Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe were contemporaries, who were both born at the beginning of the 19th century. If you are acquainted with literary themes and read a selection of the short stories of the two authors you will find easily a common denominator which connects both authors, namely the Gothic. As someone who appreciates literature it is impossible not to be fascinated by the gloomy atmosphere that each of the short stories transmits. Nevertheless, after thoroughly analyzing the short story Young Goodman Brown by Edgar Allan Poe and two tales by Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat,and consulting secondary literature I realized that each author has established their own individual Gothic legacy. Nathaniel Hawthorne can be regarded as one of the founding fathers of a typical American Gothic fiction: One that was concerned with the establishment of a nation, which was based on religious beliefs. He revolutionized the typical Gothic setting by replacing the European Gothic scenery, such as castles and monasteries, with the uncultivated American wilderness. Furthermore he redefined one of the original goals of European Gothic literature from the 18th century, namely to criticize Catholicism, as a means to question the religious self-righteousness of the Puritans, one of the first European settler groups in America. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s characters were punished for the crime of religious hypocrisy and cruelty against dissident people with frightening supernatural occurrences, but he never challenged the validity of religion in general. Edgar Allan Poe by contrast created a typical form of secular and ahistorical Gothic, which kept the European Gothic setting, but shifted its focus from the terror of the righteousness of a certain belief system and the resulting violent treatment of nonbelievers to a Freudian emphasis on the power of the subconscious. Instead of focusing on religious hypocrisy and bigotry as a source for malice and evil he focused on a human being’s psyche as an entity, at which core lie dark and sinister wishes, which are represented in his tales with Gothic terror. His characters were tormented by their repressed wishes such as sadism and incest, which came to the surface through drug abuse and expressed themselves in the gloominess of their mind, gruesome behavior and inexplicable supernatural occurrences. Furthermore in most of Poe’s religious imagery is used in a Gothic way in order to undermine the truth claim of religion and depict it as a mere irrational anxiety of the soul.
In order to prove my point I’m going to outline in the first part of my essay the Anti-Catholicism which was the key motivation for 18th century European Gothic novels: Namely as a reaction to the age of rationalism, which questioned religious beliefs and as criticism of the evil doings of the Catholic Church.
In the second part of my essay I will apply this knowledge to Hawthorne’s and Poe’s fiction by showing their deviations from 18th century European Gothic literature: Hawthorne’s re-appliance of the gloomy characteristic of the European Gothic setting to the wild American landscape and his reinterpretation of the Gothic anti-catholic agenda as a means to criticize Puritan doctrine by using example passages from his story Young Goodman Brown. Equally I will illustrate the way Poe alienated his Gothic tales from the aim of religious criticism and how he translated the Freudian concept of an innate, subconsciously driven malice into an imaginary Gothic lifeworld in his short stories The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat.
It is important to understand that there were different reasons for the occurrence of the first European Gothic literature and that they laid in the societal circumstances of the 18th century. One of its purposes of this literary form was to reconnect the audience with the supernatural, because the enlightenment period advocated rationalism and empiricism as the supreme ideological paradigms (Stevens 10). Rationalism and the important role that the Catholic Church played were in direct opposition to each other, and enlightenment challenged the validity of religious belief (19). That is why the Gothic represented an alternative interpretation of the world: The growth of rationalism and empiricism led to a decrease in respect for religious experience and gothic fiction re-established the relationship between characters and the audience and the supernatural without demanding the status of objective truth like religion did ( 22).
However, Gothic literature did not only function as a substitute for Catholic religious experience, moreover - and more important for my analysis - it also criticized the Catholic church by writing about the hypocrisy and terrible proceedings within the Catholic Church, which the Catholic Church tried to conceal. Catholics were regarded as immoral and it was believed that confession and celibacy encouraged moral hypocrisy( Graham 41). Protestants saw a major flaw in the Catholic confession: People were encouraged to do immoral things, because all they had to do to be forgiven is to tell them a Priest (41). Celibacy was viewed as a unnatural practice, which led Priests to be extremely cruel towards people, who they regarded as false teachers (40). Stevens explains how this criticism of Catholic doctrine was revisited in 18th century Gothic fiction. Gothic literature tried to represent the darker aspects of the Catholic Church: repressive doctrine, which encouraged hypocrisy and religious bigotry, that lead to the inhuman and unjust treatment of non-believers in the inquisition and stood in direct contrast to the biblical notion of charity (22). Therefore a lot of the first Gothic novels were situated within a typical Catholic setting, namely within “heavy stone walls of medieval cathedrals, castles and monasteries” ( Graham 9), which enveloped the reader with an atmosphere of terror and gloom.
