Peter Becnel

The Usefulness of the Gothic

The Gothic, as a significant part of the American Romantic period, signifies the sense of estrangement and uncertainty that accompanies the precariousness of living in a rapidly developing nation. Characters within American Gothic fiction must deal with the parts of their own psyches, made manifest in the world.  As such, like much of Romanticism, the gothic presents an interesting application for the typical exchange between desire and loss that we see in much of the writing of the American Romantic period. The gothic becomes a useful system of figures both to explore the uncomfortable realities of the emerging American psyche, but also the uncomfortable, but inevitable, changes in American culture, and includes elements of desire and loss as a means of demonstrating both the yearnings and limitations of the American experience.

Jonathon Edwards’s sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God exploits the American Gothic’s movement between desire and loss in order to craft a compelling argument for the value of salvation through baptism. Edward’s project was to “revive earlier Puritan practices in opposition to the progressive secularism of the Enlightenment and changes to the original Puritan community. For instance, the first American Puritan churches required and convincing individual testimonies of personal salvation for membership, a practice Edwards wished to reinstate” (White). Edward’s use of the gothic in his sermon serves a decidedly theological purpose. He exploits gothic imagery and the sublime to create the fearful, yet accessible, notions of the power of a wrathful God and the furious ravages of an afterlife without salvation. His claim that “the wrath of God burns against [unbaptized sinners], their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the 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, and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them,” indicates, simultaneously, the awesome power of God to exact vengeance upon sinners and the incomprehensible power of Hell to punish the unbaptized for their failure to join the church. In the case of Edwards, the usefulness of the gothic is its established ability to unsettle the psyche, and the gradual development of these figures is meant to make the listener ever more fearful for the state of his or her soul if he or she rejects baptism. Edwards’ sermon demonstrates one of social functions of gothic figures in early American texts and in the lives of Americans. While Edwards is clearly exploiting familiar gothic tropes, he is using them to enhance his rhetorical purpose—to motivate people to allow him to baptize him and therefore save their souls. Thus, the gothic, here, is used as a catalyst for the desire of salvation. The notion of loss, that forever the unbaptized sinner will be lost to the salvation of God is used to persuade listeners, to make listeners desire salvation. Ironically, the fulfillment of this desire is a simple reassurance of the eventual attainment of the desired state.

The anxiety of the loss of this particular state, a heavenly eternity with an all-powerful, divine creator, motivates the need for this reassurance; however, if desire is only satisfied when an object or aim is obtained, that is, “you can only want what you cannot have. If you have something, then it is real and present and cannot be yearned for;” what Edwards’ sermon truly creates is more desire, a desire, that is appropriate for his religious convictions (White).

While Edwards’s sermon clearly presents the relationship between loss and desire, its effect is to reveal the true essence of the desire-loss function in the Romance narrative—it creates a new, perpetual state of desire which cannot be overcome before the ultimate form of loss—death. While I focus primarily on the Gothic aspects of Edwards’s sermon, it is certain that it qualifies as a Romantic text. Even the image of Edwards the potent speaker saving the souls of the misguided individuals as he travels through the New England countryside delivering his powerful sermon agrees with the notion of the heroic individual on a quest to save the souls of those misguided Christians who do not yet know how to save themselves.

We are given an interesting fictional counterpoint to the power of Jonathon Edward’s sermon in Hawthorne’s The Minister’s Black Veil. Here again, the virtuous individual pastor, Mr. Hooper, is exalted above the perceptions of the masses to whom he must preach. In The Minister’s Black Veil, however, the gothic figures become symbolic rather than representative. In Edward’s sermon the exalted use of the sublime to impress the wrathful power of God and Hell upon the people is given a representative function, that is, it is meant to make comprehensible the incomprehensible power of a wrathful God. This is due to the sermon’s nature as meaning to produce something that is not meant to be perceived as fiction. Edwards wishes to impress the reality of a precarious state he believes in to motivate people to become baptized. Hawthorne’s more sophisticated work employs the gothic “black veil” to suggest both implications of theological and social conventions.

