ACTKONS'AND AGENTS: COOPERS EVOLWNG AESTHEHO Thesis fax the Degree of PhD. ° , l ‘ 'aVIiCHlGAN STATE UNWERSWY- ‘ f I .. ~ m SNYDER PAUL ' ~ 3 ‘ 19:71 ’ ’ M——'——‘ O A T“’ LIB :2 Michigan. if: d W University gnu This is to certify that the thesis entitled ACTIONS AND AGENTS: COOPER 'S EVOLVING AZS'FHETIC presented by Jay Snyder Paul has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Pho no EngliSh Jegree in 291m: fIl- rc: mum—— Mayor professor Date April 28, 1971 0-7639 ’0- 4?“? 1.1311“ Michigan v ”3 Universrty ’ W This is to certify that the ’ thesis entitled ACTIONS AND AGENTS: COOPEP'S EVOLVING AESTHETIC presented by Jay Snyder Paul has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph. D. degreein English I l Zine: fit. ram/UF— Mayor professor Date _April 28; 1971 0-7639 (I i l t?‘ hfi- ABSTRACT ACTIONS AND AGENTS: COOPER'S EVOLVING AESTHETIC BY Jay Snyder Paul The purpose of this study is to state systemati- cally the case for Cooper's aesthetic. Analyses of The Spy (1821), The Bravo (1831), The Deerslayer (1841), and Satanstoe (1845), novels which represent successive stages of his career, illuminate COOper's continuing deve10pment of novelistic structure. Discussions of the novels focus on the following: (1) the basic structural pattern in the novel; (2) the primary interplay of fictional elements; (3) the functions of representative structural portions; (4) Cooper's success in fusing form and meaning; and (5) the importances of each book to his development. The four books attest to his ability to adapt structure to new ends and demonstrate the fundamental structural shift between his early and later works. This shift is best described in terms utilized by Scholes and Kellogg in The Nature of Narrative. Cooper's early books are structured in "the historical form"; that is, they are "based on an event from the past with its Jay Snyder Paul causes and consequences, torn from its irrelevant and casual surroundings and isolated in the form of a narra— tive, or based on a related sequence of events treated in this manner." Later, he turns to "the biographical form" patterned around "the birth, life, and death of an actual individual."l Ehg_§py, COOper's first attempt in the historical form, is representative of his craft during his first decade. Another historical romance, Th§_§£ayg marks his first attempt at a non-American novel. Not only does the book demonstrate his increased proficiency with the form, but the conflicts that the hero, Jacopo Frontoni, faces intimate the biographical form. Cooper wrote few novels in the 1830's, but that decade fostered the radical changes that appear in his later books. Egg Deerslayer illustrates the mixture of the two forms that is typical of his work at the end of the 'thirties. Al- though Natty Bumppo's eXperience constitutes an initi- ation, making a major portion of the book's subject biographical, the novel's form is historical. Therefore, the lesser figures must be considered to appreciate the book's full meaning. Subsequently, C00per concentrates on the biographical form, shaping novels around extended portions of characters' lives. Satanstoe, the first book in his Anti-Rent Trilogy, remains his most readable effort in the biographical form, depicting through the eyes of a nostalgic narrator an experience that affects not only his own life but the history of provincial New York. Thus, Jay Snyder Paul Satanstoe is a biographical novel possessing both bio- graphical and historical purposes. Static aspects of Cooper's evolving structure are also vital to his artistry. One of his most reliable devices--and the one used to focus the four analyses-—is the motif, which unifies his best novels thematically: appearance vs. reality in Thg_§py; degrees of political oppression in The Bravo; the confrontation of novelty in The Deerslayer; self-indulgence vs. self-restraint in Satanstoe. These novels simply did not result from slovenly composition. Cooper must be judged first as a novelist who shapes material into an imaginative world to entertain and/or instruct his audience. His early historical romances are his most readable books. Although ideas dominate his later fiction, his most memorable characters --besides Natty-~inhabit The Two Admirals (1842), H2227 dotté (1843), Afloat and Ashore (1844), Satanstoe, and The Oak Openings (1848). That Cooper can then verbalize the implications of earlier ideals makes him more than a formulaic writer. To the end, he continues to adapt structure to evolving ideas and aims. lRobert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 7T4. These terms occur in a discussion of empirical narrative; nevertheless, they are appropriate to the study of fiction if one keeps in mind that the shape of the narrative is the question. ACTIONS AND AGENTS: COOPER'S EVOLVING AESTHETIC BY Jay Snyder Paul A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English 1971 @Copyright by JAY SNYDER PAUL 1971 To James Pickering for his patience ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Professor James H. Pickering's seminar on Cooper during the spring of 1969 provided the impetus for this study. Not only did those discussions introduce me to the serious study of the novelist, but many of my ideas have been influenced by the participants. I am especially indebted to Mrs. Betty Nichols for the use of her study of The Bravo and to Mrs. Leslie Smith for the use of her paper on Satanstoe. My doctoral guidance committee comprised of Howard Anderson, E. Fred Carlisle, and James Pickering (Chairman) has made countless suggestions that are essential to this essay. Daryl Jones spent the better part of a spring weekend proofreading the manuscript. My wife, Joanne, needs no words to know my gratitude. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. FROM HISTORICAL TO BIOGRAPHICAL: AN OVERVIEW 0 O O I O O O O O I O O 1 II. "IMAGINATIVE LIGHT OVER AMERICAN HISTORY": THE SPY AND AFTER . . . . . . . . . 26 III. "BEYOND OUR OWN BOUNDED VISION": THE BRAVO O O O O O O O O O O O O O 5 1 IV. THE DEERSLAYER: SOCIO-DRAMA ON THE GL IMMERGLASS O O O O O O O I O O O 8 2 V. "I SHALL NOT ATTEMPT THE HISTORICAL MOOD AT ALL": SATANSTOE . . . . . . . . 114 VI. A VITAL IMPOSITION. . . . . . . . . 155 NOTES 0 C O I O O O O O O O O O O O 16 3 LIST OF REFERENCES 0 O O O O O O O O O 0 l7 4 iv FROM HISTORICAL TO BIOGRAPHICAL: AN OVERVIEW Despite renewed interest in the fiction of James Fenimore Cooper during the past quarter century, his books are rarely regarded as aesthetic objects. In a much- neglected study of The Bravo in Maule's Curse, Professor Yvor Winters argues the need for a formal critical approach to Cooper's novels: The fifteenth chapter, for example, describing the murder of Antonio, is very impressive as one comes to it in the actual narrative. Coming to it from the beginning of the story, one is not only familiar with the style, but one is acutely aware of the sym- bolic value of the moonlit water, and of fragments of action discernible upon it, in this narrative of secret and evasive evil. In isolation the passage' appears to display something of the overwrought affection of Poe; in its context, the tone is sup- ported as it is never supported in Poe, by a com- prehensible theme, so that the details, melodramatic, perhaps, if réad alone, are sustained by a genuinely dramatic significance.l ’ Winters is contending, of course, that appreciation and even comprehension of a novel depend upon an understand- ing of the sequential and spatial dimensions of the book, which is to say that a character like Cooper's fabled Natty Bumppo becomes significant only in terms of his existence in the Leatherstocking Tales, not apart from them. Furthermore, any statement inferred from a book like The Deerslayer must take into account all the charac- ters, not Natty alone. The assertion which this study makes, that a novel should be read on its own terms, is relatively new in Cooper criticism. Yet, Cooper chose to work within the conventions of a genre that involves the reshaping of material into new forms. His books should be read with that in mind. The best of Cooper's recent critics recognize this fact. Donald Ringe, for example, explains Cooper's development as the result of his effort to objectify theme: "What Cooper did throughout his career was to refine his ideas about God, man, and society in the light of his increasing experience; to express different ele- ments of his view at different times; and eventually, in his best work, to unite the major streams of his thought into the well-planned books that artistically express his ideas."2 Ringe adds that "the general movement of his work is forward to more complex themes and increasing skill in developing them."3 Morton Ross, on the other hand, argues in his unpublished dissertation that "the depiction of manners"--of individuals, social groups, and nations, as well as through developments in each of these-~13 the central means of fusing form and content in certain novels,4 while Thomas Philbrick, to cite just one more scholar, finds the central characteristic of C00per's novels to be a fundamental relationship between art and message: "all his novels are informed by an interplay between the surface of the action and setting and an underlying moral vision."5 The purpose of this study is a new attempt to state systematically the case for Cooper's aesthetic. Analyses of The S , The Bravo, The Deerslayer, and Satanstoe, novels which represent successive stages of his career illuminate Cooper's continuing deve10pment of novelistic structure. Since relationships among structural elements eventually encompass each entire novel, I focus my discussions on the following: (1) the basic structural pattern in the novel; (2) the pri- mary interplay of fictional elements; (3) the functions of representative portions of the structure; (4) Cooper's success in fusing form and meaning; and (5) the impor- tance of each book to his artistic deve10pment. Th3 Spy, The Bravo, The Deerslayer, and Satanstoe attest to Cooper's ability to adapt structure to new ends and yet retain its vitality, and demonstrate the fundamental structural shift between his early and later works. This shift is best described in terms utilized by Scholes and Kellogg in The Nature pf Narrative.