This raises the question what Nathaniel Hawthorne had in common and what separated him from the critical outlook on Catholicism of the Gothic writers in the 18th century.
First of all it is important to note that he wasn’t concerned about Catholicism, because he grew up in a different religious setting. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace was in Salem, Massachusetts and his forefathers were Puritans, of which one worked as a magistrate in the Salem witch trials ( Baym 1272). The Puritans had just like the Catholic Church a self-righteous doctrine. They believed that they were “God’s chosen people” and that their new homestead America was a “New Jerusalem” ( Graham 61). The conviction that they alone followed the true path to God made them discriminate and act violently against other religious groups, such as the Quakers ( Graham 61). They also tried to convert the heathen Indians to the “right belief” and if this didn’t work, they decided to massacre them brutally, for instance by setting Indian villages on fire and shooting the escaping fugitives ( Vaughan 144). This persecution of people of another faith resembles the Catholic torture of dissident people in the Inquisition. Furthermore their bible teaching of forgiveness of sins and salvation encouraged hypocrisy and unfairness. Their concept of God was that he was sovereign and that he chose certain Puritan people to be eternally salvaged independent from their personal merit ( Graham 62). The author calls this the “covenant of grace”, which didn’t require any personal effort and permitted sinning, as opposed to the “covenant of works”, which demanded people to always conduct themselves in a pious and biblical manner (62).
I will now show in detail how Nathaniel Hawthorne reflected this criticism of the Puritan doctrine in his tales and dramatized them by means of Gothic terror.
First of all Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tales often include violent historical events of the Puritan history, such as the discrimination and brutality of the Puritans against the Quakers ( 61). Young Goodman Brown for instance includes thewhipping of a Quaker woman and the ignition of an Indian village ( Baym 1290). His tales never lost their historical resonance and their terror was always connected to the Puritan doctrine, which he perceived as injust and brutal. However, Nathaniel Hawthorne wasn’t a historian and therefore didn’t lose himself in filling pages tracts about Puritan hypocrisy. He was an author, whose goal wasn’t only to inform the reader about the Puritans crimes, but also to provide a good read. That is why he expressed his criticism of the Puritan hypocrisy and brutality by means of a haunting wilderness and Puritan characters, who were attached to supernatural devious powers in their secret lives.
I have already pointed out earlier in my essay that a lot of the European Gothic novels of the 18th century were situated in gloomy monasteries and castles. This was due to the brutality of the inquisition, which was mainly confined to the inside. However, buildings like this didn’t exist at that time in America. A lot of the religious beliefs, that the Puritans opposed, were connected to nature, such as the natural religions of the Native Indians. Furthermore a lot of the persecution against people of other religions took place in nature, such as the burning of Indian villages. This is why Graham observes that “...commonplace things like nature assume an evil countenance and become active players on the side of the devil” in Hawthorne’s short stories (20). Lloyd- Smith calls the usage of nature as a Gothic agent “Gothic realism”, which takes advantage of “the resources of the wilderness and the primitive emotions of the rough settlers for its effect” (113).
