Emily Masterson
LITR 5535
Dr. Craig White
Sept. 29, 2003 

American Romanticism in Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans: An Escalating Rebellion Against Gender Conventions of the Previous Era 

            The mid-nineteenth century Romantic movement is infamous for slowly chipping away at the rigid ideas of both literary and social conventions of the previous Age of Reason.  On the heels of the British movement by the same name, the American Romantic wave first emerged in the literary works of those such as the English-inspired Washington Irving, the frontierwoman’s voice of Mary Rowlandson and the distinctly wild American pen of James Fenimore Cooper.  These voices, and in the case of Irving and Rowlandson, precursory voices, became a force of rebellion easily recognizable as fundamentally romantic.  Interestingly enough, these works, and most specifically, Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, also rebel against the strict gender conventions of their day, a dispersal which began early on in the movement, and as the Romantic era progressed, blossomed into full critique of widely accepted gender stereotypes.     

            Both The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Last of the Mohicans offer characters that push the limits of typical gender conventions.  While the comparison between the two characters or Ichabod Crane and David Gamut is limited because Washington’s novel is just short of being a wholly Romantic work in terms of gender rebellion, we can see ways in which Washington prepares us for new ideas of masculinity which unfold more completely in Cooper’s novel. 

In Washington’s darkly comic tale, the character of Ichabod Crane seems just as physically ridiculous as Cooper’s David Gamut.  Physically, Ichabod is certainly not the pinnacle of coursing masculinity.  Washington describes the school teacher as “tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders […], hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and a frame hung loosely together” (Washington 2095). 

Washington continues to set up his character as one not to be taken seriously, even when riding the horse “Gunpowder” :  “And, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth, like a knight-errant in quest of adventures [...], the animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow horse that had outlived everything but his viciousness” (2103).  Washington’s humorous depiction of the gangling Ichabod may not seem so much a rebellion of gender conventions as a vehicle for satire, but the character serves as a precursor to the more serious character of Cooper’s, David Gamut.

            Much like Ichabod in appearance, David could also be disregarded as a masculine specimen by his physical appearance: “His head was large; his shoulders narrow; his arms long and dangling; while his hands were small, if not delicate.  His legs and thighs were thin nearly to emaciation […]” (Cooper 16).  But unlike Ichabod, David is not primarily a humorous device, and rather than ridiculous, his features seems to suggest effeminate qualities, such as his small, delicate hands.  With physical characteristics as a foundation for their characters, the ridiculous Ichabod and physically effeminate David are compared to their masculine counterparts with ferocity--readers cannot help but make evaluative judgments about their masculinity.  

            One in a tentative sense and the other in a more mature fashion, both authors deviate from gender conventions through contrast with characters who have masculine attributes in the traditional sense.  On page 2100, Washington describes the arch-nemesis of Ichabod, Brom Bones, as a character of intense, brutish masculinity.  Washington describes Brom as having a “Herculean frame” and possessing “great powers of limb.”  Also, Brom is “foremost in all races and cockfights, and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes” (2100).  Not only is Brom a great physical presence, but compared to Ichabod, Brom represents a rural man with rural masculine tastes and propensities that Ichabod cannot hope to match.  Realizing the futility of combat with the masculine Brom, Washington asserts that though Brom was willing, a cowardly Ichabod “was too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter the lists against him” (Washington 2102). 

 In the story, the comparison serves as a way that Washington can highlight differences between the two gender extremes and therefore develop the comic angle that makes his novel so fondly read today.  But also, whether intentional or by coincidence, Washington creates a character that is primarily defined by his qualities as the “anti-male”.   

            Fully enmeshed in the Romantic era, Cooper’s David Gamut also stands apart from the rustic frontiersmen and masculine Indians that permeate The Last of the Mohicans.  Cooper illustrates tension between the superbly masculine characters of Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas and the effeminate character of David in a decidedly more blatant manner than Washington.  In open hostility, Hawkeye contemptibly questions David’s right to manhood as defined by the frontiersman:

“Yes, he will do their singing!  Can he slay a buck for their dinner; journey by the moss on the beeches, or cut the throat of a Huron?  If not, the first cat-bird he meets is the cleverest fellow of the two.  Well, boy, any signs of such a foundation?”  (Cooper 187)  

David’s interest in things of a scholarly value and his love of “psalmody” often must bear the brunt of criticism because his talents do not lend themselves to the traditional talents of someone of his gender.  This is perceived by the other characters and most often construed in the novel as a general weakness of person.  In one instance when Hawk-eye is searching for traces of David, Cora and Alice in the dirt, he spots evidence of David’s footprints:

“Now, the singer was beginning to be foot-sore and leg-weary, as is plain by his trail.  There you see he slipped; here he has traveled wide, and tottered; and there, again, it looks as though he journeyed on snowshoes.  Ay, ay, a man who uses his throat altogether, can hardly give his legs a proper training!”  (217)

It seems that the woman-male of the group, a symbolic rebellion against traditional notions of gender and gender roles, still cannot maintain the respect of the party for long.  The gender-crossed David must constantly embattle the Indians’ and Hawk-eye’s general conceptions of manhood throughout the novel.  Some examples of the prevalent theme of manhood are: “but I though it befitting my manhood to name it […]” (138), “according to military opinion, and so, their honor […]”, (166) “a firm tread announced that he was still equal to the duties of manhood […]” (234), and “he was deficient in that moral courage, without which no man can be truly great […]” (180).  The criteria for maleness in this novel is more than David can ever hope to compete with, and perhaps, is never meant to try. 

            Examples of both cultures’ ideas of manhood are prevalent in The Last of the Mohicans, and to a precursory extent, in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  But Romantic rebellion is not limited to the male gender, and can be observed readily in Mary Rowlandson’s narrative of captivity and in Cooper’s characterization of the mixed-blooded Cora. 

To some extent, a deviation from typical gender roles was probably accepted from Mary Rowlandson, due to the extreme nature of her real-life captivity account.  In A Narrative of Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Rowlandson, Rowlandson’s bravery in the face of death and captivity exceeds typical literary conventions of the tragic heroine.  To begin with, Rowlandson is squarely set in a situation that effectively places her in the position of a traditional masculine hero.  While she is captive, Rowlandson has no male patriarch over her in the traditional sense—her husband cannot protect her and does not rejoin her until the end of her tale.  Rowlandson tells her reader, “All was gone, my husband gone […], and to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward” (Rowlandson 138).  In her miserable state, Rowlandson is effectively freed from patriarchal rule and must independently fight for her freedom.  She confronts her captors with an uncommon strength:

I earnestly desired them (Rowlandson’s Indian kidnappers) to let me go and see them (her daughter and sister): yea, I entreated, begged, and persuaded them, but to let me see my daughter; and yet so hard-hearted were they, that they would not suffer it.  (144)

In her desperation to see her daughter and sister, a strength emerges that foreshadows the “new” independent woman from Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.  Though Rowlandson’s account is inspired by actual events, her character, as a literary device, is one who walks outside of the line of gender conventions, a precursor to Cooper’s masculine-female.

One wonders how Cooper’s novel might have changed if the male “saviors” of the novel were excluded.  Cora takes Rowlandson’s bravery a step further, entering the literary realm of the male hero.  In Cooper’s novel, the dark-haired, mixed-blooded Cora is also potentially a woman, who if free from her patriarchal culture, might show herself to be equal to her male counterparts in bravery.   She demonstrates bravery in the face of death; this advances her character past a woman of mere desperation and fully into potential rivalry for the title of masculine hero. 

            In the face of certain death, Cora utters a speech to the Lenape chief Tamenund, pleading for her life and the lives of her sister and friends in a manner which exceeds that of the frightened woman: “Then elevating her rich features and beaming eyes, she continued, in tones scarcely less penetrating than the unearthly voice of the patriarch himself […]” (Cooper 304). 

             During this tense scene, when the fate of the group is being decided, it seems the controlled voice of Cora is best suited to handle the situation with bravery and defiance.  Contrasted with the fragile, “womanly” Alice, Cora’s bravery seems to be an integral part of her strength as a male-female character. 

            Comparison between Rowlandson and Cooper should end at this point, but Cooper, firmly in the genre of American Romantic, takes the character of Cora many steps further.  At one point, Cooper tells his reader that Cora’s voice is “husky” in tone, a word heavy in male connotations and often used to describe the male voice (67).   Also, throughout the novel, Cooper allows Cora to be a figure whose clear-headed logic and calm demeanor cause the reader to puzzle at her place in the background of a cast of male characters who often seem to be her equals.

            But even though Last of the Mohicans is a true rebellious Romantic tale, Cooper undoubtedly fails to take his cause far enough.  While Cora is a woman of man-like bravery and strength, much of her characteristics can be excused because she is not a pure European woman.  Perhaps it is important to remember that though Cooper pushes notions of gender roles, he is still very much a product of his time.  By modern standards, Cooper’s rebellion against gender conventions is limited at best, but during the Romantic era of American literature, Cooper was undoubtedly one of the first writers who began to question gender limitations of his society.  As a Romantic author, his name is indelibly, and rightly, marked on literary culture and on the American conscience.