* Cooper's early books are structured in keeping with "the historical form"; that is, they are "based on an event from the past with its causes and consequences, torn from its irrelevant and casual surroundings and isolated in the form of a narrative, or based on a related sequence of events treated I I 6 in this manner." In his later books, however, Cooper turned to "the biographical form," which takes its organi- zation "from the birth, life, and death of an actual indi- vidual."7 While this evolution is neither regular nor absolute, the four books I have chosen mark critical stages in the development. $22.§EX.(1821) is Cooper's first attempt in the historical form, evidencing the self- consciousness of the inexperienced writer; moreover, that novel's structure is representative of his craft during his first decade as a novelist. Another historical romance, The Bravo (1831), Cooper's first attempt at a non-American novel, demonstrates his increased proficiency with the historical form and intimates the biographical form. He wrote few novels during the 1830's, but that decade fostered the radical changes that appeared in his later books. One of them, The Deerslayer (1841), produced *The terms are applied to empirical narratives rather than fictional; however, I use them to describe the shape of the novel, not the book's relationship to the actual world. in a transitional phase of his career, recounts a critical week in Natty Bumppo's young manhood. Although his experi- ence constitutes an initiation, which makes a major portion of the book's subject biographical, the novel's form is historical. Therefore, the usually neglected lesser figures in the story must affect The Deerslayer's meaning. Subsequently, Cooper experimented with the biographical form, shaping novels around extended portions of charac- ters' lives. Satanstoe (1845), the first book in C00per's Anti-Rent Trilogy, remains his most readable biographical novel. Although the entire Trilogy chronicles nearly a century in the form of personal journals of the various narrators, Satanstoe itself focuses primarily on the social initiation of its narrator, Cornelius Littlepage. James Fenimore Cooper did not sign his name to his first novel, Precaution (1820), and preferred thereafter that the book remain anonymous. Comprised of forty chapters of bland domestic scenes, a five-chapter flash- back into the hero's past, and finally a resolution, Precaution is at best an attenuated version of the English novel of manners. Cooper's characters can only be dis- tinguished by their names, and setting is little more than stage flats. With the heavyhandedness of morality drama, Cooper expounds a static thesis--in romantic matters, prevention is preferable to cure. His American readers were receptive but annoyed: Precaution presented charac- ters that were conventional and unconvincing, and worst of all they and the setting were English. By 1820 Cooper, no doubt, was aware of the cry for an American literature that democratic journals had been . . 8 . raiSing for years. Even before he wrote Precaution, CooPer had been contributing articles (mostly on maritime subjects) to New York publications.9 At this same time, when he hovered socially on the fringes of what would emerge later in the 1820's as the Knickerbocker group, Cooper was experiencing financial distress. Apparently, he hoped that writing novels, a gentlemanly occupation, would also be lucrative: while Precaution was in press, he had begun another book. Given encouragement, Cooper completed and published The Spy_(1821), a novel which he was willing to claim as his own. The significance of his second book should not be underestimated: "The quest for an American art was fundamentally a search for the proper way to use the resources of the American land, the American past, and American society to produce something aestheti- cally correct, morally true, and at the same time expres— 10 In a time when it sive of American life and ideals." was all too easy to c0py English writers, Tp§.§pyfs West- chester County setting, Revolutionary wartime plot, and recognizable American types made the book a truly native production. It also initiated thirty years of almost uninterrupted novel writing. Recognizing the lucrative vein he had tapped with Thg_§py, Cooper mined it throughout the 'twenties. He deliberately avoided the excesses of Gothic and senti- mental novels, choosing instead material "true" to America. His apologies for the sparseness of literary material seem unmerited today, but he was sincerely uncertain whether Americans would read books without castles and medieval settings. But if he gambled in portraying American pio- neers, soldiers, sailors, and lovers, his books of the decade attested to his qualifications for the undertaking. He set tales of the civilizing process (The Pioneers [1823] and The Last pf the Mohicans [1826]) in familiar upstate New York woodlands. His knowledge of the sea and ships supplied tales about the determination and skill of American (and colonial) seamen (The Pilot [1824], The Red Rover [1828], The Water-Witch [1830]). Even in novels set in areas less known to him personally (Lionel Lincoln [1825] and The Wept pf Wish-Ton-Wish [1829]). his enthusi- asm for the American past was evident. The novels of Cooper's early period were all distinguished by the invo- cation of American history and Americanization of the continent, embodied in the historical form. That he did not choose to sustain this method into his later books fostered questions and misconceptions that haunt us yet. Not only did he turn to writing about foreign countries and manners, but he became disenchanted with America and Americans. Moreover, his early fictional method did not always suit his later subject. Thus, critics who conceive of Cooper as simply a historical romancer, whose mission was to tell good stories of set- tlers and Indians, underestimate the range and complexity of his literary achievement. As might be expected, Cooper's expression of his nationalism through quasi-historical material required the dramatization of complete events. His early historical romances are generated from the interaction of characters involved in collective processes like ethnic confrontation. The emphasis is clearly on the group, the community, the army, or the tribe. For example, Cooper stated that he included Monsieur Le Quoi in The Pioneers because the picture of Templeton could not be complete without him.11 Action, spectacle, rapid movement, frenetic plotting charac- terize The Spy, The Last g£_the Mohicans, and the others. In short, COOper tells his story and tries to make it com- pelling reading. What happens is paramount. But, while he re-used the historical form, with both its excitement and his quirks, throughout the 1830's and the 1840's, radical changes in his choice of subject and in his in- tentions required alterations in his novel form. In the 'twenties Cooper tried to entertain his readers, for in his Opinion the amusement of a good story had positive social value: "Of all those who animate our solitude, refresh our weariness, and beguile our cares, the most successful is he who furnishes us with a new and 12 Historical material, veiled by time interesting story." and vivified by the author's inventiveness, could provide pleasurable escape: "The delight of pure imagination, the tranSportation of ourselves beyond our own bounded vision and existence to the past and the distant, into scenes of splendor, and into conditions which fancy has devised, and fancy only could sustain or enjoy, are among the rarest 13 While pleasures that the reader of fiction tastes." Cooper realized that fancy did not necessarily comport with the depiction of American material, he knew that pleasing the reader was just as necessary in his book as in the more romantic works he admired. Within his pronouncement on fiction-as-escape, nevertheless, lay the germ of a subsequent aesthetic-- "the transportation of ourselves beyond our own bounded vision." His experience in Eur0pe, where he lived with his family from 1826 until 1833, extended his own per- spective so that by 1830 he felt qualified to educate America about European politics. The Bravo (1831), The Heidenmauer (1832), and The Headsman (1833) depended on the premise that "it is necessary to have lived abroad to understand our prOper position."14 By dramatizing three instances of political oppression, Cooper felt he was providing valuable object lessons for his countrymen. 10 Even though in these books he substituted Europe for his formerly American setting and altered his purpose from entertainment in the direction of instruction, he retained the historical form. While not well received, The Bravo remains Cooper's best historical romance. His apprenticeship well behind him, he incorporated complex plotting with the historical form. His interest in European revolutionary movements supplied him with powerful material. Venice's enchanting, decadent splendor, which had charmed him as a tourist, contributed symbolic depth and mysterious aura to his narrative. In contrast to the rest of the European Trilogy, he maintained a careful balance of theme (actu- ally, thesis) and plot in The Bravo; the vigor and success- ful fusion of subplots in the narrative resulted in a minor masterpiece. Cooper's defense of the novel intA Letter E2 His Countrymen illuminates his intentions: "The object was not to be obtained by an essay, or a com- mentary, but by one of those popular pictures which find their way into every library; and which, whilst they have attractions for the feeblest intellect, are not often "15 rejected by the strongest. The Bravo's illustrative purpose is implicit in his comparison of the book to an essay, but he also fuses story and message into a viable, if occasionally discursive, novel. 