Kimberly Jones
American Romanticism- LITR 5535
Dr. Craig White
11 November 2000

The Connection Between the Sublime and the Gothic Genre in Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne 

As Jonathan Edwards read the words, "Now unto the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen," he states in his personal narrative that he felt "a new sense quite different from anything ever experienced before." He also states, "I thought with myself, how excellent a being that was, and how happy I should be if I might enjoy the God and be rapt up to God in Heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in Him." Through a connection with a greater force than himself, Edwards goes on to explain in his narrative that he "knew not how to express" the majestic glory of God. He attempts to define his feelings through the words, "It was a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness" (Edwards 178). A feeling of transcendence is often found in American Romantic literature by incorporating religion and nature as subjects; there is a recognition of a force that is greater than the writer or humanity as a whole. The individual is experiencing a peaceful, comforting spiritual awakening through this revelation. The texts of the Transcendentalists—Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman—are further examples of authors being in awe of a higher being. Emerson creates the term "transparent eyeball" to depict his ability to see beyond the physical world. In Nature he states, "I am nothing. I see all" (Emerson 499). Emerson is conveying that he is part of something beyond definition due to its immensity. The inability of Edwards and the Transcendentalists to find adequate means of expression to define their feelings of being "rapt up" can be related to Immanuel Kant’s idea of the sublime—an aesthetic also found in the texts of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Kant’s definition of the sublime focuses on the act of being introduced to something that is too overwhelming to comprehend. The subject of comprehension in Emerson and Edwards is geared toward the presence of a higher, benevolent Power—God or Nature. Both Poe and Hawthorne place a twist on this concept by employing supernatural forces in their texts that possess a darker nature; however, the supernatural forces also adhere to Kant’s notion of the sublime by lacking a clear definition. Due to their dark, sinister, indefinable nature, the supernatural forces in the texts of Poe and Hawthorne do not create a peaceful feeling of contentment in the characters or in the readers. A further twist is placed on the works of Poe and Hawthorne through the function of the individual in the scheme of the text. While Edwards and the Transcendentalists support the idea that man is fundamentally good, the texts of Poe and Hawthorne delve into the dark corners of the individual’s psyche and moral beliefs to reveal quite the opposite. To serve as an ideal setting to complement the sublime idea of the indefinable, Poe and Hawthorne use many Gothic elements to create a sense of terror and suspense in the reader. The backdrop of dark, ominous atmospheres and the presence of malevolent forces in Poe’s Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher as well as in Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown and The Minister’s Black Veil result in the powerful commingling of the Gothic and the sublime.

In his Critique of the Aesthetical Judgment, Kant explains that the sublime involves "astonishment that borders upon terror, the dread and the holy awe which seizes the observer" (Kant 109). He further defines an incomprehensible feeling as producing the effect of "quickly alternating attraction toward, and repulsion from, the same object" (Kant 97). The phrase "awful sweetness" used by Jonathan Edwards to describe his spiritual experience is an example of the fine line between pleasure and pain that is inherent in the sublime. Yet, the texts of Poe and Hawthorne focusing on the fantastic and supernatural can produce the same engagement with readers. In order to effect a sense of terror, there has to be a feeling of suspense building as a text progresses. In order to entice the reader to continue navigating through the text, the author must play on the idea of oscillating between pleasure and pain. In texts that focus on dark, evil entities, whether supernatural or physical, the reader gains an uncanny sense of pleasure from the emotional suspense resulting from the text. In Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher "a bundle of unfamiliar horrors causes a tingling thrill of apprehension to shake the reader" (Hoffman 297). In Poe’s texts the reader might keep an emotional distance from the idea of ghosts and spirits common in Gothic terror due to the unfamiliarity of such entities; however, "the real-world basis of events—they are, after all, a form of rationality—makes the terror of the story immediate" (Voller 229).

