Robert Lowell: Following Nathaniel Hawthornes Tradition of Ancestral Guilt - Essay Example

ROBERT LOWELL: FOLLOWING NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S TRADITION OF ANCESTRAL GUILT “In Memory of Arthur Winslow” and “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket” (1946) display a bitterly disdainful preacher-poet who regards the lives of the dead relatives he has presumably come to mourn as so many exempla of the ultimate failure of the New England Puritan vision. (Perloff) Thesis: Modern American writers were definitely realistic than romantic writers such as Hawthorne. The quote above expresses one of Robert Lowell’s most common poetic motifs – the theme of religious (and familial) criticism. Another similar motif in his poetry is that of Lowell’s dichotomous relationship with his ancestral history. The contradictory feelings that define Lowell’s ambivalent relationship with his family history have much to do with his ancestors’ (hypocritical) religious beliefs and how those pious beliefs were not reflected in the daily lives of Lowell’s ancestors. In focusing on this ancestral legacy, Lowell joins the ranks of writers such as the great American Renaissance author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Both Lowell and Hawthorne came from a rich cultural ancestry. Both wanted to respect their ancestors, yet both writers also felt their ancestors had committed crimes which Hawthorne and Lowell were being held responsible for. Just as Hawthorne’s fiction expresses his dichotomous feelings towards his ancestral legacy, as is seen in the first chapter of The Scarlet Letter, so, too, does Robert Lowell’s poetry exemplify his controversial feelings towards his ancestral legacy, as is shown in the poem “At the Indian Killer’s Grave.” The romantic period in American literature may be said to have started with the independence of United States from the European colonialism. Europe’s literary styles and forms continued to influence many American writers during the early romantic period. During this period most of the American writers magnificently praised the beauty of American countrysides and American literature generally symbolized the optimism of an emerging nation. The puritan traditions and upbringing that had influenced Hawthorne in his early years is clearly visible in his work, which explains and often dictates the ‘appropriate’ behavior of his characters. We often see that his characters wear a make-believe image that can be seldom expected from the real world that the modern world is exposed to. In particular, Hawthorne’s feminine characters are influenced by puritan beliefs that mandate them to behave in a particular fashion that is appropriate in the society. Hawthorne’s female characters are ideally stifled and restrained and Hawthorne is not happy about women asserting themselves in public life. Many critics believe that the efforts of Hawthorne have been to provide America with its own genuine romantic literary traditions. We can see that his obsessions with romanticism and his ardent need to provide a literary culture to America that can be comparable to that of England’s literary traditions, is very much visible in his works. Many critics believe that this obsession to provide something to America’s literary culture has made him oblivious to the fact that his works resembled more of the past Anglican culture than the true American culture, which had its own identity. The ambience that is projected through his stories are definitely more English than American. His close resemblance in style to the English values and value systems is perhaps what earned him the name of the "American Shakespeare" The superiority of the puritan society is also highlighted often in Young Goodman Brown. The native Indians are considered as dark and reproachable while whites are presented as pathetic and helpless figures. The relations of the characters with the natives are often painted in a gloomy way and the book tries to shows that the religious superiority of the whites is unquestionable. In comparison to Hawthorne, many women writers recorded this domestic revolution, at a time when writing was not an accepted profession for women. The significant increase in written works by women can be attributed to their overwhelming desire to express themselves and their needs. Noteworthy representatives of this group are Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In their writings they poignantly voiced the inner struggle of the 19th Century middle-class American woman, especially of the South. The works of these writers were realistic and reflected the realism that affected the society of their times. Their stories were not decorated with the ideal nor were their characters puritans who fought for an ideal. Their characters were simple, plain people who accept life as it is and are resigned to their impulses and beliefs, whatever the society believes. These characters are rebellious, open and genuine in their thought and accept the beauty of life and its happenings even it may go against puritan beliefs and accepted norms of the society. The protagonists in these stories are middle-class, sensitive and intelligent women, caught in the coils of marriage that stifles their true selves. To them, as for most women of their time, marriage represented the death of the true independent self, rather than self-fulfillment and self- actualization. This was because they lived in a society required a wife to subordinate her will and her very being to her husband. The narrator of the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is Ann, a woman who is being treated with a rest cure for mild depression after childbirth. Ann’s husband confines her in a small room, in the attic, with no one to talk to and nothing to do. Her only release from her loneliness and fears during this time is secretly writing in her journal. Since the story is told through this journal, the reader bears witness to the narrators shocking mental deterioration. Ann’s husband, ignorant of the state of his wife’s mind, believes that she is recovering. At the end of the story, however, Ann locks herself inside the room and tears the wallpaper off the wall to free the imaginary woman trapped behind it. When her husband breaks down the door he discovers a demented woman, who has escaped into insanity. The narrator identifies herself with the woman she has supposedly released and declares, "Ive got out at last in spite of you and Jane. And Ive pulled off most of the paper, so you cant put me back!" Ann, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is seen to constantly express herself in secrecy. “There comes John, and I must put this away, -- he hates to have me write a word.” she writes in her journal. Into its unthreatening and unbiased pages she pours out all her secret thoughts and deepest fears and feelings. From it we become privy to her loneliness and despair. Every word with which Ann describes the wallpaper is symbolic and can be analyzed to reveal her state of mind and reaction to her marriage. When Ann describes the wallpaper she says” The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” The word ”smoldering” is very revealing of Ann’s state of mind. . Her discontent about the marriage is smoldering in her subconscious and is transferred to the wallpaper. Ann is so obsessed with it that she attributes it with a personality that is vicious. “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!” she writes in her journal. All her pent up anger and frustrations are expressed in the patterns she is able to see in the wallpaper, that grow more and more nightmarish. In The Storm, Kate Chopin makes her audience go off the track by describing the act of deception. When opportunity strikes who wouldn’t succumb to it? The growling of thunder had passed away and rain had become more subtle. Looks could be deceptive and that’s what’s proven out of this situation. After Calixta and Alcee get passionate physically they do not feel guilty or even regretful, instead Kate describes them to be delightful. That could be compared to the life after storm. The sound of silence and beauty, which exists in everyone’s heart is so much similar to Calixta and Alcee’s rendezvous. When Alcee leaves her house, she thinks about the whole incident and laughs. There’s not a tinge of guilt in her. She knows what she’s done is not wrong to her heart and the woman in her. Her emotions are much of the opals; they change their color way too quickly. Like the rain, the intense flow of passion gives rise to peace and happiness, when it ends WORKS CITED Axelrod, Steven Gould. “Lowell, Robert.” http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-02124.html; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter Centenary Edition Volume I. Ed. by William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce, and Claude M. Simpson. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1962. Lowell, Robert. Lord Weary’s Castle and The Mills of the Kavanaughs. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1979 Perloff, Marjorie. “Death by Water: the Winslow Elegies of Robert Lowell.” ELH, Volume 34, Issue 1 (March 1967). 116-140. Article taken off http://www.jstor.org. Read More