11 But the vitality of The Bravo results from more than an exciting plot. For the first time, Cooper objecti— fies an internal dilemma in his hero. Jac0po broods Byronically--he allows the State to blackmail him into the position of becoming the scapegoat for its crimes in the hope that his father Will be freed from prison--and ultimately chooses a definite course of action. By the end of the novel, Jacopo's mind itself emerges as one of the major ambiguities. Thus, COOper's political thesis, reiterated throughout the book, is supported dramatically by Jacopo's indecision and by conflicts among the charac- ters. Cooper no doubt remained aware of the advantages of the dramatic nature of the novel, but he made his books more and more discursive. The Bravo is the only book of the EurOpean Trilogy to sustain satisfactorily a political thesis within its historical form. The Heidenmauer depicts the struggle for control of a town in the days of the Lutheran Reformation between a Catholic abbot and the local baron. Both men are equally dissolute and unscrupu- lous, and the baron's embracing of Lutheranism is obviously a political expedient; thus, the transparency of motive and the one-dimensional nature of the characters undermine the reader's interest. Moreover, Cooper uses a number of static scenes--glances at religious processions and pil— grimages, for example--that cannot realize the dramatic 12 potentialities of the historical form. The Headsman, too, is a failure, but for different reasons. COOper success- fully involves the reader in the dilemma of the family of the Headsman of Berne, peOple permanently alienated by their hereditary role as executioners. Like the prison- keeper in 222.§£2321 these people deplore the politics they must uphold. A compelling situation, but Cooper refuses to carry it to its logical conclusion. Through a hackneyed romantic device--the exchange of infants--the son of the Headsman is revealed as the heir of a noble Italian family and exonerated from infamy. In both books, Cooper compromised the quality which, in The Bravo, he had demonstrated could be achieved with the historical form. Part of the reason for this artistic decline, his letters suggest, was non-literary. COOper's h0pe of edu- cating Americans about European politics, the primary non- financial motive for the Trilogy, vanished when, upon his return to the United States, he found that Americans simply did not care about his work. Earlier, while completing the Eur0pean novels, he had declared to William Dunlap, "I can stand no longer what I have received at home . . . , and have made up my mind to retire while I can do it with— out disgrace."l6 Cooper's awareness of public indifference could easily account for his own decreasing interest in his craft. 13 Events subsequent to his return to America confirm this supposition. The Whig press had denigrated The Bravo, and Cooper's role in the French Finance Controversy had earned him vilification. Public indifference hurt him: "I have been in no country in the last eight years, in which personally my reception has been so cool, as it has been in my own (old friends and acquaintances excepted) and these are signs that a discreet man must respect. I do not wish to make a parade of my own situation, but I tell you, that were it not for my family, I should return 17 to Europe." Bitterly be interpreted Whig disdain for his work as personal criticism, confusing, as James Beard 18 The re- notes, personal matters and partisan politics. sult was further vilification, for each time Cooper replied to his critics, they lashed him the harder. The alienation that Cooper experienced is probably clearer from our perspective than his own. A member of a leading New York family, he had, before his EurOpean trip, been accustomed to considerable adulation. On his depar- ture, he had been toasted as America's foremost novelist, as the "American Scott." And shortly after he arrived in France, he was befriended by Lafayette and other prominent figures, which enabled him to easily adjust to his new society. Furthermore, as Notions pf the Americans (1828) implies, he felt a vested interest in the American system. In that book he had gone to considerable effort to correct 14 European misconceptions of his native country. While in France he consistently maintained that concern for America's interests. Put simply, socially and profession— ally, Cooper considered himself above the common mass. Back in America, though, he found "a vast expansion of mediocrity, that was well enough in itself, but which was so overwhelming as nearly to overshadow every thing 19 Since that once stood prominent, as more excellent." CooPer's social theories were founded on the Hamiltonian position that men, being fallen creatures, require gui- dance, egalitarianism upset him immensely. Jacksonian elevation of the common man did not square with Cooper's convictions: just as hubristic Unitarianism received his sustained criticism in The Sea Lions (1849), the self- reliance he saw around him in the early 'thirties implied an easy jump to anarchy. Repeatedly in his letters, Cooper lamented the prominence of party politics, the seeming disregard for the Constitution, and the pre- 20 eminence of "Yankee strut" and "go-aheadism." "Every hour I stay at home," he wrote to Mrs. COOper, "convinces me more and more, that society has had a summerset, and 1|!21 that the élite is at the bottom Hostile