Theresa Matthews
American Romanticism
Midterm Essay
Dr. Craig White
September 26, 2003  

Gothic Romanticism in the American Renaissance  

            Romanticism imbued with gothic elements is a power that continues to draw readers to the classics of the American Renaissance.  Dark, decay, and gloomy settings are the backdrop for the supernatural phenomena found in the Romantic literature of Mary Rowlandson, Washington Irving, and James Fenimore Cooper. Rowlandson’s narrative captivity is a Pre-Romantic work that threads elements of fear effecting a passionate, terror-filled encounter with the unknown.  Then Irving, in his tale of mystery and legend, refines the gothic techniques in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  Finally, Cooper’s romantic novel, The Last of the Mohicans, employs complex elements of Gothic correspondence and sublimity introducing readers to the imaginative self.

            “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” by Mary Rowlandson was written in a time when reason and logic, order and balance were esteemed conventions in the literary arts.  However, living on the frontier in New England was not conducive to these conventions nor to Puritan morality prized by society.  With this in mind, threads of the Romantic precepts develop in Rowlandson’s narrative captivity.  These trace elements evince through the gothic tradition of a mysterious, dark setting and a suggestion of the supernatural.  Rowlandson describes her initial capture, “It is a solemn sight to see . . . Christians lying in their blood, … like a company of sheep torn by wolves … stripped naked by a company of hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out…” (Norton 137).  The image of Christians as sheep being torn apart by the wolves that are Indians truly initiates an unimagined terror in the mind of the reader.  Indeed, the horrific images of hell and grotesque monsters capture the audience just as surely as if they had been captured with Rowlandson, and the Indians are no longer definable as humans but as fiendish “hounds” to be hunted and killed as otherworldly beasts whose home is not earth but hell.  Rowlandson furthers this nightmarish imagery through descriptions of her captors, “Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell” (138).  Consistently, a cultic image materializes as Rowlandson reveals her tale of terror.  The “creatures” appear to be engaged in a ritual that is at once obscene and horrific to the senses.  To reinforce the atmosphere of terror, the setting infuses images of the color “black” and “hell” to reveal danger and terror of the unknown. The gothic elements of the supernatural are disturbing and produce a highly emotional, unreasonable, unwavering empathy for the author’s plight.  The “style overwhelms the reality” (class notes).  Consequently, Rowlandson’s narrative effectively demonizes the “red” indigenous savages of the New World. 

These gothic elements are more perceptible in the early Romantic writings of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”   As the story begins, the land (Tarry Town) possesses an exotic characteristic, “…[it] is one of the quietest places in the whole world…a small brook glides through it…[it is] uniform tranquility” (Irving 2094).  The image expresses an Edenic quality that is sequestered from the rest of the world.  However, Irving juxtaposes this image with gothic elements that add suspense and heighten the emotions, “…the place was bewitched by a high German doctor…that holds a spell over the minds of the good people…” (2094). Both past and present supernatural legends seducingly influence its inhabitants.  The “bewitching” history of the populace chillingly primes the audience to accept the reigning folklore of the “ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannonball…and haunts…the valley…[and] adjacent roads…” on horseback (2094).  Irving creates a gothic correspondence between “this legendary superstition” and the newcomers of Tarry Town, “they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, . . . and see apparitions” (2095).    Irving implies that all inhabitants are susceptible to superstition and gloom. The inner mind of the community corresponds with the mysterious surroundings, so that they are compelled to believe in the superstitious legends in Tarry Town.  Moreover, the pedagogical Ichabod departs with a heavy heart from a local gathering and travels into the lonely night, and a “correspondence exists between Ichabod and his surroundings” (Muskievicz 1).  The gothic scene surfaces with terrifying suspense as “All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard, now came crowding upon his recollection…[and] [t]he night grew darker and darker; …he thought he saw something white, …perceived that it was a place where …the white wood laid bare” (2108).  Ichabod’s emotions, whether self-induced or authentic, feed into the frenzy of fear, and as he looks upon nature, it grows dark.  Notice too the startling contrast of dark and white.   As Ichabod’s thoughts turn to the darker side of emotions, his surroundings reflect his deep, dark mood.  The bleakness of color, black and white, connote the eerie, the phantasmic, the gloom of certain dread. Add to this, the image of an “enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant…its limbs were gnarled, and fantastic…twisting down almost to the earth…” furthers the transformation of nature into specter.  Ichobod’s fearful encounter with the supposed goblin is his last, a “…huge, misshapen, black, and towering” phantom appears and pursues the quivering Ichabod.  These gothic elements of the supernatural and the unknown converge and thrill the reader to nervous anticipation of Ichabod’s demise. In keeping with legend, superstition, and mystery, the morning reveals Ichabod’s horse, but Ichabod is never found.  The legend continues to reinvent itself with Ichabod as the latest victim.