This can be best seen in Young Goodman Brown, in which the forest takes a double role: that of the haunted, which symbolizes the Puritan’s fear of the Indians and that of the haunter, who punished Young Goodman Brown for his blindness towards the crimes committed by Puritans. Young Goodman Brown leaves his wife Faith at a late hour at night in order to meet up with the devil and his congregation ( Baym 1289). In order to do so he has to pass through a dark and gloomy forest with “innumerable trunks” and “thick boughs overhead” so that “the traveller knows not who may be concealed” by it (1289). The forest is inscrutable and gloomy, it is almost impossible to make out if somebody hides behind the bushes, yet Young Goodman Brown fears that “there may be a devilish Indian behind every tree” (1289). The presence of Indians is implied because the forest is filled with terrifying sounds, such as the “howling of wild beasts” and the “yell of Indians” (1294). The forest is connected to the Puritans primeval fear of Indians and their witchcraft, which expresses itself through the gloomy atmosphere and Young Goodman Brown’s sensual impression that the forest is peopled by Indians, the enemy image of Puritans. Furthermore the forest is also assigned human characteristics , which terrifies Young Goodman Brown. He perceives the noises of nature as the sounds of a spirit, which haunts him and covers him in mental anguish:
The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. (1294)
Nathaniel Hawthorne wanted to insinuate that nature actively torments Young Goodman Brown by adapting the supernatural power of laughing at him.This has to be analyzed as Hawthorne’s fictional code to represent his criticism of Puritan hypocrisy concerning other religions.The forest is a natural space which is connected to the Indians and their witchcraft, which was regarded as evil by the Puritans. Yet, Young Goodman Brown follows a belief system that was responsible for harsh persecution of dissident people, which often times took place in the wilderness, such as the burning of Indian villages(1290). He never understood before that the Puritans were just as evil as the people they condemned, which is symbolized by the wind that sounds “like a distant church bell” (1294). The forest haunts Young Goodman Brown with terrifying noises for his inability to recognize the Puritan hypocrisy towards other religions, which originated in the belief that they were God’s chosen people and consequently were allowed to enforce their belief on others.
Nathaniel Hawthorne expanded his Gothic criticism of the Puritan teaching to the hypocrisy that they displayed among each other. There were Puritan people who pretended to lead a pious life in front of their brethren and hid their evil deeds from them. Goody Cloyse for example was one of the Puritan church people who led a secret double life. Young Goodman Brown is surprised that he would find her at such a late hour in the forest, because she is the woman who advices him in biblical questions and told him everything about catechism (1291). Yet, she goes to the devil’s meeting, where the devil reveals that all the attending Puritans, who were respected church people, are guilty of committing sins in secret, like lust and murder (1296).
The duplicity of Puritan pretenders is connected in “Young Goodman Brown” to their involvement in supernatural and uncanny powers, which can be seen in Martha Carrier’s case, “who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell (1296).” Goody Cloyse is also an accomplice of the devil, because she uses his magic staff to travel faster in time ( 1292). This peaks in the multilayeredness of the devil’s character in Young Goodman Brown. While it is quite obvious that Young Goodman Brown’s nightly companion has to be the devil - which can be seen among other things by his serpent like staff (1290) - Goody Cloyse also addresses the devil as Young Goodman’s Brown grandfather, who whipped a Quaker woman (1290). The fact that his grandfather is now represented by the darkest of all powers, the devil, exemplifies Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Gothic criticism of puritanism: He dramatized his objections against Puritan factitiousness by connecting respectable Puritan figures to dark supernatural powers, which enable people to do horrible things to their fellow men in the name of God.
Nathaniel Hawthorne extends his criticism to the Puritans who were easily impressed by their allegedly godly role models. Young Goodman Brown belongs in this category. Unlike his religious role models, who actively partake in supernatural occurrences, he only witnesses them and is tormented by them , which makes him pass away surrounded by “gloom” (1298). His main fault, which leads to his demise, is that he bases his religious belief and salvation on spiritual role models, whose piety could supposedly save him. He allows himself to sin just this once and thinks that he can be godly again afterwards by imitating other Puritans. This is exemplified when he utters about his wife Faith: “(....) after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven (1289).” He considers these heroes as infallible and so holy that he would never expect that they would also come to the forest and partake in the devil’s congregation, for instance his minister and deacon Gookin (1293). He is very surprised when the devil reveals that they have participated in the most hideous crimes (1296). When his wife Faith finally leaves him and transcends to heaven, he surrenders: “There is no good on earth; and sin but a name. Come, devil! for to thee is this world given” (1294). Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Gothic portrayal of Puritan interpersonal hypocrisy refers back to the problematic Puritan belief that one could never be sure if the gift of salvation was given to you or if you have to earn it by leading a godly life. Human beings in general aren’t able to abstain from evil all together though. In the Puritan context that automatically entailed hypocrisy because one had to keep up appearances.