reviews of his work only nourished his bitterness: "This is not a country for literature, at least yet, nor do I believe that our people will bear much of the same thing, even "22 though it should be godliness. He publicly renounced 15 his profession in A_Letter £2 His Countrymen (1834), and his letters reiterated the decision that "The quill and I are divorced."23 Cooper was referring only to fiction, for the middle years of the 'thirties were filled with his social and political writing. In December, 1834, he initiated a lengthy series of pseudonymous letters, mostly to The New York Post. Signed "A. B. C.," they treated a number of contemporary issues, mainly the question of France's reimbursement to the United States for shipping seized during the Napoleonic era, and they "provided a mask by which Cooper could escape the too self—conscious and, at times, querulous tone that mars much of his controversial "24 He had utilized the conventional "traveling writing. bachelor" as his mouthpiece in Notions 9£_the Americans, and he used a fictional persona in The Monikins (1835), 25 a social satire bulked out to resemble his novels. During the 'thirties, Cooper also published his impressions of the landscape and society of various EurOpean countries, as well as The American Democrat (1838), a study of the political system for use in the schools, and The Chronicles .QE Cooperstown (1838), a social history of the town's deve10pment. His favorite project, over which he felt he labored harder than on anything else,26 was the long- deferred History pf the Navy pf the United States pf America (1839). 16 Ironically, the unpopularity that had caused C00per to renounce his profession as a novelist played a sizable role in his return. At home and in England, his books of the 'thirties were financial failures.27 Cooper's announcement to Richard Bentley, his English publisher, that "A freak has got into my head to write a novel, again, was immediately preceded by a letter to his wife implying that he was feeling the effects of the financial crisis of 1837.28 This was in July, 1837. As early as 1836, the C00pers had come to spend more time in Coopers- town than they had planned as a result of their readjust- ment to country living and their lack of money.29 And by the fall of 1837, affected by the financial Panic of that year, Cooper "found things so bad in New-York that I did not print Italy [Gleanings i2 EurOpe: Italy], but sent 30 the manuscript to Bentley." Not one to "parade his situ- ation," Cooper set to work’on a novel, convinced the effort could not damage his financial situation. His resumption of fiction writing is a most sig— nificant juncture in his career. Disillusioned with his country, he confronted for the first time in his novels the perplexities of the present. In Homeward Bound (1838) to some extent, and constantly in Home angound (1838), he turned "the direction of the narrative outward" to comment on disquieting developments in "our rumour—loving and 31 prattling country." Structurally, the result in his 17 fiction was "the substitution pf 3p order pf conceptual expgsition for the order pf living production, and pf rational proofs for aesthetic proofs."32 Current events had become too pressing to be handled circuitously in the historical form; a symmetrical plot with intricate and entertaining relationships among characters would be a waste of time. In Donald Ringe's words, "Cooper no longer included so much of the rapidly paced adventure that making the books "33 characterized some of his earlier tales, instead more faithful to the real world. With Cooper's return to novel writing came an increased reliance on mimesis and the gradual movement toward the biographical form. The two Effingham novels, Homeward Bound and Home 3g_§pppd, embody, in miniature, the shift in emphasis from the historical form. Cooper's original intention was to write one novel, a critique of contemporary American society. The book was to start with the Effingham family's arrival in America, but the resumé of their voyage led to a demand for "more ship."* Homeward Bound, in its final state, retains the form of Cooper's earlier historical romances, but its setting is virtually con- temporary with its writing. The voyage also allows *This and all subsequent quotations from Cooper, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the so-called "Darley Edition," published by W. A. Townsend and Com- pany, New York, 1859-1861. The Darley Edition of Cooper's Novels is generally considered as standard. Citations to the quotations are given parenthetically in the text. 18 considerable time for social criticism. Although Stead- fast Dodge, the hypocritically egalitarian, smalltown editor, is constantly the butt of Effingham criticism, most of the targets Cooper had in mind were yet to be reached--at home in America. And in E222.E§.