I 14 AINSWORTH, WILLIAM HARRISON AMERICAN GOTHIC 15 this (Ainsworth to day 1881: I, IV). Ainsworth The Lancashire Witches is the only of Ai0. M. G. W. (George William MacAr- to tell about itself. It has also superseded Maturin and brought the sworth’s forty-three novels to have geyfl°’ offered a voice to the remained St dImon, Robert Louis; Romanticism; repressed and Gothic to the mainland (see MATURIN, CHARLES consistently thut); oppressed, to those left out or in print, often shelved alongsj Terror; Urban Gothic; Victorian Gothic. Tales of pushed into the shadows. The Gothic ROBERT). Rookwood represents a bridge be Dennis Wheatley and Montague Summers is a lit erature of borderlands, suited to tween the eighteenth-century Gothic and the (both of whom it undoubtedly influenced). a country defined by its frontier. It also has contemporary urban nightmares of the penny In their role of Gothic Other to patriarchal EfERC patrolled dreadful and literary other shifting and unstable boundaries, and the novel, being sty versions of femininity, Ainsworth’s powerful W. H. (1881) The Original Mnsw0t Illustrated provides an index of American listically and historically liminal, somewhere Faustian protagonists know, like Eve, that Novels of fears, anxieties, they Edition of the William Harrison Am and self-doubt. between Romantic and Victorian (see pENNY have a much better chance with Satan 31 vols. London: Routledge. than sworth, The DREADfULS; ROMANTICISM). Life sources of American Gothic go back with God. Although the primary plot offirs Carvet, S. (2003) The and Works of the Lan a much further, before the Revolution, A craze for criminal romance ensued, and more moral interpretation, the possibility casinre Novelist: William Harrison Ainsworth, to early that colonial experience. When Ainsworth returned to the Newgate Calendars it is good to be bad remains forever teasing 1805_1882 New York: Edwin Mellen. Puritans looked and from the deck of the in 1839, serializing Jack Sheppard in Bentley’s present. At times the author appears Mayflower upon the on the inhospitable Miscellany, which ran concurrently with Otiver coast of New England, they saw a threshold of more serious comment on per.. READING FURTHER wilderness filled with wild animals, Twist. As both stories were set in the London secution but chooses, instead, magic realism savages, A. (1902) William and devils. The story they told underworld and illustrated by Cruikshank, The narrative therefore works according to xv. F. Harrison Ainsworth: about them the selves A Memoir. London: Gibbings. in this wild land, and that their leader critical comparisons were common, much to logic of a fairy tale, which is really where Ellis, S. M. (1911) William Harrison Ainsworth and William Bradford Wrote in his history OfPlym Dickens’ annoyance (see DICKENS, CHARLES). witches belong, and much of the story takes His friends, 2 vols. London: John Lane. outh Plantation (1651), was An editorial moral panic, the “Newgate contro place in an enchanted wood. This anachronis based on the Book Elwin, M. (1934) Victorian Wallflowers. London: of Exodus. The experience versy,” followed, originally led by the Examiner, tic synergy of history, folktale, romance, of these English and Jonathan Cape. Christians Punch, and the Athenaeum, centering around melodrama paralleled that of the Israelites, is the last English novel that can Hollingsworth, K. (1963) The Newgate Novel 1830— the Newgate novels fleeing the Egyptians and seeking their Prom of Lytton, Ainsworth, and truly be said to belong to the original Gothic 47. DeIroil, MI: Wayne State University Press. Dickens, and ised Land. Like them, the Puritans would have their potential to corrupt young, tradition. John, J. fed.) (1998) Cult Criminals, Tile Ne14’gate their faith tested in the wilderness. Such working-class males. When the valet François Ainsworth subsequently dropped from the Novels 1830—1847, 8 vols. London: Routledge. a test was experienced by Mary Courvoisier murdered his master, Lord William literary mainstream, although the “Lancashire Meredith, M. (1992) A fine distancing: Browning’s Rowlandson, wife of debt to Harrison Ainsrorth. a minister, whose account (1682) Russell, allegedly after reading Jack Sheppard, Novelist” was honored at a Lord Mayor’s Browning Society of being cap Notes 21. tured by Indians during the the charge against Ainsworth seemed incon banquet in Manchester in 1881 as “an expres uprising known Schroeder, N. (1986) Jack Sheppard and Barnaby as King Phillip’s War was the first best-selling trovertible and his status as a good Victorian sion of the high esteem in which he is held by Rudge: Yet more “humbug” from a “jolter head.” work of the English experience and a serious literary novelist never recovered. his Fellow townsmen and of his services to in New Eng Lit Studies in the Novel 18(1), 27—35. Dickens publicly and privately distanced land. Narratives of Indian captivity, an innova erature.” An accompanying article in Punch Worth, G. (1972) J. William Harrison Ainsworth. tion at the beginning of American himself from his friend, Thackeray criticized affectionately described him as “the greatest New York: Twayne. literature in English, often containing and lampooned, and Poe savaged Ainsworth axe-and-neck-romancer of our time” (Carver proto-Gothic graphic descriptions of violence and in Graham’s Magazine, later sending him up in 2003: 389, 402). Ainsworth died a few weeks the suffering of the captive, “The Balloon-Hoax” (1844). later. would remain a popular form for the next two hundred Down but not out, Ainsworth took over the Although rejected by his contemporaries years. Eventually, Native American voices would editorship of Bentley’s Miscellany from Dickens as a hack, and still often critically overlooked, American Gothic begin to complicate in this story. 