American Gothic Literature

Gothic Undercurrents

What was haunting the American nation in the 1850s? The three writers treated in this program — Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson — use poetry and prose to explore the dark side of nineteenth-century America.

Unit Overview: Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. define what "gothic" means;


2. understand which American hopes, fears, and anxieties are explored and critiqued by writers in the gothic mode;


3. recognize the centrality of gothic literature to nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture;


4. evaluate the generally skeptical, pessimistic, or critical positions adopted by gothic writers;


5. discuss the role of gender and race in shaping the forms and themes of the American gothic tradition.

Gothic Literature:

Think of gothic literature as that which plunges its characters into mystery, torment, and fear in order to pose disturbing questions to our familiar and comfortable ideas of humanity, society, and the cosmos.

 These writers urge us to ask: What is an American? What are our ideals, and to what extent does it seem within our power to realize them? What power, if any, rules us? How much are we in control of ourselves? How well do we even know ourselves? To what extent can we ever be sure of anything?

Preview

• Preview the video: Alongside the optimism of writers like Emerson, the nineteenth century produced a body of writing meant to question Americans' essential goodness. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson wrote narratives and poems in which they asked difficult questions about God, truth, and humanity. They rarely provided hopeful answers.

• What to think about while watching: How do these writers expect their work to be received by the reader? How dothey express the social and personal anxieties of their time? What assumptions or beliefs do they challenge? Why do they remain compelling today? What do they hope to achieve through their writing? 

• Tying the video to the unit content: These writers are only three of the most important practitioners of the gothic mode in the nineteenth century. Many others also explored the disturbing or repressed aspects of American life, asking questions like: What are we afraid of? What is the worst we are capable of? What do we have a right to believe in? To what extent can our will and reason evade the lures of habit, prejudice, ignorance, and desire?

Watch the Video and be prepared to discuss in class: DUE - OCT. 1

http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit06/usingvideo.html

About the authors covered in this video: http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit06/authors.html

This timeline places literary publications (in black) in their historical contexts (in red).:
http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit06/timeline.html

Unit Overview: Glossary

ambiguity - Doubtfulness or uncertainness of interpretation. Much gothic literature is considered ambiguous insofar as it rarely presents a clear moral or message; it seems intended to be open to multiple meanings. 

American Renaissance - Standard if limiting description of the flowering of American art and thought in the mid-nineteenth century. The restricted "canonical" version is usually thought to include Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, and Dickinson.

gothic - In the eighteenth century and following, generally used for "of the Middle Ages." Then, through negative association with the medieval--often seen as the "Dark Ages" following the intellectual and social flowering of Rome--the term "gothic" shifts to literature, art, or architecture which attempts to disturb or unsettle the orderly, "civilized" course of society. Gothic works probe the dark side of humanity or unveil socio-cultural anxiety.

Manifest Destiny - Prevalent in America from its early days through the nineteenth century, the belief that divine providence mandated America to expand throughout the continent and to stand as a social model for the rest of the world.

original sin - The Calvinist belief that, because of the fall of Adam and Eve, all humans are born inherently sinful. Only God's free grace can save us from hell.

Romanticism - European American late-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century intellectual movement that stressed human creativity, sensation, subjectivity, emotion, and fulfillment. Often associated with nature as an inspiring force, Romanticism emphasized the radically innovative individual, as opposed to the Enlightenment focus on the rationally ordered society. Gothicism is sometimes called "dark Romanticism." 

spiritualism - A more comforting and optimistic idea of the afterlife than that offered by Calvinism: the belief that the human personality or soul continues to exist after death and can be contacted through the aid of a medium. Many in the mid-nineteenth century were hopeful that science would eventually prove the existence of spirits.

Unit Vocabulary- Memorize terms and definitions: DUE OCT. 8

Print out and/or view vocabulary flashcards here: http://quizlet.com/23974376/flashcards

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

CLICK HERE TO READ: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow   READ and be prepared to discuss in class: DUE OCTOBER 1

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

Born to the teenage actors Elizabeth Arnold and David Poe Jr. (in a time when acting was a highly disreputable career), Edgar Allan Poe was raised by a Richmond, Virginia, merchant named John Allan after both his parents died. Allan sent Poe to the University of Virginia, but Poe left after quarrelling with Allan in 1827. Allan had no patience for Poe’s literary pretensions, and Poe found Allan cheap and cruel. Poe then sought out his father’s relatives in Baltimore, where he published his first volume of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems, and later secretly married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. He moved with his wife and her mother to Richmond, Philadelphia (where he wrote several of his most famous works, including “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”), and then to New York City. Throughout these relocations, he worked editing magazines and newspapers, but found it difficult to hold onto any one job for very long. Poe’s horror tales and detective stories (a genre he created) were written to capture the fancy of the popular reading pub- lic, but he earned his national reputation through a large number of critical essays and sketches. With the publication of “The Raven”(1845), Poe secured his fame, but he was not succeeding as well in his personal life. His wife died in 1847, and Poe was increasingly ill and drinking uncontrollably. He died on a trip to Baltimore, four days after being found intoxicated near a polling booth on Election Day.