What this all amounts to is that Gothic terror in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction is always the result of religious hypocrisy. He reapplied the agenda of 18th century European Gothic fiction, to present the terror of hypocrisy and the inquisition, to the Puritan belief system. However, Hawthorne never disassociates himself from religion all together, at their very essence his stories can be read as Gothic morality tales. It is impossible not to detect Hawthorne’s strong appeal to the reader to be honest about one’s iniquities, not to pretend a holiness that can’t be combined with personal actions and not to build personal faith upon religious leaders. This is why Hawthorne’s literature can be regarded as American nationalistic literature. Hawthorne was a child of his time who writes about the struggles of a young nation, which was found by religious groups which sought freedom in this land and automatically clashed because of their different beliefs. The type of Gothic literature that he developed isn’t futuristic, but one that points back in time and is closely related to American history.
After analyzing the way in which Nathaniel Hawthorne developed a typical style of American Gothic based on the hypocrisy of the Puritan belief system, I am now going to put my focus on Edgar Allan Poe and will illustrate in which way he deviated from the original aim of 18th century Gothic literature, namely to criticize religion and how he established his own secular style of Gothic literature, which took a critical stance on religion in general and drew some of its basic ideas from the school of psychoanalysis.
Poe’s non-religious approach to Gothic literature can be best seen in his own statement: “If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is (...) of the soul ( qtd. in Fisher 84).” Poe revealed with that statement his intention to use Gothic terror as a symbol for the dark urges of the human soul, rather than as a result of religious hypocrisy like in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiction. Furthermore Hoffman points out that Poe even challenged the authority of religion in general: “ Poe's further sin is in denying the validity of any religion, any resurrection, any saving spiritual grace...“ (323). Arguably Poe denied the validity of any religion by deconstructing it as an expression of the soul’s anguish. Poe achieved this for instance by giving gloomy religious imagery the same significance as sombre superstitious symbols. The narrator in The Black Cat for instance is convinced that he will be internally doomed by God because of his malice (Baym 1594), which is a religious thought. His wife on the other hand is familiar with the superstitious thought that black cats are witches (1593) and her husband starts believing in the supernatural power of the second black cat when he sees the shape of the gallows emerging on its breast. (1596). He is filled with fear of the cat and feels haunted by it (1596), because he believes that it will punish him for what he did to its conspecific (1597). He attaches supernatural powers to the cat and even calls it a “monster” (1599), which is superstition at its best. His demise can be rationally explained, namely because he accidently walled up the meowing cat (1599), which signifies that religious belief of a punishing God as well as superstitious thoughts of black cats were both irrational. Religion and superstition are both irrational inventions of a tormented soul who expects to be punished for its dark urges. This fear expresses itself in gloomy religious and superstitious imagery.
The viewpoint that religion is only an expression of mental fear also becomes clear in the Fall of the House of Usher, in which the biblical image of resurrection, which normally stands for hope, is turned into a Gothic symbol. Lady Madeleine’s return from the grave touches on the biblical hope of the resurrection of the dead. However, the image is corrupted. Christians are supposed to be reborn with a new and wholesome body ( New King James Version, 1. Corinthians 15:44) whereas Madeleine is still is in her old body and even injured. She only leaves her tomb in order to carry her brother off into death with her (Baym 1565). The purity of this biblical image is destroyed, it is turned into a gory Gothic symbol, which dismisses any kind of belief in resurrection. The reason is because in The Fall of the House of Usher this belief is only grounded in the fear to be haunted or punished for the dark urges of the soul. Usher already anticipates Madeleine’s return from the grave and predicts that she will punish him for burying her alive: “ Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste?”(1565) He says that he heard her moving in the coffin for many days and that he heard her “first feeble movements” (1565). This is hard to believe as the vault is so deep and secluded (1561). This refers back to the narrator’s observation that Usher “was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted” (1556). In the end his fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because he becomes “a victim to the terrors he had dreaded” (1565). Poe psychologizes religion and therefore indirectly “denies the validity of any religion”( Hoffman 323). Instead of the authors of 18th Century European novels and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who criticized religious hypocrisy without leaving the system of faith, Poe deconstructed religion from a psychoanalytical viewpoint. Poe reduces religion to a sole neurosis of the soul’s anxiety. This concurs with the Freudian thought that religion didn’t represent an outward reality, but that it was an expression of underlying psychological neuroses and distress ( Cherry).
