The transition from Rowlandson to Cooper and Irving is refreshing because of the renewed sense of awe with the natural world that they both bring to their literature. From Rowlandson's point of view, the wilderness holds nothing but evil from the Amerindians. The Amerindians are an uncivilized, savage people that do not care for her and her family but for the small favors she can do for them by making clothes. The Amerindians are looked at as a deceitful clan, a group that will lie and cheat to those outside of their clan. When Rowlandson is acknowledging about the health of her son, one of the Indian's responds that "himself did eat a piece of him, as big as his two fingers, and that he was very good meat."She claims that she is surrounded by a bunch of "barbarous heathens" that do nothing but lie to their captives. This creates a very cynical and bleary outlook about the Natural World and how different it can be from the religious Puritan worldview.
Instead of using a savage, cannibalistic Indian as his protagonist, Cooper invites in a mythic creature in Natty Bumppo. Natty is a strong willed, true wilderness man that cares about nothing but the natural order of the world and how one must keep in accordance with his/her natural surroundings. Natty lives by the old rules in a new, civilized country and fights to keep the integrity of Nature. When quarreling with the Judge about who rightfully killed the deer in Chapter 1 of the Pioneers, Natty Bumppo says "I am a porr man and can live without the venison, but I don't like to give up my lawful dues in a free country. Though for the matter of that, might often makes right here, as well as in the old country, for what I can see." (5) Natty stays true to the rules of Nature, to the unwritten law that says the man who shot the kill deserves the meat, a man's law that used to permeate his culture. It is also a quick jab at the new civilized world, that is supposedly free, but is riddled with "lawful dues." Natty is one of the few who still operates within the Natural laws while interacting in the wilderness. Before the chapter is over, he urges his counterparts to "remember Indian John." Natty instills a mythic component in the natural world. They are not evil, but vastly different and more efficient than the new civilized world in acts of hunting and medical anomalies. Also, in Chapter 22, Natty Bumppo fights for the preservation of game. He does not agree with the "wasty ways" of the new colony, and is in strict opposition to these supposedly more civilized men. He advocates for only "killing what you want" and not wasting lead upon the destruction of innocent pigeons. This Chapter shows that the civilized do conform in ways to the Natural world of old when Judge Marmaduke vows to "put an end to this work of destruction." Although this may help to stop the destra whole, what was once a means of sustainability for the Indians has become a sport of game and money for the new colonies. Nature, for Cooper, became mythic and advisory for the colonists, as opposed to the evil and deceitful nature of Rowlandson.
Excellent and well developed comparison between Cooper and Irving. Your blog is well written and well supported.
ReplyDeleteRowlandson’s narrative highlights Puritan exclusivity by comparing its Christian piety and civilized behavior with that of the “”heathens and murderous”” wretches who inhabit the “vast and desolate wilderness.” She makes no further attempt to describe this wilderness other than her off hand references to ground nuts, rivers, bear, woods, corn, deer, beans, beaver, tortoise, dogs, frogs, squirrels, skunks, and rattlesnakes. We do know that the Puritans were expanding their settlements and clearing parts of the wilderness that encroached on the Native American habitat. This was the reason for Philip’s War and the Native American raids on Puritan settlements.
ReplyDeleteEncroachment of the wilderness by settlers was also the theme of Cooper’s “Pioneers.” Natty Bumppo was concerned by the encroachment, but was a pragmatist. That is, he realized that the expansion of settlements and the clearing of forests, was inevitable. He thought, however, with reasonable “mild laws,” and a new awareness of the settlers of their destructive behavior, that nature and the new civilization could co-exist.
Irving in “Rip Van Winkle” was making a similar argument, that nature could accommodate significant changes by man without eradicating its existence; and that, in fact, all change was a combination of the old and the new. In this story, the protagonist sought refuge in the wilderness, but caused no change to his environment (Catskill mountains or the Hudson River basin). After his sleep (and the revolutionary war that intervened), Rip Van Winkle returned to the same essential character he was before the sleep in basically the same natural setting.
In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Irving paints a picture that is distinctly American, with a town of descendants of original settlers who are care free, uninvolved with status, at liberty to pursue their own path, believing what they chose to believe, including thoughts of the supernatural, and with seemingly unlimited natural resources. They might have been described, like Rip Van Winkle, as day dreamers (not without their flaws).