American Literature: Romanticism Student Midterm Submissions 2016 (midterm assignment) 3. Web Highlights

Umaymah Shahid

Romantic Individualism: Not as Simple as It Seems

Individualism is a significant part of the Romantic genre and is explored in various texts between man and society, man and nature, and even man and himself. Romantics have dealt with individuality in various ways in their texts and readers have varying interpretations of what Romantic individualism exactly is. In their midterms, Meryl Bazaman, Gregory Buchanan, and Roslynn Kelley look at the various ways individuality works in Romanticism. Meryl Bazaman in her essay, “Extending Individualism in American Romanticism,” explores how a Romantic Individual is one who exhibits intelligence and energy, oftentimes escaping the confines of society to implement them. Gregory Buchanan in his essay, “The Complex Duality of Romantic Selfhood” explores the Romantic individual and his/her natural duality between good and evil and struggle to create a unified whole when divided by the two. Finally, Roslynn Kelley in her essay looks at how the Romantic individual goes through a journey to unify his/her inner self with the exterior surroundings. All three midterms focus on individuals and either conflicts within themselves or conflicts from the outside.   

          Bazaman focuses her 2013 midterm essay on how individualism in not merely an individual separated from his or her surroundings, but that individualism extends to intelligence, energy in the form of knowledge in action, and independence to guide one’s life. Bazaman looks at a variety of characters such as Thoreau from Resistance to Civil Government and Hawkeye from Last of the Mohicans. What is especially unique about Bazaman’s essay is her incorporation of two outside texts: Nietzsche’s essay “Live Dangerously” and Ayn Rand’s Anthem. Bazaman compares the madman in “Live Dangerously” and Prometheus in Anthem to Hawkeye and Thoreau. Hawkeye and Thoreau are examples of Romantic individuals because they are intelligent and energetic, using their intelligence in action. Hawkeye uses his intellect of nature to guide him and Thoreau uses his intellect to resist the government. Although I am not very familiar with Nietzsche’s piece, I have read Anthem and it was interesting to see the connection Bazaman made with Prometheus fulfilling the three characteristics of Romantic individualism. Prometheus is independent, intelligent, and energetic because he applies the concept of electricity he learns when attempting to convince the elders to do away with lamps and candles. And like Hawkeye and Thoreau, Bazaman points out that Prometheus takes his intellect and energy and preserves it by escaping into the wilderness “where individualism in aptitude and action can function more freely.” Bazaman’s take on Romantic individualism helps to take it beyond mere independence and by pulling from outside sources, she solidifies her point that a Romantic individual is one who is independent, intelligent, and energetic in applying his/her knowledge into action.

          After reading Bazaman’s essay, which seems to present the Romantic individual as a complete whole, Gregory Buchanan’s essay explores how the Romantic individual desires wholeness but lives in a duality between good and evil. The crux of Buchanan’s essay is that the Romantic desires wholeness and through self-determination unifies itself, yet a duality is created within it because the Romantic individual has to struggle with what is naturally good and evil and what is the normative standard of good and evil, whether that normative be society or a higher authority. Buchanan first explores this duality in Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” where individuals live in some form of dual existence. In “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” sinners are separated from God and humanity and the only way they can transcend this separation in their existence is by following God’s orders. Similarly, Thoreau describes those who serve the state as having an unthinking mind and mechanic body, which can only be unified through “self-initiated effort” (Buchanan). This reading of Edwards strikes me as interesting because I had not noticed there was a split in sinners between them and the rest of humanity. The idea that sinners are not only condemned to Hell but are disassociated with everyone around them, cut off from humanity is striking. In one instance Edwards seems to blame the sinners and that the only way they can achieve salvations is through good work, yet, later he claims that there is no Salvation except from God.

 The idea of duality becomes even more complex when it comes to Poe’s “William Wilson” where the individual duals with his own sense of goodness and ends up destroying a part of him but in the process, becoming one again while also destroying any possibility of becoming better or transcending the evil. Similarly, Buchanan explores Levertov’s “The Jacob’s Ladder,” and in it he points out the duality between physical exertion towards what one considers divine yet the divine actually brushing past the individual. Buchanan’s essay was very well written and it made me question the notion that Romantic individuals are wholesome and at complete peace in both inner and outer dimensions. However, from Buchanan’s essay it is evident that the Romantic individual is anything but wholesome and at peace and is always struggling with the inner duality between good and evil and normative morals and self-determined ones.

          Roslynn Kelley’s 2015 midterm works well alongside Buchanan’s because she examines how the external environment helps the Romantic individual grow internally. As Buchanan explored the duality of the Romantic individual in a moral sense, Kelley explores specifically how the Romantic individual lived a dual existence with the internal comfort of society and home and the external terror of the unknown wilderness around them. Kelley uses the captivity narrative to drive her point, looking at Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and John Smith’s A General History of Virginia. In both the captivity narratives the individuals take a journey through the wilderness and grow internally to reflect their understanding of the nature around them. Kelley states that Mary Rowlandson “can unify her experience in a wild exterior with her domesticated interior because of her journey; and since she is now able to reconcile the two, her new individuality provides deeper insight and knowledge into her existence.” Although John Smith does not have such a deep insight into his existence, he does assimilate to the wilderness as a survival mechanism. Kelley’s exploration of the unification of the external and internal areas of Romantic individuals gives insight to how certain individuals who were not naturally inclined towards nature, unlike Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawkeye, unified with their natural surroundings. Thus, Kelley’s reading of the two captivity narratives and her understanding of the Romantic individual allows room for those who might not have been considered Romantic individuals to find themselves very much so.

In their midterm essays, Meryl Bazaman (2013), George Buchanan (2015), and Roslynn Kelley (2015) each explore the complexity of the Romantic individual. All three students took what I assumed a quite simple concept and explored the nuances from what exactly qualifies one as a Romantic individual to the duality of morals within a Romantic. From all three essays it is quite clear that individualism in Romanticism is more than just being a wholesome individual who goes out into nature to contemplate the good and bad of society. Rather, a Romantic individual constantly battles between good and evil within him/herself while also fighting the external pressures of conformity and mindlessness.