American Gothic Fiction Essay Example

caves. Lloyd-Smith reinterprets Moby Dick to make this point convincingly. Early settlers were overcome by fear linked to the unexplored territory which surrounded, and in some cases, engulfed them.

Fear of the unknown stemming from nvironmental factors like darkness and vastness is notable in Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly. The emergence of the “abhuman” in American Gothic Fiction was closely coupled with Darwinism. Ideas of evolution or devolution of a species; new biological knowledge and technological advancement created a fertile environment for many to question their essential humanity. Parallels between humans and every other living thing on the planet were made obvious by the aforementioned.

This is manifest in stories like H. P. Lovecraft’s "The Outsider" and Nicholson Baker's "Subsoil". Ghosts and monsters are closely related to this theme, they function as the spiritual equivalent of the abhuman and may be evocative of unseen realities, as in The Bostonians. Kristeva theorizes that the expulsion of all things defiling, much like a corpse, is a common coping mechanism for humanity.

Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" exploits this concept. Furthermore, "The Yellow Wallpaper" reads like a social commentary on the oppressive conditions women suffered in their home lives at the turn of the century. [edit] Early American Gothic Early American Gothic writers were particularly concerned with frontier wilderness anxiety and the lasting effects of a Puritanical society. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving is perhaps the most famous example of American Colonial era horror fiction.

As mentioned above Charles Brockden Brown was deeply affected by these circumstances, this is well evidenced by pieces such as Wieland (novel). Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Washington Irving are often grouped together. They

present impressive, albeit disturbing, portraits of the human experience by way of horror. Poe accomplished this through the window of a diseased and depressive fascination with the morose, Irving with the keen charm of a masterful storyteller, and Hawthorne with familial bonds to past abominations like the Salem Witch Trials which he addresses in "Custom House".