The real-world aspects and components that propagate a sense of terror in Poe’s texts are grounded in the psychological, spiritual, and emotional attributes of the characters. The darkness and torment exists in the mind and psyche from which there is no escape. As the narrator in The Fall of the House of Usher approaches the mansion, the typical Gothic images are seen: "I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation" (Poe 718). Poe has depicted a foreboding scene by presenting a mansion with "Gothic archways and dark, intricate passages" (Poe 719). As he views the mansion, the narrator feels an "iciness, a sinking, a sickening of heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into the aught of the sublime" (Poe 718). Yet, there is the presence of the idea of the sublime in regard to the narrator being unable to understand the origin of the melancholy that hovers over and within the mansion. In a sense, The inner psyche of Usher is being projected outward into the external physical world. The "vacant and eye-like windows" are symbolic of Usher’s inner turmoil and emptiness (Poe 718). The journey of the reader’s imagination into the depths of Roderick Usher’s psyche begins in the story when the narrator perceives the "futility of cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom" (Poe 722). At this point the reader can sense the melancholy in Usher as it is symbolized by the Gothic surroundings without understanding its malevolent origin.

Another possibility of the focus on the decay of the Gothic mansion is to serve as a sign that Roderick Usher is approaching the state of freeing his "physical body, and of the material world with which that body connects him…it is possible for the poetic soul to shake off this temporal, rational, physical world and escape, if only for a moment, to a realm of unfettered vision" (Wilbur 142). Therefore, as the mansion is completely destroyed at the end of the story, Roderick Usher has truly become a spiritual entity that can have unlimited vision. The previous image adheres nicely to Emerson’s "transparent eyeball" in that the soul is able to have sight beyond the physical. In this sense, the ideas of the transcendental and the sublime have been achieved as the final Gothic images of the story unfold. A spiritual transcendence is obtained as Madeline Usher "fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her horrible and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had dreaded" (Poe 730). With this final, ghastly scene, the physical body of Roderick Usher is destroyed and his soul is released as the Gothic structure of the mansion falls to the ground.

The notion of transcendence is expanded upon by Kant who states in his definition of the sublime, "The transcendent (toward which the imagination is impelled in its apprehension of intuition) is for the imagination like an abyss." He further states, "But the judgment itself always remains only aesthetical, because, without having any determinate concept of the object at its basis, it merely represents the subjective play of the mental powers (imagination and reason) as harmonious through their very contrast" (Kant 97). In comparing the imagination to an abyss, Kant is portraying the image that there is no limit to the depth of the imagination. Also, the link Kant creates between imagination and reason can also be transferred to the connection between terror and the inability to articulate feelings of fear and apprehension. In a sense, the mind has been "confronted with an idea too large for expression, too self-consuming to be contained in any adequate form of representation, but which idea, as representation, in a momentary surrender of the law of reason the mind nevertheless grasps" (Mishra 19). In The Fall of the House of Usher the mind of the reader is able to grasp the fear, terror, and melancholy surrounding the Ushers even before the denouement occurs. The reader is affected by an apprehension throughout the story that is difficult to articulate, and the mind is able to reason through the prose.

Yet, the difficulty in articulation of feelings leads back to the idea of the sublime and the inherent dichotomies that exist. Poe’s texts support the idea that for all light there is a measure of darkness; for all good there is evil. However, "Poe insists more on the existential horror than on the redemptive good" (Voller 229). In this sense, Poe’s characters do not find any relief from redemption. Roderick and Madeline Usher never find peace and contentment from their melancholy. The reader has the sense that "the long tumultuous shouting" the narrator hears as the mansion perishes is a result of the cries of Roderick and Madeline; their torment has not subsided (Poe 730). There is a depiction of human failure in being able to overcome circumstances. The horror does not originate from supernatural forces or a Gothic setting, but from the fact that man and humanity as a whole is doomed to failure in regard to personal redemption. In Poe’s texts the terror of humanity is never redeemed. This concept is difficult to grasp due to its somber outlook toward human intellect. However, "Kant’s rationalist rescue of the mind from sublimity’s power is shown in the face of terrors too vast for reason to master" (Voller 230). In this regard Poe allows the reader to identify with the analysis of his characters intellect, but places them in a Gothic setting to which the reader is completely foreign. By doing so, it becomes impossible for the characters to be considered within any social context, and it serves to magnify their shortcomings in relation to the goodness of individual nature.