Romanticism threaded with gothic elements culminate in Cooper’s classic novel, The Last of the Mohicans.  Cooper permeates the Edenic American wilderness with the elements of Gothicism to manifest a realm of terror.  The wilderness becomes the “haunted castle” of Europe, “the gloom … was thickening beneath the leafy arches of the forest” (Cooper 45).  “Gloom” and “leafy arches” define a daunting space in nature that resembles the “flamboyant, mysterious, or even frightening” Gothic buildings of France (Murfin 191). The Edenic wilderness has taken on a new persona that is strange and full of danger.  Cooper then artfully blends the frightening wilderness with the “sarpent” Huron Indians, “[in the] topmost leaves…scantily concealed the gnarled and stunted limbs, a savage was nestled, partly exposed by the trunk of the tree…” (Cooper 73).  This is reminiscent of the ancient serpent’s deceit in the Garden of Eden.  Behold the beauty of the wilderness, yet beware the perils that lie in wait.  The Hurons function as the “supernatural,” mimicking the cunning and deceit of Satan.  Cooper then heightens the nervous sensation with Gothic correspondence when Hawk-eye and his companions escape the savage “devils” to find sanctuary “in the grave of the dead Mohawks” (126).  In this atmosphere of death, the sisters could not “entirely suppress an emotion of natural horror,” and “[the] gray light, the gloomy little area of dark grass…and the death like stillness of the vast forest, were all in unison to deepen such a sensation” (126).  The gruesome space reinforces the near death experience of the sisters and Heywood.  Thus, nature reflects the appalling “sensation” of death.  Also, the gradation of color to “gray” underscores the lushness usually associated with a forest, and the “gloom” corresponds with the emotions of the sisters and Heywood.  Finally, Cooper initiates the gothic element of sublimity to further emphasize the individual experience.  The Hurons are once again on the brink of discovering the evasive Hawk-eye and his companions when the thrilling tension builds, “Duncan, brave as he was in the combat, could not, in such a moment of painful suspense, make a reply…” (131).  The strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling is terror” (Burke 310).  Cooper incorporates the immediacy of danger and terror through Duncan’s emotional reaction to their perilous situation.  Duncan realizes that the tiniest of sound or movement will divulge their hiding spot, and the blood-thirsty Hurons’ proximity is unimaginably close to discovery.  Nervous anticipation through Duncan’s “pain” renders the audience chillingly helpless.  Gothic sublimity taps into the psyche of the audience, indelibly creating a phenomenal frightening encounter with literature.

Gothicism in the American Renaissance lures audiences by effecting passionate responses through its literature.  Rowlandson’s narrative captivity employs the supernatural and dark setting to give voice to her horrific ordeal in a wilderness with “savages.”  Irving’s advanced use of gothic elements give rise to the supernatural genre in the early Romantic Era, while Cooper’s stylistic use of Gothic writing earns him critically acclaimed success.  All three authors richly use the power of Romanticism to heighten the sensations of its audience and elevate the reader to a place of the unknown.