American Romanticism

American Romanticism 1836-1865

Abandon traditional authority Emphasis on creative imagination Nature ranks superior to civilization Rely on intuition over rational calculation Emphasis on the individual and subjective experience Commitment to revealing the “marvellous” in personal and ordinary acts as part of democratic art.

Preface to The House of the Seven Gables 1851 “When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of

man’s experience. The former—while, as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart—has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights

and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the Public. He can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if he disregard this caution.”

Allegory We can understand Hawthorne’s style as using romantic allegory wherein relationships are infused with extended comparisons in order to bring the reader (through imagination) to a greater significance beyond the literal context of the narrative. In “The Birth-Mark,” hands operate as an allegorical emblem, an object with symbolic significance made known by its various qualities and the role it plays in the story.

“The Birth-Mark” 1843 “In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy.”

Sound familiar? “The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over Nature.”

"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection."

“ Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand.”

Allegorical emblem The birth mark’s a “charm,” “a fairy sign-manual,” “a crimson stain upon the snow,” “the Bloody Hand,” “this mimic hand,” “the Crimson hand,” “firm gripe of this little Hand” He handled physical details, as if there were nothing beyond them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from materialism, by his strong and eager aspiration towards the infinite. In his grasp, the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul” “beyond his reach.”

“He rushed towards her, and seized her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.” “you have rejected the best that earth could offer.” In the story’s sexual politics, neurotic obsession and megalomania are presented as “love.”

“Purloined Letter” 1844 Poe makes the scientific style opaque in his use of ratiocination and narrative techniques such as foreshadowing and flashback. In the deductive practice, “manner becomes matter.” C. Auguste Dupin becomes the first private detective in literature. Part of romanticism’s emphasis on the individual, imagination and looking beyond appearances.

“ ‘If it is any point requiring reflection,’ observed Dupin, as he forebore to enkindle the wick, ‘we shall examine it better in the dark.’” “ ‘The material world,’ continued Dupin, abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as establish a description.”

Poe uses the anecdote about the 8 year-old boy and the map puzzle game as metaphor to explain and flesh out his process of deduction. “ ‘But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D--; upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose”

“Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” 1853 Franklin’s conception of cultivating morality through the marketplace collapses. Mike Judge’s Office Space owes a huge debt to Melville. Check out Bartleby (2001). Melville’s style depends upon the point of view of an unreliable narrator whose perceptions and interpretations do not coincide with the author’s. Ambiguity and alienation punctuate his style.

“All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man. The late John Jacob Astor, a personage little given to poetic enthusiasm, had no hesitation in pronouncing my first grand point to be prudence; my next, method. I do not speak it in vanity, but simply to record the fact, that I was not unemployed in my profession by the late John Jacob Astor; a name which, I admit, I love to repeat, for it hath a rounded and orbicular sound to it, and rings like unto bullion.”

“deficient in what landscape painters call ‘life.’” “In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes.” “resembled a huge square cistern.”

The lawyer doesn’t acknowledge that the reason Turkey’s work suffers in the afternoon is because the employee drinks during the lunch hour, hence the red face, “reckless activity,” and who was suddenly “slightly rash with his tongue.” “He was a man whom prosperity harmed.”

The lawyer says that Nippers “could never get his table to suit him. The angle either “stopped the circulation in his arms” or produced “a sore and aching in his back.” From his perspective, “Nippers knew not what he wanted.”

“Though concerning the self-indulgent habits of Turkey I had my own private surmises, yet touching Nippers I was well persuaded that whatever might be his faults in other respects, he was, at least, a temperate young man. But indeed, nature herself seemed to have been his vintner, and at his birth charged him so thoroughly with an irritable, brandy-like disposition, that all subsequent potations were needless.”

“their fits relieved each other like guards” Bartleby’s hired as we’re told he’s a “motionless young man,” “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!” The lawyer puts him in the corner “so as to have this quiet man within easy call, in case any trifling thing was to be done.” “I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight, though not remove him from my voice.”