The thematic similarities between Poe and Freud go beyond religion. Sigmund Freud’s most important finding was that the human being and his behavior are driven by his subconscious, which is a more dominant force than the conscious self ( Stevens 102) According to Stevens this extreme power of the subconscious causes emotional intensity and abnormal behavioral patterns and also expresses itself in dreams(102). Freud also believed that the subconscious is filled with dark urges like the sex drives, which society tries to suppress ( Stevens 102). Lloyd- Smith suggests how this thoughts are reflected in Poe’s tales: “Poe’s great contribution to psychological acuity lies (...) in his assumption of a spirit of perversity” (114). The author points out that Poe’s characters don’t act in their best interest (114).” What he means by that is that the evil and bad has an inexplicable appeal to Poe’s character, which they can’t fathom, but still have to follow. His characters were troubled with their subconscious, which tortured them with dark urges and wishes.
This leads to the question what this perverseness of the human soul actually consists of. What all of Poe’s characters throughout his tales have in common is that they all have wishes and desires that are connected with a taboo and repressed by society. In The Fall of the House of Usher there are several hints throughout the whole story that Usher might have a secret desire for incest with his sister. It is remarked that “the entire family lay in the direct line of descent” (Baym 1554), which indicates that family members have only married each other in the history of the Ushers. As the story progresses the reader also finds out that there were always feelings between Usher and his sister Madeleine, which were hard to understand for outsiders (1561). The reader’s suspicion that Usher may indeed have an illicit sexual relationship with his sister is strengthened by the implicit way they die: Madeleine falls upon Usher and they both die instantly (1565). The fact that his desire isn’t accepted by society and has always been prohibited in all cultures is shown when the protagonist and Usher bury Madeleine in a vault which is difficult to access because of its depth and darkness (1561). It is directly underneath the protagonist’s bedroom (1561) and the night after the funeral he is anguished by an “incubus”( 1562), which is a demon that causes nightmares. Madeleine was buried alive ( 1565) and Usher’s and therefore the protagonist’s repressed desire for incest does still exist and haunts him in form of a nightmare and finally with Madeleine’s resurrection from the grave ( 1565). The woman appears ghostlike, because she is described as “lofty” and she has “blood upon her white robes“ ( 1565). The protagonist’s repressed wishes haunt him in form of Gothic terror.
Another dark desire of the human soul is the inexplicable love for malice. The narrator of The Black Cat admits that he has a “spirit of perverseness” (1594) which drives him to cruelty towards his cat:
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such. (1594)
He enjoys cutting out the eye of his first cat and killing his wife, because his own depravity pleases him. He hasn’t got any supposedly moral reason for walling up his wife’s dead body in the cellar other than finding a good hiding place for the corpse ( 1597). He even remarks that the “monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims” as well (1597). The difference between him and them is that they were driven by religious bigotry - just like the objectionable deeds by Puritans in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tales were caused by religious righteousness- but he does it because he egoistically follows the pleasure principle: He pleases himself by being cruel and tries to avoid personal consequences by hiding the dead body. It is theoretically still possible to excuse the evil deeds by the Puritans, because they were narrow-minded and they thought that God gave them the mission to do so. Poe’s character on the contrary give themselves the permission to do evil things in order to please himself. They are either acquainted with drugs or they take drugs. The narrator in The Fall of the House of Usher for instance compares the view of the gloomy and supernatural mansion to “the after-dream of the reveller upon opium (1553).” That shows that he must have taken drugs at some point in his life and that it stimulates his Gothic imagination. The sadism of the protagonist in The Black Cat is triggered by alcoholism (1594). Poe’s characters all pleased themselves by taking chemical substances, which enables them to bring out and enjoy their dark and sinister wishes. Poe himself even finds an aesthetic beauty in the demise of women in his tales. He famously stated that “the death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world”( qtd. in Kennedy 67). This is reflected in the narrator of The Fall of the House of Usher when he speaks of the beauty of the deceased, who has “ a faint blush” and “a lingering smile” on her face ( Baym 1561). That shows that he is appalled and attracted at the same time by the terrible proceedings in the house. Poe celebrates evil as something which is destructive but pleasant at the same time. His tales lack the moral advice of Hawthorne’s short stories.
