Blog Series on Romanticism #4: America

Romanticism, a cultural movement that primarily emerged within the context of Europe, eventually came to exert a strong and influential effect on the culture of America as well. The purpose of the present part of this series of Romanticism is to discuss Romanticism within America. One key point that will emerge here is that there were two dimensions to Romanticism over here: there were the earlier, darker Romantics, and then there were the later, brighter Romantics. This essay will consider five key works of American Romanticism. These will be: one, "The Tell-Tale Heart," by Poe; two, The Scarlet Letter, by Hawthorne; three, Moby Dick, by Melville; four, Walden, by Thoreau; and five, "Song of Myself," by Whitman.  

Poe: "The Tell-Tale Heart"

Poe was veritably obsessed with the dark side of the Romantic ethos, as is made clear by his exploration of madness and altered states of consciousness. Indeed, Poe has often been classified as part of the subgenre that some have identified as Dark Romanticism, which is characterized by exactly such an obsession with the seedier side of human nature (see Thompson). In a way, this focus follows naturally from the very nature of the Romantic project itself. Romanticism seeks to explore the depths of the subjective human soul; and that soul contains a complex admixture of darkness and light. From the perspective of pure reason, the darkness is to be avoided; but from the perspective of Romanticism, the most profound insights of the human condition are precisely to be found in the midst of that darkness. A Dark Romantic such as Poe responds against rationality in an almost violent way and is drawn to the non-rational parts of human consciousness, like a moth to flames.  

Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is told from the first-person perspective of a psychologically unstable man. The narrator claims to have murdered and chopped up an older man on the grounds that he was being disturbed by the beating of the old man's heart. Now, objectively speaking, one can assume that the narrator had some kind of anxiety problem, and he was probably just hearing the thumping of his own heart; but the story is told from the narrator's subjective perspective, and this is not how he sees the matter. Eventually, when the police show up, they find nothing wrong whatsoever with the narrator and simply engage in banter with him. This represents another clash between the objective and subjective worlds: the police represent objective society, whereas the narrator's madness represents the subjective soul. Eventually the narrator confesses, bringing the drama and conflict to an end. This deep exploration of a psyche at the edge of madness, and the conflicts between that psyche and the objective world, is characteristic of the dark side of Romanticism.   

Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter focuses on the story of a woman who is condemned by her Puritan community for having committed adultery and as punishment is forced to wear the letter "A" (for adulteress) on her dress. The woman herself, however, finds herself to be relatively blameless; or in any event, she does not believe that the narrow-minded Puritans of her community have the right to condemn her in the way that they have. The woman withdraws from the community and begins to develop her own ideas regarding the nature of sin and faith; and she eventually concludes with her lover that whatever sin they have committed has already been paid for, and that it will not keep them from passing through the doors of Heaven. This conflict between a strong and radical individuality and a weak and conformist society is a characteristic theme of much of Romantic literature. 

Hawthorne, like, Poe, has often been associated with Dark Romanticism. Nelson has explained this in the following way: "Through the . . . belief in the wisdom and refuge that can be found in untainted people and places, and the rejection of traditional law in favor of a moral code of honor, Nathaniel Hawthorne embeds many Romantic ideals into the pages of The Scarlet Letter. As a result, this novel embodies the restlessness, imagination, and ingenuity of this group of writers in the nineteenth century" (paragraph 5). The darkness in Hawthorne comes not from his protagonist herself—who has a very pure heart—but rather from the society in which she lives, and the conflicts and tragedies that almost inevitably result between the one and the other. One of Hawthorne's basic points would seem to be that in a society filled with darkness, an individual filled with light is an inherently antagonistic being, insofar as she insists (like his protagonist) on staying true to herself.

Moreover, the quoted passage above calls attention to the fact that it is not only the reason of the Enlightenment that the Romantics radically opposed, but also the industrial society that was increasingly being produced by adherence to that reason. In the Romantic vision, there is purity to be found in Nature and in less urbanized spaces, whereas the spaces that have been touched by the Industrial Revolution and especially by the hegemony of money have become morally corrupted and out of touch with the natural law of the soul. In Hawthorne's novel, this contrast is made clear in the juxtaposition between the city and the forest, and the way in which the forest tends to offer a kind of reprieve from the moral tyranny of the city. This also sheds further light on why the Romantics were so vehemently opposed to the standards of the emerging industrialized society of their day and age. It was not just because of the immediate aesthetic appeal of revolt. Rather, it was because of the moral perception that industrial society was corrupting the individual soul and oppressing the power of subjectivity.  '

Melville: Moby Dick

Everyone probably knows that Melville's grand novel Moby Dick is about a man, Ahab, who is obsessed with a whale; indeed, when it was first published, the book was simply known as The Whale. It would be impossible to discuss this novel at length within the space available here. Suffice to say that Melville's work contains what are some of the most beautiful descriptions of Nature—and especially the ocean—in all of American literature. Moreover, regarding the Romanticism of this work, it will be effective to simply quote Thomson on this matter: he has written of "Ahab's unyielding Romantic imagination—an imagination that will not be obstructed or overshadowed by the gross disorder and catastrophic face of nature. Ahab's passionate idealism is an extension of Shelley's powerful imagination, an obsessive energy that broadens and surpasses Classical and Christian idealism" (3). Melville has also been called a Dark Romantic, insofar as his protagonist's passion verges on madness and increasingly turns into a kind of tragedy. 