Poe was influenced by the fantastic romances of Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. However, unlike most of his famous contemporaries, Poe rarely described American life in any direct way in his writings. Often set in exotic, vaguely medieval, or indeterminately distant locations, Poe’s work seems more interested in altered states of consciousness than history or culture: his characters often swirl within madness, dreams, or intoxication, and may or may not encounter the supernatural. His literary reputation has been uneven, with some critics finding his extrav- agant prose and wild situations off-putting or absurd (and his poetry pedestrian and repetitive). Poe’s defenders, however (including many nineteenth- and twentieth-century French intellectuals), see him as a brilliant allegorist of the convolutions of human consciousness. For example, there are many “doubles” in Poe: characters who mirror each other in profound but nonrealistic ways, suggesting not so much the subtleties of actual social relationships as the splits and fractures with- in a single psyche trying to relate to itself. 

Assignment Due Oct. 8 Read "Ligeia" http://poestories.com/read/ligeia

"In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselvesupon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember."

- from "Ligeia"

Due Oct. 8-Answer Reading Response Questions:

1.  Does “Ligeia” represent supernatural events? What difference does your answer make to our understanding of the story?

2.  Poe works very well for the study of spatial analysis and analyses of setting— that is, for considering the importance of the stories’ spaces (e.g., houses, prisons) and the locations (e.g., “exotic” or medieval places and times). In preparation for class discussion, draw a picture (or write a detailed description) of the setting of one of Poe’s stories and annotate it with what each aspect of the setting symbolizes.

3.  How does the setting of “Ligeia” affect your under- standing of the story?

4.  The narrator is unsure about many things in “Ligeia,” including when and where he met Ligeia, her last name, and whether he is mad. In fact, it is possible to say that the story is about uncertainty: “Not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it,” says the narrator at one point. How does Poe explore the dilemma of ambiguity in “Ligeia”? What does he seem to be saying about the mind’s attempt to establish certainty?

Read and Listen to "Fall of the House of Usher" here:

http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/147/the-works-of-edgar-allan-poe/5312/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher/

Style and Imagery

Word Choice

Poe carefully makes every word, every phrase, every sentence in the story contribute to the overall effect, horror, accompanied by oppressing morbidity and anxious anticipation of terrifying events. Notice, for example, the tenor of the words in the opening sentence of the story. I have underlined those that help establish the mood and atmosphere.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. 

Rhythm

But besides painting a gloomy picture, the words in the paragraph also beat out a funereal rhythm—at first through the alliteration of during, dull, dark, and day, and then through the rhyming suffixes of oppressively, singularly, and melancholy. 

Alliteration

Alliteration occurs frequently in the rest of the story, in such phrases as the following:

iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart 
cadaverousness of complexion 
feeble and futile struggles 
certain superstitious impressions [the s in impressions does not alliterate because it has a z sound]
sensation of stupor 
partially cataleptical character 
wild air of the last waltz 
fervid facility of his impromptus
impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet 
and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."

Anaphora

As in his other short stories, Poe frequently uses anaphora in "The Fall of the House of Usher." Anaphora is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of a clause or another group of words. Anaphora imparts emphasis and balance. Here are boldfaced examples from "The Fall of the House of Usher":

I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon thebleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees 

While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up.

Many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it 

Main Theme

The central theme of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is terror that arises from the complexity and multiplicity of forces that shape human destiny. Dreadful, horrifying events result not from a single, uncomplicated circumstance but from a collision and intermingling of manifold, complex circumstances. In Poe’s story, the House of Usher falls to ruin for the reasons listed under "Other Themes" (below).

Other Themes

Evil

Evil has been at work in the House of Usher for generations, befouling the residents of the mansion. Roderick Usher's illness is "a constitutional and family evil . . . one for which he despaired to find a remedy," the narrator reports. Usher himself later refers to this evil in Stanza V of "The Haunted Palace," a ballad he sings to the accompaniment of his guitar music. The palace in the ballad represents the House of Usher and its master, Roderick, whose mind has been degenerating. The first two lines of Stanza V are as follows:

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.

Neither of these references identifies the exact nature of the evil. However, clues in the story suggest that the evil infecting the House of Usher is incest. Early in the story, the narrator implies there has been marriage between relatives:

I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. 

Later, the narrator describes Madeline Usher as her brother’s “tenderly beloved sister—his sole companion for long years.” He also notes that Roderick Usher's illness "displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations." 

