; there's such an attention paid to individual feelings and the emphasis on emotion is so prevalent that we can accept the fact there's a ghost in the house, or more grotesquely, a prematurely buried individual.

          Where Poe seemed inordinately preoccupied with premature burials, Faulkner employed the almost as horrific invention of an unburied corpse to highlight his Southern Gothic story "A Rose For Emily." But Miss Emily is more than just a decayed visage from a forgotten past and her madness says more than we gather at first glance. Unable to intermingle with her social peers and largely influenced by her overbearing father, we sense that the tragedy and the real Gothic element of the story is the extreme commonplace elements which meet with the changing standards of a wider, more progressive world. The result is not a distortion by the author of ordinary circumstances ultimately interpellated by an unnatural or extraordinary occurrence, but a very grotesque result of very natural circumstances. Additionally, one might say Faulkner's symbolism of the decaying Southern lady representing the decline and ugly fall of the Old South meets with the equally conflicting emotion of a dead but unburied past. Homer Barron, a yankee, lies murdered yet still preserved just as the South is unwilling to bury its own former history with the North. Consequently the "match" of the yankee and the southern belle can only end in, well, a highly distorted relationship.

          It would be wrong to say that the Gothic doesn't have some type of permanent appeal, perhaps even more than Romanticism as a whole. Its attraction is more widespread, its milieu more self-contained. It's a reflection on individuality and the human condition more than anything. The darker places of our minds are never far away for many people. Finding an identification of sorts in the form of literature offers solace, even encouragement to the minds not inclined toward frivolity or for people just wanting to explore the darker elements. The problem with the Gothic is that it is too often unsatisfying as a text. A good Gothic tale can spurn intrigue but often fails to follow through on the spate of emotion delivered prior to the climax. Too many times is the mystery more gratifying than the truth. The place in the mind where we can go to access the Gothic is too often diminished by the resolution. Yet this shouldn't depreciate the power and significance of the Gothic experience. Perhaps voyeurism is never far away from the genre. The Gothic often deals with, well, personal secrets and lies. However, I don't believe that this is as much a correlation. For the Gothic, as we've said is a distortion of the commonplace. Irregularity and the acceptance of the extraordinary are what make it what it really is.