Thoreau: Walden

Thoreau was part of the movement known as Transcendentalism, which can be understood as an American form of Romanticism. The difference from the Dark Romanticism of the American writers who have been discussed above is immediately evident in the mind of Thoreau, which is characterized not by the passionate turmoil of the ambivalent soul but rather by the search for tranquility and communion with a higher power. Thoreau's key work Walden is the account of the author living away from society in a cabin in the woods, on the grounds of his belief that this would enable him to discover truths about himself and about human nature that are completely obscured by life within society. This opposition to society is, of course, a key aspect of Romanticism in general, and it can clearly be found in Thoreau's work. 

The Romantic impulse that animated Thoreau's project can, if anything, only be felt ever more strongly today, within the context of our hyper-industrialized and ever-accelerating late modern society. As Updike has put the matter: "In a time of informational overload, of clamorously inane electronic entertainment, and of a fraught, globally challenged, ever more demanding workplace, the urge to build a cabin in the woods and this reform, simplify, and cleanse one's life . . . remains strong" (paragraph 2). It would be easy to denigrate Thoreau's experiment in Walden on the grounds that he was after all not all that far from civilization (he lived on his fellow Transcendentalist Emerson's land), and that he thus tended to romanticize the ferocity of Nature from a vantage point of relative safety. Nevertheless, it would be difficult, from a Romantic perspective, to not respect and admire the sheer individual will made evident in the desire to get away from society in order to better understand oneself. Moreover, Thoreau's conclusions in this regard were highly optimistic, giving readers reason to believe that much of the darkness of the human condition comes from society and not from Nature herself. 

Whitman: "Song of Myself"

Whitman, like Thoreau, was a Transcendentalist; and his poetry is virtually filled to the brim with the natural splendor of the world and the self when not oppressed by the social powers that be. It would be difficult, for example, to imagine a more thorough and radical affirmation of the subjective self than the one that can be found at the beginning of Whitman's poet "Song of Myself": "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. / I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass" (21). This is a picture of the self in serene repose within itself, having virtually no concern for the external world, having even risen above the level of feeling antagonism toward the external world. 

It is worth pointing out here that in general, Whitman's vision—like those of his fellow Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau—tends to go beyond the alienation of the individual mind from the world around it in order to rise to a level at which the individual mind is in communion with all of reality. This can imply a revolt against society, but only insofar as society itself is a corruption that prevents the individual mind from communing with reality. The vision of Whitman, for instance, is worlds away from the vision of Poe, even as both are Romantics who are obsessed with the individual subjective soul. For Poe, this subjectivity takes the form of torment, with madness being its most characteristic manifestation: a madness that essentially seals his protagonists away within the winding labyrinths of their own minds. For Whitman, on the other hand, the characteristic manifestation of the individual soul is celebration, as it perceives its communion with other souls and with all of reality. One could call this optimistic. But seen from another angle, it could also be understood as a capture of the true Romantic ideal, according to which the plunge into the darkness of the soul is meant to be not as an end in and of itself, but rather merely a necessary prelude to the apprehension of a higher form of uncorrupted existential truth.  

Conclusion 

In summary, this essay has consisted of a discussion of Romanticism within America. And in particular, attention has been dedicated to the fact writers in America captured both the dark side and the bright side of Romanticism with tremendous insight and detail. The darkness inherent in Romanticism will be explored further later. The next post in the present blog series, though, will turn away from literature and focus instead on Romanticism and music.

Works Cited 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Penguin, 2015. Print. 

Nelson, Maggie. "In the Time of the Dark Romantics: An Analysis of The Scarlet Letter and its Relation to American Romanticism." Online Writing Portfolio. 13 Jan. 2008. Web. 21 Jun. 2016. <https://maggienelson2.wordpress.com/2008/01/13/in-the-time-of-the-dark-romantics-an-analysis-of-the-scarlet-letter-and-its-relation-to-american-romanticism-before/>.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Essential Tales and Poems. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004. Print. 

Thompson, G.R. Gothic Imagination: Essays on Dark Romanticism. Pullman, WA: Washington State U P, 1974. Print. 

Thomson, Shawn. The Romantic Architecture of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson U P, 2001. Print. 

Updike, John. "A Sage for All Seasons." Guardian. 25 Jun. 2004. Web. 21 Jun. 2016. <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/26/classics>. 

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: The Deathbed Edition. New York: Book of the Month Club, 1992. Print.