American Literature: Romanticism   Student Midterm Samples 2015 midterm assignment 1. Long Essay

Hanna Mak

1b. Long Essay: The Constructed Reality of Correspondence

Within the Romantic tradition, the inner world of emotions and the concept of reality are fundamentally inseparable. In perceiving reality as unbound purely to the material, the elements of twinning and correspondence, which effectively dissolve the already unstable boundary between the real and unreal, are both natural territories for a Romantic text. In the words of Emerson, “Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue.” The use of correspondence thoroughly reflects this view of reality, even in twinning—an element of story which ultimately makes manifest our latent fears and anxieties regarding the fragility of identity. Although each specific instance of correspondence differs somewhat from the next, each example is still connected via an inextricable link to the mysterious psychology of our culture’s collective imagination. Furthermore, despite their notable prominence within the Romantic period, examples of these reality-bending elements are common occurrences within subsequent modern literary traditions as well, which further serves to underscore their extensive psychological significance.

In the context of early American Romantic literature, as in Washington Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the example of correspondence taps into an awareness of the natural and supernatural alike, together evoking an overall sense of the dark and arcane. During Ichabod’s ill-fated trek towards home, the stage is initially set by the specific evocation and corruption of nature: “the melancholy chirp of a cricket…the guttural twang of a bull-frog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in his bed.” Here, Irving makes use of atmospheric night sounds which are often perceived as both natural and pleasant, but uses them in order to set the stage for Ichabod’s gradually building unease. Ichabod’s pensive emotions are projected onto the cricket, and his anxiety seeps into the restless call of the bullfrog, making use of a natural, material reality and effectively manipulating it in order to gradually build a darkly psychological, supernatural depiction of reality. The character’s demonstrable and steadily creeping despair, as well as his special predilection towards elements of the supernatural, only further seeps into his perception of reality as the night progresses: “All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal.” In these particular instances, the line between the natural and supernatural, as well as the line between reality and perception, are ultimately blurred, mirroring Ichabod’s emotions with the environment.

The effect of correspondence, however, is as complex and diverse as the range of emotions which it strives to manifest. In Emerson’s Nature, for example, the reader is exposed to a use of correspondence which is empowering, exultant, and highly spiritual. The material imagery of the plants, animals and stars in this case function not to evoke darkness or fear, but serves to operate as a mirror which reflects the author’s own spiritual contemplation and his veneration for the natural world: “The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. … The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.” Despite this initial reverent tone, however, Emerson also expressly acknowledges the flexibility of nature within the context of human emotion: “for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece.” In this instance, Emerson pointedly reveals the psychology and power behind the use of correspondence—man’s interpretation of the natural world is ultimately as malleable as his own mind.

This evident emotional malleability is exemplified by Poe in The Fall of the House of Usher, which darkly inverts the expression of natural beauty and religious splendor which is demonstrable in the works of Emerson. The potency of the narrator’s word choice evokes the spiritual, but does so to the opposite effect: “…within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.” Mere contact with the environment establishes a discourse between the setting and the emotional state of the character, casting both in a decidedly otherworldly light. As with the spiritual, the effects of the environs are received almost through absorption, but are in the service of the narrator’s building despair, which oftentimes borders on the profane. In this vein, the observance of Madeline’s death seems to infect her brother with the wraithlike qualities of his sister, which, in turn, spills over into the psyche of the narrator himself: “The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly hue… it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.” In this sense, the effect of correspondence is that of an inexorable and unholy disease, spreading from person to person in a manner which should be inexplicable, but is justified and real when constructed within the narrator’s own reality of abject terror and emotional vulnerability.

If the literary device of correspondence may go so far as to effectively function without reproach as a disease, its link to human psychology is decidedly profound. Therefore, it is no surprise that it continually occurs within works well after the Romantic period, albeit perhaps with different aims and added complications. In William Faulkner’s Modernist novel, Absalom, Absalom!, the characters are constantly subject to correspondence, but here its function is often to cast doubt upon the reliability of the narrator’s self-conscious retrospect, establishing that details constantly shift within the failing realm of memory. This aspect of the narrative is demonstrable in Miss Rosa’s anxiety and uncertainty towards the death of Charles Bon: “…I tried to take the full weight of the coffin to prove to myself that he was really in it. And I could not tell. …Because I never saw him. You see? There are some things that happen to us which the intelligence and the senses refuse just as the stomach sometimes refuses what the palate has accepted but which digestion cannot compass.” The vague feelings of anxiety and uncertainty that Rosa feels towards the death of Charles Bon move beyond mere emotion and effectually become evidence to support the unreality of her situation—did he actually die? While it is a relatively simple matter for the reader to determine that he did, as the result of direct access to every narrator and testimony that the novel presents, for Miss Rosa, while she certainly knows the empirical facts as well as the reader, her psychological state provides a tincture of doubt that is not only impossible with an impartial, omniscient narrator, but is a common occurrence in the reality of daily life.

The modern use of correspondence is not solely restricted to the process of casting doubt, however. It is a device that may also be used for the opposite aim of shedding a new and purposeful light upon a particularly complicated matter. In Salman Rushdie’s Postmodernist novel, Midnight’s Children, the effects of correspondence, and especially twinning, feature prominently in its plot; however, its significance is placed on a different cultural level due to the unique purpose of the text. The basic premise of the novel is that the protagonist and narrator, Saleem Sinai, was born at exactly midnight during the precise moment of India’s independence, and claims that from the moment of his birth, both his fate and the fate of the nation became mysteriously intertwined; in other words, if the narrator is to be trusted, the main character’s ‘twin’ is not a person, but the nation of India itself. In fact, the purported motive for Saleem’s narration is the declining state of his health, which itself is constructed to reflect the political and cultural turmoil of the nation:

"Please believe that I am falling apart. I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug… buffeted by too much history...In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. ...I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust."

The narrator, then, burdens the reader with the task of unraveling some version of the truth—are the fates of the narrator and the nation of India supernaturally linked, or does the narrator purposefully construct the events of his life to coincide with the history of his nation? Regardless of the empirical truth, however, the narrator’s version of events still serves to elucidate matters about the religious, cultural and political state of India, via the emotional and psychological truth of the protagonist. In this sense, whether the narrator is telling the ‘truth’ is irrelevant—the purpose of the narrative and the function of the correspondence within it exists to grant the reader access to what would be wholly inaccessible with bare, empirical facts.

This, however, is the very essence of correspondence—to make accessible this version of reality, this illusive emotional truth. If Realism aims to construct a believable version of reality based upon the tangible, then Romanticism seeks to construct a version of the tangible based heavily upon an abstract yet powerful emotional reality. Indeed, correspondence is the ultimate manifestation of that latter impulse. The dependency of this literary device upon the emotive qualities of its narrator or characters, ultimately lends it an instinctive depth and fluidity which brings to fruition the primal psychological truths that lie dormant in every mind.