1839, and began two historical romances, Ainsworth contributed significantly to the CHARIF S L CROW In the New Guy Fawkes and The Tower ofLondon, transfer development of the literary novel after Scott, England master narrative, carried forward ring his Gothic sensibilities from the under and The Unitetl by later-seventeenth-century to the new urban Gothic of Dickens, Reyfl States and the Gothic have common J Puritan intellectuals such as Cotton world to the kings and queens of England. A olds, and Stevenson (see REYNOLDS, G. W. N. origins in the turmoil Mather, of European thought the success of stream of popular romances followed; forty (GEORGE WILLIAM STEVENSON, in the late the colonists was resisted by MACARTHUR); eighteenth century. The cusp of the years on Ainsworth Enlight Satan and his allies. In this nearly Manichean was still turning national ROBERT LOUIS; URBAN GOTHIC). His approad and Romanticism earls’ produced vision, Satan ruled the wilderness landmarks into sublime spaces, and populating to history, while flying in the face of Lttk.icSian Englisl Gothic and continu novels, the Declaration of ally attempted them with ill omens, fated monarchs, paupers theory, can still be seen in popular narratives Independeice to infiltrate the settlements and and the United States Constitu create of noble birth, star-crossed lovers, Gothic vil such as tion. Deeply a secret cadre of his followers. Thus, Rome, Titanic, and The Tudors. entwined with American thought lains, hot gypsies, and plenty of from the when a few girls began to exhibit strange hys ghosts. His last beginning the Gothic a dark has produced terical symptoms in major work, however, was The Lancashire SEE ALSO: Dickens, Charles; Maturin, Char tWin of the Salem, Massachusetts, in of national narrative, a critique 1692, Witches. Robert; Penny Alh°, the Sto investigation into suspected witchcraft Dreadfuls; Poe, Edgar the United States has been tng was begun, and a special court was appointed. 16 AMERICAN GOTHIC AMERICAN GOTHIC 17 0 Accusations and indictments multiplied, and this encounter with slavery in its most mon his sadism, energy, and obscene humor, antici and Melville’s Captain Ahab and Pierre (see ultimately nineteen men and women were strous form, a true Gothic moment, Crève pates by some two hundred years the character HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL; MELVILLE, HERMAN; hanged and one man pressed to death with coeur exposed the irreconcilability ofAmerica’s of Al Sweareflgen in the television series Dead POE, EDGAR ALLAN). heavy stones (see wITCHCRAFT). original sin with its dream of perfection and wood (2004—6). During the middle years of the nineteenth The Salem witch scare was traumatic for innocence. The cultural explosion called the “American century, one of the country’s greatest writers, New England, and its implications for its nar Thus, by the time the English colonies Renaissance” (roughly from 1836, when Emer as we now know, was a woman living a clois rative of place were debated even while the earned independence — despite Hawthorne’s son’s Nature was published, to the Civil War) tered and eccentric life in Amherst, Massachu trials were in progress. The witchcraft outbreak later, and probably ironic, assertion in the was the late flowering of American Romanti setts. Emily Dickinson published little during was proof of New England’s success, argued preface to The Marble Faun that America had cism, and can be divided between Emerson and her lifetime, and well into the twentieth century Cotton Mather (1692), since the righteousness “no dark and gloomy wrong” (1930: 590) his followers, and Poe, Hawthorne, and Mel her writings were available only in altered ver of its people enraged Satan and motivated his — there was ample material for Gothic ville — the “dark Romantics,” whom we would sions that obscured her startling originality. jealous attacks against its communities. Yet, literature. now label Gothic writers. James Fenimore Dickinson, like the dark Romantics and unlike others doubted Mather’s assurances and sus The first great American Gothic novelist, Cooper also included Gothic elements in his Emerson, found the gap between human spirit pected that a great injustice had been done, Charles Brockden Brown, originated most of work, as in his Leatherstocking wilderness and nature unbridgeable.