In the writings of Cooper and Irving, we find and attitude toward nature that differs significantly from that of Mary Rowlandson. Whereas Rowlandson treats the wilderness as foe to be conquered, or at least avoided, the heroes of Rip Van Winkle and Natty Bumppo take a sort of sublime pleasure in nature. Unlike Rowlandson, who identifies herself as an English subject within the Puritan colony of the New World, Cooper and Irving intentionally create characters that take on an American identity. Part of that identity is the love of the American landscape. Take Irving’s description of the Catskills early in Rip Van Winkle: “Sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they will gather a hood of grey vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun will glow and light up like a crown of glory.” Irving makes a point to separate the mountains from “the rest of the landscape” which, aside from being a mundane descriptive detail, reinforces the notion of the opposing forces of nature and civilization. We might also say that the conflation of “the setting sun” and the image of the crown indicates that the expulsion of British rule from the colonies was and is a beautiful thing.
“For some time Tip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.”
What’s interesting is that as he surveys the beautiful scene of the American wilderness, Rip is not concerned with his own safety once night falls on the woods, but of the difficulty with facing his wife. Rowlandson, on the other hand, spends the entirety of the captivity narrative hoping to escape the woods and see her family. The fact that she is a prisoner is an obvious factor, but her approach to the wild is nonetheless one of disdain.
In Cooper’s work, we find an opposition of nature and society similar to the nature/devil concept, but it’s not quite so grave. He uses an argument over a slain deer to illustrate the new American pioneer identity in contrast to the comforts of privilege. We can see this best through their style of hunting. First, we have the awkward work of the Judge: “In a few moments the speaker succeeded in extricating a double-barreled fowling-piece from among a multitude of trunks and bandboxes. After throwing aside a thick pair of mittens which had encased his hands, there now appeared a leather pair of gloves tipped with fur…” Notice the pains Cooper takes to portray this judge as protected by the physical trappings of wealth. Not only do his “trunks and bandboxes,” the “mittens… that “encased his hands” and the fur tipped leather gloves give the would-be hunter a posh figure, they slow him down and cause him to fail in shooting the dear. Now, look later in the chapter when Natty stops the debate over the deer, and despite his wounded leg (a result of the Judge’s unwieldy buckshot), kills a foul with a long rifle (the trusty tool of the pioneer):
“He was interrupted by the hunter, who held up his finger with an expressive gesture for silence. He then moved softly along the margin of the road, keeping his eyes steadfastly fixed on the branches of a pine. When he had obtained such a position as he wished, he stopped, and, cocking his rifle, threw one leg far behind him, and stretching his left arm to its utmost extent along the barrel of his piece, he began slowly to raise its muzzle in a line with the straight trunk of the tree.”
The fluidity of the young man’s motion strongly contrasts the awkward Judge, and does so with relevance to the debate. Natty speaks with his actions, and very much concludes the case in a form of justice beyond the power of the Judge, whose legal importance has no bearing in the wilderness. In this way, Cooper both defines and praises the new American hero, who knows and embraces the wilderness as his home, apart from society.
“For some time Tip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; he saw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and he heaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of Dame Van Winkle.”
What’s interesting is that as he surveys the beautiful scene of the American wilderness, Rip is not concerned with his own safety once night falls on the woods, but of the difficulty with facing his wife. Rowlandson, on the other hand, spends the entirety of the captivity narrative hoping to escape the woods and see her family. The fact that she is a prisoner is an obvious factor, but her approach to the wild is nonetheless one of disdain.
In Cooper’s work, we find an opposition of nature and society similar to the nature/devil concept, but it’s not quite so grave. He uses an argument over a slain deer to illustrate the new American pioneer identity in contrast to the comforts of privilege. We can see this best through their style of hunting. First, we have the awkward work of the Judge: “In a few moments the speaker succeeded in extricating a double-barreled fowling-piece from among a multitude of trunks and bandboxes. After throwing aside a thick pair of mittens which had encased his hands, there now appeared a leather pair of gloves tipped with fur…” Notice the pains Cooper takes to portray this judge as protected by the physical trappings of wealth. Not only do his “trunks and bandboxes,” the “mittens… that “encased his hands” and the fur tipped leather gloves give the would-be hunter a posh figure, they slow him down and cause him to fail in shooting the dear. Now, look later in the chapter when Natty stops the debate over the deer, and despite his wounded leg (a result of the Judge’s unwieldy buckshot), kills a foul with a long rifle (the trusty tool of the pioneer):
“He was interrupted by the hunter, who held up his finger with an expressive gesture for silence. He then moved softly along the margin of the road, keeping his eyes steadfastly fixed on the branches of a pine. When he had obtained such a position as he wished, he stopped, and, cocking his rifle, threw one leg far behind him, and stretching his left arm to its utmost extent along the barrel of his piece, he began slowly to raise its muzzle in a line with the straight trunk of the tree.”
The fluidity of the young man’s motion strongly contrasts the awkward Judge, and does so with relevance to the debate. Natty speaks with his actions, and very much concludes the case in a form of justice beyond the power of the Judge, whose legal importance has no bearing in the wilderness. In this way, Cooper both defines and praises the new American hero, who knows and embraces the wilderness as his home, apart from society.
I find it very interesting that you bring up the British in this post because the British subject/American citizen divide is the big shift that occurs between when Rowlandson’s writing and when Cooper and Irving are writing. Rowlandson is writing in the context of British literature while at the same time living in a world that is not hers and is admittedly very hostile towards her entire way of life. Cooper and Irving are working in a vacuum (from a literary point of view) devoid of the national literature that they themselves are trying to create. And, being in this vacuum, the trick becomes finding pieces of American life to build stories out of. So they take portions of the landscape and characters like Natty Bumpo, a hunter living off the land, as the signifiers that this is America and these are the icons of our national mythology. This shift is almost like the literature of America conquering its fear of the wilderness and embracing it as a part of itself.
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