Isolation

Roderick and Madeline Usher seal themselves inside their mansion, cutting themselves off from friends, ideas, progress. They have become musty and mildewed, sick unto their souls for lack of contact with the outside world.

Failure to Adapt

The Usher family has become obsolete because it failed to throw off the vestiges of outmoded tradition, a failing reflected by the mansion itself, a symbol of the family. The interior continues to display coats-of-arms and other paraphernalia from the age of kings and castles. As to the outside, “Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves."

Madness

Roger and Madeline suffer from mental illness characterized by anxiety, depression, and other symptoms. Catalepsy, a symptom of Madeline’s illness, is a condition that causes muscle rigidity and temporary loss of consciousness and feeling for several minutes, several hours, and, in some cases, more than a day. Generally, it is not an illness in itself but a symptom of an illness, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, hysteria, alcoholism or a brain tumor. Certain drugs, too, can trigger a cataleptic episode. The victim does not respond to external stimuli, even painful stimuli such as a pinch on the skin. In the past, a victim of catalepsy was sometimes pronounced dead by a doctor unfamiliar with the condition. Apparently, Madeline is not dead when her brother and the narrator entomb her; instead, she is in a state of catalepsy. When she awakens from her trance, she breaks free of her confines, enters her brother's chamber, and falls on him. She and her brother then die together. Besides Roger and Madeline, the narrator himself may suffer from mental instability, given his reaction to the depressing scene he describes in the opening paragraphs. If he is insane, all of the events he describes could be viewed as manifestations of his sick mind—illusions, dreams, hallucinations.

Mystery

From the very beginning, the narrator realizes that he is entering a world of mystery when he crosses the tarn bridge. He observes, "What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher ?  It was a mystery all insoluble."

Strange Phenomena

The narrator describes the mansion as having a “pestilent and mystic” vapor enveloping it. He also says Roderick Usher “was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted.”
.

Symbolism

The Fungus-Ridden Mansion: Decline of the Usher family. 
The Collapsing Mansion: Fall of the Usher family.
The “Vacant eye-like” Windows of the Mansion: (1) Hollow, cadaverous eyes of Roderick Usher; (2) Madeline Usher’s cataleptic gaze; (3) the vacuity of life in the Usher mansion. 
The Tarn, a Small Lake Encircling the Mansion and Reflecting Its Image: (1) Madeline as the twin of Roderick, reflecting his image and personality; (2) the  image of reality which Roderick and the narrator perceive; though the water of the tarn reflects details exactly, the image is upside down, leaving open the possibility that Roderick and the narrator see a false reality; (3) the desire of the Ushers to isolate themselves from the outside world.
The Bridge Over the Tarn: The narrator as Roderick Usher’s only link to the outside world. 
The name Usher: An usher is a doorkeeper. In this sense, Roderick Usher opens the door to a frightening world for the narrator.
The Storm: The turbulent emotions experienced by the characters.

Foreshadowing

The narrator's reference to catalepsy—describing Madeline Usher as having “affections of a partially cataleptical character”—foreshadows her burial while she is still alive. 

Reading Response Question for "Fall of the House of Usher" DUE OCT.22

1.  What mood is set in stanzas I-IV of “The Haunted Palace”?  In stanzas V-VI?  (p. 218-219)

 2. What kinds of books did the narrator and Roderick read?  (p. 219)

3.  When Madeline dies, what does Roderick plan to do with the body?  Why?  (p. 219-220)

 4.  Describe the vault in which the narrator and Roderick place Madeline’s coffin.  (p. 220)

 5.  As they gaze on Madeline, the narrator commented on her resemblance to Roderick.  What does he tell the narrator?  (p. 220)

6.  After Madeline’s death, how did Roderick change?  (p. 220)

 7.  On the 7^th or 8^th night after Madeline’s death, why couldn’t the narrator sleep?  (p. 221)

8.  Roderick is up roaming the house and goes to the narrator’s room.  What does he ask the narrator?  (p. 221)

 9.  To pass the time and take their minds off the storm, the narrator begins to read to Roderick.  What is he reading?  

 10.  In the story that the narrator is reading, Ethelred beats open a wooden door.  What does the narrator hear in the house?  (p. 222)

 11.  In the story that the narrator is reading, the dragon shrieks when Ethelred kills him.  What does the narrator hear in the house?  (p. 222-223)

 12.  How does Roderick react to these sounds?  (p. 223)

 13.  What does Roderick say is causing the sounds in the house?  (p. 223)

 14.  How does Roderick die?  (p. 224)

 15.  The narrator flees from the house out into the storm.  A wild light appears behind him so he turns to see what caused it.  What does he witness?  (p. 224)