American Literature: Romanticism Sample Final Exam Essays 2015 final exam assignment #4: Variations on the Gothic

Niki Bippen

The Haunting of American Romanticism

          When it comes to American Romanticism, the gothic is an element that is present within a lot of the works.  It is both an important genre and a key mode mostly because it invokes strong emotions within the reader.  It is important to note that the gothic elements are not limited to ghosts, blood, or haunted houses.  Opposing light and dark (particularly in skin color and meaning), “repressed fears & desires… fair & dark ladies”, and even the sublime are all part of the gothic (Dr. White notes).  The American gothic is not limited to just haunted houses either; the mind can be possessed, the wilderness can be a dangerous place as James Fenimore Cooper demonstrates, a person’s race, Puritan works like Jonathan Edwards, and many more. 

          One of my favorite modes of the gothic is the Puritan.  While sermons may not be the first thing that comes to mind in regards to the genre, the works speak for themselves once read.  With these works there is no need for a haunted house or mind; the fact that God most likely hats you and wants to cast you down into the pit of Hell is scary enough.  Jonathan Edwards takes this a step further in his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” when he preaches that the “the pit is prepared, fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow.  The glittering sword is whet [sharpened], and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.”  Puritan gothics are very similar to this particular passage in their nature; they all the raw power of God’s wrath and the terrors of Hell that await sinners.  Essentially, they were designed to scare people into doing the right thing. 

          Another popular genre of the gothic is the wilderness.  During the day and in a lot of Romantic literature, the forest is presented as a magical, wonderful place where one can go to seek solace and connect to nature.  The gothic wilderness genre however presents the forest as a place full of danger and something to be feared.  “The Blair Witch Project” is an example of this on film.  When the crew venture into the woods in search of the Blair Witch, they are terrorized by unseen forces and all around them danger lurks.  While there are no ghosts in James Fenimore Cooper’s “Last of the Mohicans”, there were “toils and dangers [present in] the wilderness… The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict.”  In short, the wilderness presented conflicts and troubles for those who sought to make it their home. 

          The haunted mind is another popular genre of the gothic.  In these tales it is not the environment or house that is haunted but rather the mind.  While the house or environment definitely appears to be haunted, it is really just a reflection of the possessed mind.  Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” is a wonderful example of this.  The narrator has committed a heinous crime and buried the victim beneath the floorboards in his home.  He is confident that the no one will ever find the body but when the police show up to question him, he is convinced that he hears the beating heart of his victim.   Eventually the noise drives the narrator completely mad and he says to the police, ”’Villains!’…Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --Tear up the planks! Here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart’” (Poe, “A Tell-Tale Heart”).  However, it is not the beating heart of the dead that he is hearing but rather his own heart.  His mind is playing tricks on him convincing him that the environment is haunted not his own conscience. 

          The appeal of the gothic is that it strongly plays on our fears and anxieties, which captures our attention.  The thrill of not knowing what it is coming and the fear associated with this genre makes for a roller coaster ride for our mind.  That little bit of adrenaline that starts flowing through our system as our heart starts to beat facing when we are scared can be addicting.  It is why people pay to go to haunted houses and be scared by underpaid actors in clown costumes.  It is also why Hollywood is making tons of money on the ‘found footage’ films and other horror movies.  Deep down, we love being scared.  It is what makes the gothic genre so popular.  We are overly curious and want to know what is just around that dark corner or what that bump in the night really is and gothic tales help scratch that itch. 

          Unfortunately, the gothic genre can be passed off as just another ‘scary story’ with ‘no real value’.  With the saturation of the horror market with the ‘found footage’ gimmick films, it is hard for people to take horror movies seriously; especially with so many poor quality flicks floating around Netflix and Amazon.  The same applies to novels.  Horror books are almost always looked down upon as one of the lowest forms of entertainment in the writing industry and when people see these narratives appear in academia, they tend to disregard them as equally unimportant if they are not carefully presented by the professor.  Many students just assume these narratives are just older versions of Stephen King dime-a-dozen horror books when the fact of the matter is they could not be further from the truth.