          Even more clearly in The Minister’s Black Veil, the reader is given a romantic hero; however, in this case, one whose quest is difficult to comprehend even for the reader until the end of the story. Unlike Edwards, Mr. Hooper, “strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences, rather than drive them thither by the thunders of the Word.” Here we see Mr. Hooper in direct counterpoint to Edwards. His ability to persuade his audience (albeit an audience which is comprised already of his congregation), is made effective by the gothic symbol, the black veil. Because he wears the black veil, the congregation is made unconsciously aware of its own sinfulness. They ostracize him. Here were are given the double function of the veil. While it remains a symbol for the sinfulness of the congregation, and it colors the minister’s perception of the world accordingly, it also reveals society’s inability to comprehend their aversion to the black veil as a manifestation of their own repressed sinfulness. That Mr. Hooper refuses to remove the veil follows the familiar pattern of desire and loss. The clearest manifestation of desire and loss, and Mr. Hooper’s most personal, comes from his interaction with Elizabeth. Because Mr. Hooper refuses to remove the veil, Elizabeth leaves him, abandoning him forever. It is essential that he loses Elizabeth because, like all of the members of the congregation, she too contains the repressed and unacknowledged sin that is symbolized by the veil itself. Her desire to have Mr. Hooper remove the veil, the unacknowledged reminder of her sinfulness, indicates that she is not capable of accepting her own repressed sinfulness. Only when Mr. Hooper loses his life, literally, are they physically able to remove the veil, and then, too, they refuse to do so, indicating that they prefer to remain in a state of perpetual repression and judgement.

          Unlike Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, The Minister’s Black Veil does not present itself as an overtly theological text. While it relies on the religious frame of sinfulness to demonstrate that the people’s repressed and unacknowledged shame can lead to ostracizing others, that is, that people reject those whose shame is made manifest, even in a general or symbolic “veil,” it thematically presents a problem with religious constrictions of social systems in early America. Here, the Minister’s veil makes manifest the unspoken sinfulness that separates members of the community, the desire is for a unity that forms from the open admission of sinfulness, which could be restorative and help to ameliorate the issues of social separation. The loss is not simply the loss of the minister’s life, but also the fact that these hidden sins remain hidden even after a physical manifestation of their presence is demonstrated. The minister is buried as “a veiled corpse.”

          As early American society evolves, communities are established and an estranged group of writers are empowered to tell their stories, the gothic and the Romance narrative are appropriated to deal with increasingly complex social issues. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the gothic is still clearly present. The entire issue of race is coded in black and white; however, we can see that Douglass is able to invert the typical associations of a gothic color code to demonstrate the constructed nature of racial bias and inequality in the Antebellum South. One such example of this is Douglass’ inversion of the typical black-other, unfamiliar, strange; white-familiar, pure, good, color code in his narrative. Douglass indicates that “he never saw his mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night.” Here, the “night” the darkness is transformed into a rare world of familiarity and comfort. Only in these moments, is Douglass able to see his mother. One of the most impressive things about Douglass’ inversions is its suggestion that he understands and has mastered the typical gothic figures in the writing in his period.

His awareness of typical color associations in the gothic, and demonstration of this mastery presents a further challenge to the southern ideology that supports innate inferiority of slaves. He is not only able to master the Romance narrative to tell his story of escape, as he casts himself (rightly) as the virtuous individual striking out to overcome nearly impossible odds so he can achieve freedom, but he also demonstrates a mastery and manipulation of gothic conventions—another challenge to the notion of the intellectual inferiority of slaves. Of course, the pattern of desire and loss, too, is present in Douglass’ work, as the recurring desire for freedom, is lost again and again due to the social construction of his inferiority. Unlike Edwards who uses the gothic to demonstrate the wrath of god, and motivates the desire for salvation, or Hawthorne who uses the gothic “black veil” to demonstrate how abstract judgement as a result of repression leads to social divisions, Douglass does not wear a veil or exploit the gothic to scare people into saving themselves. For Douglass the fictional gothic imagery through which people distinguish citizen from other, or slave, is a part of his physical appearance. 

          From Edwards to Douglass, the gothic’s versatility seems due to its ability to make manifest the frightening or threatening aspects of the human psyche. When the gothic is manipulated by Douglass, its manipulation suggests its constructed nature. What this evolution demonstrates, is that while the gothic can be useful to make people fearful, or describe the unacknowledged forces that motivate people’s decisions, it can also become pervasive when it is perceived as more than a fictional construction. Furthermore, Douglass signals an awareness of the fictional constructions included in gothic literature. His use of the gothic is indicative of an awareness of the constructed nature of Romantic and Gothic figures that indicates the beginnings of a shift to Realism. The movement I indicate from Edwards, to Hawthorne, to Douglass is not meant to be an all-inclusive evaluation of the usefulness of the gothic during the American Romantic period, but rather, what I hoped to demonstrate is some of the ways that an emerging nation used the gothic color code, the psychologically disturbing aspects of the gothic, and the exploitation of the gothic in general to describe, illustrate, and shape the emerging and unfamiliar society that was forming in the America during the period.