Tyler R. Tichelaar - The Gothic Wanderer: From Transgression to Redemption; Gothic Literature from 1794 - Present

Acknowledgments

This book began as my dissertation at Western Michigan University, so first I would like to thank my dissertation committee, Scott Dykstra, Jil Larson, and Dale Porter, for all the hours spent reading and commenting upon this work.

Next, I thank my publisher Victor Volkman of Modern History Press for suggesting the expansion of this study to the modern day treatments of the Gothic.

Thank you to Susan Siferd for all her moral support during the writing of the dissertation, and for the memories of a wonderful trip to England to present at the Edward Bulwer-Lytton conference and to lay flowers on Fanny Burneys grave.

I thank Irene Watson for helping me to reconsider this book as more than an academic, scholarly work, but one which can resonate with why the Gothic matters to us today.

Thank you to Diana Deluca for her many suggestions to make the argument more attractive to readers.

Thank you to Larry Alexander for suggestions of modern Gothic novels I might otherwise not have considered.

To my parents and brother, who did not understand but permitted my early desire to have a dusty bedroom so it would feel like a haunted house, my wearing plastic vampire teeth, or my constantly quoting lines from my record A Story of Dracula, The Wolfman, and Frankenstein.

Finally, to my literary ancestors, the great writers of the Gothic, especially:

Mrs. Radcliffe, Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Bram Stoker

My early and best teachers of what makes good writing.

Also by Tyler R. Tichelaar

The Marquette Trilogy

Iron Pioneers

The Queen City

Superior Heritage

More Historical Fiction

Narrow Lives

The Only Thing That Lasts

Nonfiction

My Marquette: Explore the Queen City of the North

Authors Access: 30 Success Secrets for Authors and Publishers

with Victor R. Volkman and Irene Watson

PART I

Creating the Gothic Wanderer

Chapter I The Gothic Wanderers Origins in the French Revolution

While a great deal of criticism has been written about wanderers in Romantic poetry, the Gothic wanderers distinct significance has been largely ignored. The Gothic wanderer, a contemporary figure to the Romantic wanderer, offers an equally important commentary upon the nineteenth centurys political and social concerns. Like the Romantic poets, the Gothic novelists adapted the figure of the wandering outcast from Miltons Paradise Lost to comment upon the French Revolution and its implications for social struggle and political debate in Britain. The Gothic novels of the 1790s were metaphorical discussions of the French Revolutions legitimacy and whether the Revolution would benefit humanity or result in complete disaster. The Gothic wanderer figure reflected a fear that the Revolution would cause the breakdown of social order and the familys dissolution, thus resulting in individual alienation. While Romantic wanderers were primarily depicted as heroic rebels, by contrast, the Gothic wanderer suffers pangs of guilt and is often eternally damned for transgressing against authority. A brief discussion of the French Revolutions influence on the Gothic wanderers creation will provide a background for understanding the figures evolution over the course of the nineteenth century from a symbol of transgression into a Christian symbol of redemption.

The Optimism of Romantic Poets

The French Revolution evoked numerous reactions in England, varying from praise and hope to trepidation and fear. Several people, particularly radicals and intellectuals, hoped that the French Revolution would be as successful in casting off the yoke of tyranny as had been the American one. While many feared that the Revolution foreshadowed the coming Apocalypse, the Romantic poets hoped the Revolution was the beginning of a new age that would evolve into an age of peace on earth and humanitys regeneration. Numerous Romantic poems express this millennial view in the decades following the French Revolution including William Blakes The French Revolution, Song of Liberty, America, and Europe, Robert Southeys Joan of Arc, Samuel Taylor Coleridges Destiny of Nations and Religious Musings, the conclusion of William Wordsworths Descriptive Sketches and portions of the Prelude, and Percy Shelleys Queen Mab. M.H. Abrams remarks that all these works depict a:

panoramic view of history in a cosmic setting, in which the agents are in part historical and in part allegorical or mythological and the overall design is apocalyptic; they envision a dark past, a violent present, and an immediately impending future which will justify the history of suffering man by its culmination in an absolute good; and they represent the French Revolution (or else a coming revolution which will improve upon the French model) as the critical event which signals the emergence of a regenerate man who will inhabit a new world uniting the features of a restored paradise and a recovered Golden Age. (332)

The Romantic poets optimism is reflected in their personal remembrances of the French Revolution, long after it failed to succeed as had been hoped. Wordsworth would declare in the Prelude, Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very Heaven! (Prelude (1850) XI, 108-9). Similarly, Robert Southey felt that few persons but those who have lived during the French Revolution can conceive or comprehend what a visionary world seemed to open upon those who were just entering it. Old things seemed passing away and nothing was dreamt of but the regeneration of the human race (Abrams 330).

This optimistic spirit sorely diminished as the Revolution progressed, culminating in the royal familys executions and the Reign of Terror. The Romantic poets lost their faith that the Revolution foreshadowed humanitys return to an edenic state. And during the Reign of Terror, the Gothic novelists began to express their own skepticism about the Revolutions results, questioning its purpose and legitimacy. Most importantly, the Gothic debated how the social order could be maintained in a world that lacked the traditional forms of government. Because the monarchy had been a central focus of government, people feared that its destruction would result in the dissolution of all units of society, including the family. The Gothic became greatly concerned with how the family could be preserved or reinvented to ensure its survival during this time of political chaos. Lynn Hunts The French Revolution as Family Romance provides a useful analysis of how the French Revolution was interpreted by witnesses as a large scale version of a family crisis. While Hunt does not discuss the response of British literature to the French Revolution, the French peoples concerns and the reflection of those concerns in French literature are parallel to the concerns the English expressed in their own writings. The British Gothic novel adapted this concern over the familys future by creating plots that centered on family secrets and inheritances. These plots were attempts to reinvent the family in a new form so it could survive in the new post-revolutionary age.

Family as a Metaphor for Political Order

An increased emphasis upon the family was the natural result of how the political order was interpreted by eighteenth century Europeans. Hunt notes that prior to the French Revolution, most Europeans viewed a king as a father who ruled over his nation, which represented his children (xiv). The French royal familys execution resulted in the French people feeling they had become like orphans (2). While the monarchys dissolution could be viewed as justifiable, it remained difficult to imagine a government not based upon a monarchy, thus providing a family model. French literature of the period reflects this difficulty by creating narratives or family romances (xv). Lynn Hunt uses the term family romance to refer to the collective, unconscious images of the familial order that underlie revolutionary politics (xiii). The family order was reinvented in literature to reflect the new order that rejected monarchy. Without a king as the nations father, people feared disorder would result because the normal laws of social order and legitimacy no longer applied (Hunt 143). To prevent both future tyranny from another king and complete anarchy, the French people sought to be autonomous by creating a democratic brotherhood, as reflected in the Revolutions emphasis upon fraternity (Hunt xiv). French literature reflected the discourse on how such a fraternity could be formed to provide liberty and equality for all, yet still retain authority to ensure its citizens loyalty and obedience (Hunt 3).