Other characters completely devoid of goodness are portrayed in Poe’s Ligeia. By returning from the dead, the character of Ligeia touches on the idea of the sublime through creating questions surrounding life and death. The very topic of mortality and human existence—life and death—creates a path toward discovering truths of existence. Poe is using the backdrop of the Gothic and the fantastic to uncover greater truths of the human psyche. As in The Fall of the House of Usher the narrator is finding great difficulty in articulating his perceptions and feeling on his journey toward a greater understanding. The narrator in Ligeia states of her beauty, "Yet not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it. I recognized it sometimes in the commonest objects of the universe" (Poe 710). The narrator can see the beauty in other objects that he sees in Ligeia, but in accordance with the idea of the sublime it is too overwhelming to define. The narrator’s feelings toward Ligeia’s beauty should give the reader a positive feeling, but instead they leave the reader with a feeling of the grotesque. There is something unnatural about her beauty as well as the narrator’s experience of being rapt up in his love for her.

Gothic imagery further adds to the darkness of the situation as the author states, "She died—and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of my dwelling in the dim and decaying city by the Rhine" (Poe 712). The separation of the external, physical world and the inner, psychological world is skewed in Ligeia as it is in The Fall of the House of Usher; it becomes difficult to discern which world is actually affecting the other. The wedding chamber of the narrator and Lady Rowena sets the tone of their marriage with a "ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-druidical device" (Poe 713). There is heaviness and melancholy that pervades the wedding chamber of Lady Rowena and the narrator. It has more of the characteristics of a tomb than a marriage chamber; there is a greater resemblance to death and finality than life and renewal. In fact, death does prevail in the story; Ligeia/Lady Rowena is brought back to life and released to slip back into death more than once. This action is horrific for the reader and creates heightened suspense.

The reader’s apprehension is paralleled by that of the narrator as he states, "Through a species of unutterable horror and awe, for which the language of mortality has no sufficiently energetic expression, I felt my brain reel" (Poe 716). Once again, the narrator is unable to adequately express his feelings through words; yet, the reader grasps his emotional torment. As Rowena is caught between life and death, the sublime characteristic of dualities is present as "the drama of revivification is hideous yet utterly absorbing; and its interest seems to lie in its radical indeterminacy" (Kennedy 85). As with most of Poe’s characters, Lady Rowena is caught in a between state that mirrors the tortured existence that she possessed when she was completely conscious. However, there is something indescribably horrific about being trapped in between life and death; her fate is completely out of her control. In fact, it is in the control of a madman. By the end of the story the narrator’s psychological state has completely collapsed. "There was a mad disorder in his thoughts—a tumult unappeasable" (Poe 717). Lady Rowena and Ligeia merge into the same person and the narrator is unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. The surreal return of Ligeia has depicted "disease transformed beauty into a ghastly parody of itself, turning desire to loathing and love to disgust" (Kennedy 89). The conflict between the mind and the decay of the material world is a theme that continues in Ligeia. Both The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia "dramatize the contradictory desires of memory and forgetfulness" experienced by the characters in the stories (Kennedy 88).