His focus on the innate darkness of the human soul, which was appalling and attractive at the same time, is also why he used in most of his short stories an European Gothic setting such as castles, graveyards and tombs, even though he was like Hawthorne an American author: “Poe, for the most part, however, turned his back on specifically American settings and user, rather, a quasi- European setting for his Gothic tales” ( Lloyd. Smith 113). Poe used the typical European Gothic stock elements of haunted mansions, graveyards and tombs, because there was no need for him to change it. His goal was to express his general observations that he made about human beings, no matter in which part of the world they lived or which religion they followed. Griffithsuggests that he made these typical buildings “suggestive” of the human mind itself (128), that means that gloomy Gothic setting and supernatural occurrences were only a symbol of the terror of the human mind and its repressed wishes. Lloyd- Smith adds that he separated this setting “ from social and historical resonance”(113). Unlike Hawthorne’ stories, which can be described as Gothic realism (Lloyd- Smith 113), Poe’s Gothic tales took a non-historical and philosophical approach.
The usage of the European Gothic setting as a mere symbol for the darkness of the human mind can be best seen in The Fall of the House of Usher. The house itself actually resembles a human head, because it has “vacant eye-like windows” ( Norton 1838). It is a ghastly house with “bleak walls” and is surrounded by “decayed trees” (1838). The fact that after entering the house the interior brings back memories of his childhood to the narrator and that he speaks of “our books” (1555) makes the reader suspect that Usher is really only a projection of the protagonist’s dark desires and that the gloomy house is only a symbol for the narrators own troubled psychic state This can be further seen in the fact that even the narrator himself suspects, that the gloomy appearance of the house is only an imagination of his mind.
I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity-- an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. (1554)
If the Gothic appearance of the house is only a product of the protagonist fantasy, it is sensible to conclude that the whole house is only an invention of his mind. The whole existence of the house is based on its Gothic appearance and therefore it also vanishes if the gloominess isn’t a proven fact anymore. Therefore the whole story can be read as a journey of the narrator into the darkness of his own soul, which is symbolized by the Gothic appearance of the house. This is also mirrored in Roderick Usher, who has “ (...)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.” (1557)This shows again that the Gothic appearance of the house and its gloomy interior, for instance the “ebon blackness of the floors” (1555) is only a reflection of Usher’s and consequently the narrator’s dark state of mind, rather than a physical reality. It becomes quite clear now why it wasn’t necessary for Poe to americanize the Gothic setting like Hawthorne did. He used the European seeming gloomy mansion as an expression of the narrator’s troubled soul, who isn’t attached to a certain time in history, but could be anybody in the world at any given time.
I have shown in this research paper that although Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe were fellow country men and contemporaries, their achievement and contribution to Gothic fiction was totally different. Nathaniel Hawthorne managed to detach his fiction from the typical European Gothic architecture such as monasteries and castles, in which crimes in the name of Catholic belief were committed. Instead he successfully managed to find the gloomy and frightening atmosphere of these buildings in the uncultivated American landscape, because he used the wilderness as a Gothic agent who could echo the Puritan fear of the other religions and haunt its characters for the crime of religious hypocrisy.
He kept the original agenda of Gothic literature to criticize religious bigotry and cruelty, but he totally customized it to the Puritan belief system. He manages to convey the problems of the Puritan doctrine in a nutshell, without giving lengthy explanations of “the covenant of works”, “the covenant of grace” and the Puritan’s conviction that they were God’s chosen people.
Poe on the contrary chose not to place his tales within an American setting, but instead to leave the Gothic buildings of the European lifeworld unchanged. Nevertheless his Gothic short stories strongly differed from 18th century European Gothic fiction. He detached the setting from it’s original purpose- to criticize Catholicism- and internalized it as a symbol for the darkness of the human mind. He dramatized to a considerable degree some of the concepts Freud established as the fundamentals of modern psychoanalysis. Besides, he deconstructed religion as a mere anxiety to be punished for the dark desires within the human soul. His tales didn’t contain any moral advice, rather they were a celebration of the beauty and appeal that lies within terror and the evil. Edgar Allan Poe’s great Gothic achievement lay in the foundation of psychoanalytical Gothic stories, which can be enjoyed and be put aside afterwards without being morally shaken up. He founded a new branch of Gothic literature, but took away some of the sobriety, which was typical for Gothic fiction that criticized religion. Some critics have accused him of being repetitive and not original enough, but he wasn’t less inventive than Nathaniel Hawthorne. My research paper has shown how important it is not to lump together authors, even though they seem to have so much in common in the foreground.
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