Cecilya Lundy
American Literary Traditions
Major Knepper
Help Received: Comments from Major Knepper on draft
The Dark Side
Throughout this past semester, American Literary Traditions was my favorite class
because there was always something different that we would be reading or studying. In this
class, our main focus was on the ideas of the gothic convention and why people were so
interested in the ideas of fear. Throughout many readings, the topics that I learned the most
from and that I was most interested in were, the spirit of perverseness and patriarchal
dominance. The spirit of perverseness is Edgar Allen Poe’s idea that every person has a dark
side that they hide, and patriarchal dominance is shown through readings about white men
dominating those that they think are below them. These two gothic conventions were used in
American Gothic Literature because of the way that they brought the dark sides of people out
into the light.
The spirit of perverseness was something that we looked at to better understand the
reasoning behind why people were so interested in what terrified them. The first day when
Major Knepper discussed the idea, I realized that people enjoy their darker sides, but they also
like to hide it because they are worried of what someone will think about that perverseness in
their head. One would think that Poe’s writing would be considered repulsive and that it
wouldn’t draw people in, but this isn’t the case. In “The Black Cat”, Poe writes, “Goaded, by the
interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp, and buried
the axe in her brain.” This is not something that people should enjoy reading, because it is so
dark, but even in my own experience, there was some reason that I had to keep reading not
matter how disgusting the writing got. When reading Poe, the reader has to be prepared for the
creepy things that Poe likes to write about. But the question was, why do we enjoy this dark
writing? I wrote an essay on the idea of the spirit of perverseness throughout Poe’s writing and
it really got me thinking that,
“We shouldn’t be enjoying a story like this because it is creepy but there is something
about it that keeps you turning the pages. The way that Poe writes these stories proves
to us that we all have some darkness in us because if weren’t turned off by this story
then there was something in it that was enjoyable. Poe’s writing being so common
shows that this perverseness is inside everyone. By Poe using things that we can relate
to, like people changing or common things that are unfamiliar to us he makes his tales in
a way relatable and he opens our minds to be more accepting of the spirit of
perverseness.” (Lundy, Poe Essay)
The spirit of perverseness can be found in everyone, except it may be simpler in some cases
and more extreme in others. You have to think about the different types of people in this world,
the psychopaths that think that murder is normal and then the innocent that think cussing is
extremely perverse. But the most common perversion would be, that the way that people
enjoy being frightened and are willing to put themselves in this situations by going to horror
films or haunted areas. By writing my essay on Poe, it made me realize that there was so much
behind the idea of liking the thrill of a scare because it is odd. With the history of people
enjoying stories and tales about death, it opened my eyes to realization that the world we live
in is a lot darker than some people like to accept or to think about. There are so many odd
things that we do and that we are willing to accept, but nobody questions them.
With the idea in mind of understanding the darker readings of the American culture we
looked at many different authors that wrote with similar gothic conventions to appeal to
different types of social issues throughout time. Historically there has always been the thought
that men are so much better than women. The reading that we had that related to this was
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In this story a woman is under the watch
of her husband/doctor, who thinks that she is mentally ill. He tells her the only way she will get
better is the “rest cure”, meaning that she can’t think or do anything for herself, which she
willingly does because she believes that her husband would never hurt her, and throughout the
process she ends up going mad. This was the second time that I had read this story for
educational purposes, and I learned so much more this time. For my essay, I did some research
on the “rest cure” and I realized how horrible it truly was, “In this time when women were
thought to have mental issues doctors would give them the ‘rest cure’ to help. This involved
isolation and no way of expressing themselves, because of this and a patriarchal society women
were dominated by their husbands and felt that they had complete power over them.”(Lundy,
Research Essay) Looking at the background for this story really opened up my eyes and the
more that I wrote the more that I learned about how poorly the women were actually treated.
These women were not allowed to read, write, feed themselves, etc., with the rest cure these
women were dehumanized and they were treated like children. By wanting to learn more about
this topic I researched more into the topic.
“Silas Weir Mitchel was the man that created the rest cure, and it includes spending
time completely alone, not being able to do anything for yourself and sleeping a lot. The
rest cure was very dehumanizing and it made women seem completely helpless. Mitchel
is actually mentioned in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Perkins states, ‘if I don’t pick up faster
he will send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don’t want to go there at all’. This
comment from the narrator shows the reader an idea of how bad Mitchel treated his
patients because she doesn’t want to go at all.” (Lundy, Research Essay)
With this essay I was able to expand my knowledge of the way that men were actually treating
women. The fact that this story had true experience, because Gilman was prescribed the “rest
cure” at a point in her life, made the story stronger and worked very well because she created a
believable narrator, which is sometimes difficult to do. She was able to use what happened to
her to write a more realistic story with actual evidence. Having someone like Gilman use her
experience to write a story about the “cure” makes it much more realistic and gives you a first
had look at the truth of what was happening.
Throughout this course there was a ton off different topics that were being looked at
because not every story was the same, but these are some of the few that really made me think
about what goes on in our world. Overall I feel that with the readings and writings that we did
you have to look into some of the details but by looking closely into the reading there is so
much that you can learn.
Work Cited
Lundy, Cecilya “Research Essay.” April 2015.
Lundy, Cecilya “Poe Essay.” March 2015.
Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Black Cat.”