Within both tales there is the presence of the concept of love that becomes even more sinister when juxtaposed with the Gothic setting. It is difficult to reference subjects that are indefinable and unable to be articulated without referencing the ultimate indescribable feeling—love. Of course, Poe’s depiction of love is not the quintessential romantic love that ends with two people living happily ever after. Poe’s love involves incest, revivification, and decay—emotional and physical. Poe’s "best pieces are not tales. They are more. They are ghastly stories of the human soul in its disruptive throes. Moreover, they are love stories" (Lawrence 71). The presence of a grotesque image of love in Poe’s stories increases the sense of sublimity through distorting what should be an uplifting, spiritual experience. The senses are heightened as a result of love in Poe’s stories, but the senses are related to terror as opposed to spiritual ecstasy. Before the episode of revivification in Ligeia, the narrator’s love for his wife is depicted as strange and complex. The narrator states in the beginning of the story, "And now, while I write, a recollection flashes upon me that I have never know the paternal name of her who was my friend and my betrothed, and who became the partner of my studies" (Poe 708). It is almost unbelievable that a husband is not aware of his wife’s paternal name. This leads the reader to believe that the narrator’s love is not purely based on who Ligeia is as a person; "it’s incontestable that Ligeia herself is associated, in the narrator’s mind, with knowledge" (Hoffman 242). The acquisition of knowledge is a concept that complicates the presence of the sublime since the concept of knowledge can be comprehended. Knowledge is more scientific and objective while the sublime is more subjective. Nevertheless, the narrator is not cognizant of the true nature of his love for Ligeia; he believes that his intense love can not be defined. Yet, the pursuit of knowledge as symbolized in his love for Ligeia could be considered to border on the sublime and the transcendent in the sense that it mirrors a search for deeper intellectual meaning and understanding of human existence. Inevitably, there will have to be a consideration of a higher being. However, in the end of Ligeia the entity possessing the coveted knowledge is twisted and distorted resulting in the lost opportunity of any new understanding.

The image of revivification in Ligeia is reminiscent of the idea of desire and loss that is relevant in American Romantic literature. There is an occurrence of nostalgia and looking back in American Romanticism that even Hawthorne "with his acute historical sensitivity, lamented America’s stultifying lack of historical depth" (Voller 210). The American countryside was not covered with Gothic castles, and the Gothic setting in American literature commonly occurred in the wilderness. "American Gothic is an anchoring of the Gothic in the world of the ordinary, an effect Hawthorne repeatedly achieves by combining his historicism with an insistently near-allegorical symbolism, effectively grounding his work in historical and moral reality" (Voller 211). In contrast to Poe’s journey into the dark subconscious, Hawthorne delves into the morality within an individual. Yet, in comparison to Poe, Hawthorne draws a razor thin line between the idea of the fantastic and reality. Both Poe and Hawthorne are masters at creating a between state or middle ground for their characters to exist. The trapped existence offers no opportunity for growth or escape; instead, the characters are placed in situations in which they can neither triumph nor comprehend their circumstances.

Both Hawthorne and Poe focus on the inevitable failure of the human spirit. Poe achieves this image through placing his characters in surreal and fantastic situation, while Hawthorne emphasizes moral failure. In referencing moral failure, the religious concept of good and evil invariably surfaces. In his analysis of the Puritans, Hawthorne explored their psychological dynamics and recognized that they tended to see "evil in others they did not want to own in themselves." As a result, the Puritans provide a natural subject for Hawthorne since they embody the self-righteous he sees as the antithesis of wisdom" (Bunge 4). Combining the supernatural and sublime aspects of Hawthorne’s fiction, there is a riveting effect from the relationship between the fantastic, historic, and moral.

An example of the connection between the preceding three components is depicted in Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown. The story takes place in the Gothic wilderness. As goodman Brown is "making more haste on his evil purpose," the reader is engaged by the mystery of the man’s errand. As he walks to his destination, the Gothic attributes are depicted as "the gloomiest trees in the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind" (Hawthorne 614). It is symbolic that goodman Brown has left his wife named Faith to participate in the unnatural events in the wilderness. As the reader learns the nature of the events in the forest, it is apparent that goodman Brown literally abandons his faith. The occurrences that lead to goodman Brown’s abandonment of faith are grounded in the Kantian idea of the sublime. Brown witnesses supernatural instances that are incomprehensible. Hence, fear of the unknown is experienced vicariously through the characters as the text progresses. For example, at one point in the story a rod is thrown down on the ground that turns into a serpent. "Brown could not take cognizance. He had cast his eyes in astonishment" (Hawthorne 617). Kant’s notion of the harmony between imagination and reason actively comes into play in Young Goodman Brown in regard to the reader’s struggle to assign a rationale to the fantastic occurrences. The inexplicable events lead goodman Brown to a belief in the depravity of humanity as he discovers that he is in the midst of a figurative and literal darkness.