§222§.the Effinghams thoroughly ridicule contemporary American manners, including the foibles of the press, investors, common housewives--in short, the impudence of "the people." Whereas Homeward Bound coheres dramatically around the voyage, the plot of Heme 35 Eggpd is at best episodic: the sight-seeing and travels of the family provide the framework for their opinions. Except for some hackneyed devices of romance--the secret identity of Paul Powis, his romance with Eve Effingham, and a mysterious box of papers --the novel remains an abortive attempt to shape commentary on manners around the perceptions of fictional characters. But before he could make such material viable, C00per had to find a center of interest. His solution, evident in his characterization of Natty Bumppo revived for the last two acts of the Leather- stocking Saga,* The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841), is to emphasize--more than he had done in his *COOper himself called the completed Leather- stocking Tales "something like a drama in five acts; complete as to material and design, though quite probably very incomplete as to execution." (The Deerslayer [Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1841], p. viii.) 19 previous books--the motivation and sensibility of his central character. Rather than simply recording what happened, Cooper begins to probe how and why individuals act. Emphasis on thought and speech, complexity of indi- vidual characters, and often the deve10pment of a pro- tagonist characterize novels like The Deerslayer (1841), Afloat and Ashore (1844), and Satanstoe (1845). To vary- ing degrees, these books are informed by a central charac- ter's life. C00per had not, however, completed this shift in structure when he returned to novel-writing; for some time, in fact, his novels manifested characteristics of both the historical and the biographical forms. The Deerslayer, in particular, illustrates the assimilation of the two forms. While the novel contains an event in its entirety in keeping with the historical form, the former rapidity of movement has been replaced with lengthy conversations and a detailed delineation of Natty's past. Both devices establish a motivational con- text for his actions and ideas. Cooper now §h93§_what it takes to be a moral exemplar, rather than (as before) arbitrarily assigning such a role. Additionally, the social interaction of the principals of the book's plot generates comparisons among them, which are essential to The Deerslayer's statement. The comparisons in conjunction with Natty's successful completion of the initiatory events on the Glimmerglass attest to his moral superiority. 20 Thomas Philbrick, in James Fenimore Cooper and the Develop- ment 9£_American Sea Fiction, notes that The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer, and Afloat and Ashore are the first in- stances of C00per's subjecting his heroes to significant development; no longer are his protagonists intellectually 34 inert. While both The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer appear at the point in Cooper's development at which the historical form tends noticeably toward the biographical, The Deerslayer is the more representative: temporally compact, its plot resembles earlier books like The Bravo in intensity, but during one week Natty faces the funda- mental test of affirming all that his life has been to that point. Philbrick's perceptive study of Cooper's sea fiction further elaborates the pre-eminence of character in the later books, and his observations are confirmed in the novels set on land. Philbrick shows, for instance, that after 1830 C00per developed the personality of his seamen while diminishing that of their ships.35 And Cooper himself considered that Afloat and Ashore con- tained "more fidelity of portraiture of actual American 36 Philbrick's discussion of that life" than any other. novel includes a third characteristic of the biographi- cal form—-the complexity of character: no longer "toys of plot," sailors like Moses Marble and Ithuel Bolt (222. Wing-and-Wing [1842]) face dilemmas that elicit their total 21 humanity, not merely a demonstration of seamanship.37 Judith Hutter (The Deerslayer), Captain Willoughby and Saucy Nick (Wyandotté [1843]) rank with Marble among CooPer's most vital characters because of plausibly inter- nalized conflicts. His concern with an individual's capacity for good and evil produces characters possessing deep-seated ambivalence. Although Cooper never abandoned the historical form, he utilized the biographical form for a significant number of his late novels. Afloat and Ashore, Satanstoe (1845), The Crater (1847), and The Sea Lions (1849) are organized episodically for purposes of characterization. This is the most radical structural change in Cooper's work: "The loose chronological plot frees characteri- zation from dramatic exigencies and allows it to be developed without being cramped by the necessary prepa- "38 rations for a mythic end. Of the sea novels, Afloat and Ashore, consisting of four volumes instead of COOper's usual two, best exemplifies the structural pattern COOper adopted late in his career: In Afloat and Ashore . . . Cooper finally abandons the novel of mere nautical incident, the novel that is focused primarily on the sea as the epitome of wild nature and that depends for its