“he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and candle-light. I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. But he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically.”

“It is a very dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair. I can readily imagine that to some sanguine temperaments it would be altogether intolerable. For example, I cannot credit that the mettlesome poet Byron would have contentedly sat down with Bartleby to examine a law document of, say five hundred pages, closely written in a crimped hand.”

“expectancy of instant compliance.” “I would prefer not to.” Choice, favour, inclination, desire. “His face was leanly composed; his gray eye dimly calm. Not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him. Had there been the least uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner; in other words, had there been any thing ordinarily human about him, doubtless I should have violently dismissed him.”

Bartleby responds “mildly” and “in a flute-like tone.” “It is not seldom the case that when a man is browbeaten in some unprecedented and violently unreasonable way, he begins to stagger in his own plainest faith. He begins, as it were, vaguely to surmise that, wonderful as it may be, all the justice and all the reason is on the other side.”

“Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience.” “Like a very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage.”

“his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition.” “To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul be rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder.”

“Not only did there seem to lurk in it a calm disdain, but his perverseness seemed ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage and indulgence he had received from me.” “And I trembled to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and seriously affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper aberration might it not yet produce?”

Dead wall reveries and impaired vision “his eyes looked dull and glazed. Instantly it occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence in copying by his dim window for the first few weeks of his stay with me might have temporarily impaired his vision.” “he had now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a necklace, but afflictive to bear.”

The Other Two 1904 The marketplace and marriage. “As his door closed behind him he reflected that before he opened it again it would have admitted another man who had as much right to enter it as himself, and the thought filled him with a physical repugnance.”

“The lamplight struck a gleam from her bracelets and tipped her soft hair with brightness. How light and slender she was, and how each gesture flowed into the next! She seemed a creature all compact of harmonies. As the thought of Haskett receded, Waythorn felt himself yielding again to the joy of possessorship. They were his, those white hands with their flitting motions, his the light haze of hair, the lips and eyes. . .”

“For the moment his foremost thought was one of wonder at the way in which she had shed the phase of existence which her marriage with Haskett implied. It was as if her whole aspect, every gesture, every inflection, every allusion, were a studied negation of that period of her life. If she had denied being married to Haskett she could hardly have stood more convicted of duplicity than in this obliteration of the self which had been his wife.”

“‘I don't like the woman,’ Haskett was repeating with mild persistency. ‘She ain't straight, Mr. Waythorn -- she'll teach the child to be underhand. I've noticed a change in Lily -- she's too anxious to please -- and she don't always tell the truth. She used to be the straightest child, Mr. Waythorn –’ He broke off, his voice a little thick.”

“At first he had tried to cultivate the suspicion that Haskett might be "up to" something, that he had an object in securing a foothold in the house. But in his heart Waythorn was sure of Haskett's single-mindedness; he even guessed in the latter a mild contempt for such advantages as his relation with the Waythorns might offer. Haskett's sincerity of purpose made him invulnerable, and his successor had to accept him as a lien on the property.”

“Her pliancy was beginning to sicken him. Had she really no will of her own -- no theory about her relation to these men?” “With sudden vividness Waythorn saw how the instinct had developed. She was "as easy as an old shoe" -- a shoe that too many feet had worn. Her elasticity was the result of tension in too many different directions.”

“With grim irony Waythorn compared himself to a member of a syndicate. He held so many shares in his wife's personality and his predecessors were his partners in the business. If there had been any element of passion in the transaction he would have felt less deteriorated by it.”

“If he paid for each day's comfort with the small change of his illusions, he grew daily to value the comfort more and set less store upon the coin. He had drifted into a dulling propinquity with Haskett and Varick and he took refuge in the cheap revenge of satirizing the situation. “

He even began to reckon up the advantages which accrued from it, to ask himself if it were not better to own a third of a wife who knew how to make a man happy than a whole one who had lacked opportunity to acquire the art.”

American Romanticism