The reader has difficulty deciphering whether goodman Brown is functioning in reality or a dream. At the end of Young Goodman Brown Hawthorne states,

Again, the character of goodman Brown is in a between state from which he can not distinguish whether events actually occurred. Yet, despite whether or not the sinister events were real or a delusion, the impact on Brown’s psyche is strong. The supernatural and demonic meeting in the wilderness has left a psychological impact on Brown through completely skewing his vision of the world. As a result, he ends up having no sense of himself. The meeting of the congregation in the wilderness, which is completely beyond explanation, leaves Brown a hollow, empty individual. The experience has stunted any opportunity that goodman Brown might have had as an individual. He will always be convinced of the inherent evil in himself and the rest of humanity. The final lines of the story serve as an example of the Gothic and sublime connected in the same thought. Hawthorne leaves the reader in a cemetery, a Gothic image, and also states that Brown’s family "carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom" (Hawthorne 622). The idea of a tormented soul is impossible to grasp. Hawthorne creates a depiction of a tortured Brown even after death through having him die in a state of despair. Hawthorne also closes the story and leaves the reader in the cemetery—a dark, ominous atmosphere that places Brown’s torment in a context that lingers with the reader even after the pages of the story are closed.

The Minister’s Black Veil by Hawthorne is another story that leaves the reader in an undesirable place in the final scene. As the story closes on another one of Hawthorne’s tormented characters, the reader is left with the image of "a good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust; but awful is still the thought, that it mouldered under the black veil" (Hawthorne 639). The Gothic scene is set in the story through the frequent reference to burials and cemeteries. Therefore, when Mr. Hooper begins to wear a black veil covering his entire face, the sublime enters the scenario due to a well-respected, pillar of the community exhibiting behavior that is frightening and incomprehensible; he is grotesque. The reader has difficulty finding reason in Mr. Hooper’s choice to cover his face with a black veil for the remainder of his life. It is alluded to in the story that Hooper is attempting to exhibit the idea that all humans wear a mask. "In a sense, Mr. Hooper is something of a martyr to spiritual truth. Isolated, apart from love, he is a victim of spiritual blindness, all the more worthy because he has let people look at him instead of forcing them to look at themselves" (Martin 76). Labeling Mr. Hooper as a martyr actually leaves the reader with somewhat of a positive feeling to balance the author’s act of abandoning the reader in the tomb with the veiled Mr. Hooper. It is debatable whether Mr. Hooper transcends above public scrutiny while he is alive or if he goes to his grave in torment as did goodman Brown. In either instance, a dark feeling carries the reader through the text and never truly allows absolute comprehension on the part of the reader or characters other than Mr. Hooper.

It can be argued that the sublime can be more easily discerned in the texts of the Transcendentalists and religious works that focus on a recognition of the feeling of rapture associated with a submission to a higher force nearly impossible to articulate. Yet, texts incorporating the Gothic and the sublime can also produce inexplicable feelings that result in a loss for words. While there is not a complete parallel between both of these scenarios, Kant’s idea of the sublime is inherent in each of them. Poe and Hawthorne add the components of psychology and moral edification into the mix and create a "place of the uncanny" (Mishra 78). In The Fall of the House of Usher, Ligeia, Young Goodman Brown, and The Minister’s Black Veil, "Death as the sublime in the Gothic is the uncanny-sublime; it is the always recurring/repeating presence. In the Gothic, death is troped through the supernatural machinery and used as the uncanny image of love itself" (Mishra 79). In each of the stories, the material and inner psychological worlds are commingled as the tormented characters find themselves caught in the middle while the reader tries to find a balance between reason and emotion.

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