interest and meaning on the representation of the ocean as the antithesis of human society. In the new emphasis on the seaman as man, the voyage becomes a shaping force; if mari- time crisis in the earlier novels had at best served only to reveal character, now it influences and deter- mines character. The voyager returns with a fresh vision, a new set of values; not merely disenchanted, he is a better man, a man who can perceive reality 22 and appraise it accurately. . . . Maritime life is now interesting not because it is far removed from common experience but because it offers meaningful parallels to the lives of all men.39 Man constantly confronts Nature in Cooper's fiction; the noblest characters revere their environment as a mani- festation of God's grace. As late as his next-to-last novel, Cooper put this proven technique to new use: "The process of Gardiner's conversion, the role played by natural sublimity in it, and the new vision of nature it effects . . . form the core of Tpg'§g§_§ipp§,"4o A sensitive reading of COOper depends to a great extent on one's willingness not to be content with superficial likenesses: Natty Bumppo, for instance, plays very different roles in the various Leatherstocking Tales; other techniques such as setting also evolve. To further his biographical and discursive pur- poses, Cooper introduces first-person narration-~"a ready "41 vehicle for ideas. In The Deerslayer, Natty's speech reveals Cooper's attempt to join narrator and hero, but only in the books with first-person point of view can he avoid the unnamed persona, who refracts the characters' thoughts and words through his own mind. Afloat and Ashore and the entire Littlepage Trilogy are narrated by their respective protagonists, whose ideas, though similar to C00per's own, need no longer be imposed from beyond the periphery of the fictive world. 23 Although the preponderance of ideas and opinions sometimes clutters Cooper's later novels, the hero and narrator of Satanstoe, Corny Littlepage, proves that Cooper could embody his ideology in a viable character. In the sense that Satanstoe presents events fundamental to the later Anti-Rent conflict, the novel functions his- torically, but the pervasive influence of the perceptions and opinions of Corny as well as his own central role make him the central formative element. The narrator's mellowed recounting of his own youth gives Satanstoe a disciplined quality painfully absent in The Chainbearer and The Red- gfiipg, The reader's full sympathy with Corny's motives for and efforts in settling his patent is a prerequisite to the success of Cooper's thesis in the Trilogy. Thus, the importance of full characterization of Corny--in the biographical form and through first-person narration—- produces in Satanstoe the best of Cooper's later novels.42 The structural importance of character in the novels of the 'forties must not be understated. In The Deerslayer, Afloat and Ashore, Satanstoe, The Chainbearer (1845), The Redskins (1846), The Crater (1847), Jack Tier (1848), and EEE.§EE.E$22§ (1849), Cooper's protagonists are prepared for the responsibilities of adulthood (i.e., a morally acceptable existence). Likewise, The Pathfinder, Mercedes pf Castile (1840), The Two Admirals (1842), Th3 Wipgfapdfflipg, Afloat and Ashore, The Crater, and The E22 Lions are stories of more experienced heroes facing vital 24 decisions that contribute to their continued development.* Paul Stein, in his unpublished dissertation, shows the dependence of such novels on the process of "becoming," as opposed to that of "revealing" used in books of the 'twen- 43 ties and early 'thirties. The Spy and The Bravo gradually uncover the identity of static characters, but The Deer- slayer and Satanstoe develop known personages. In the early novels, Stein continues, the removal of masks is "a fictional metaphor for the revelation of truth" essen- tial for man's understanding of his moral and social milieu, but C00per eventually comes to rely on juxtaposition to express "what man does with his understanding to make a better life."44 In the later plots, "the character's personal traits are ramified so as to make more significant the gradual shifts worked in the character during a plot which has a temporal basis."45 By a detailed study of the four representative books--The Spy, The Bravo, The Deerslayer, and Satanstoe-- one can recognize that Cooper possessed the artistic sensibility to adapt the form of his novels to differing purposes. Varying emphasis upon plot and character to generate theme constitutes an unrecognized facet of *I mention Afloat and Ashore in these two sen- tences since it consists of Miles Wallingford's entire life. The repetition of The Sea Lions results from the nature of Gardiner's experience: he is a seasoned sailor, but religiously he is a naif. 25 Cooper's contribution to the deve10pment of the American novel and distinguishes his work from that of his literary forebears. The four novels, then, stand as the products of America's first professional novelist's attempts to conceptualize pressing concerns. The Americanization of traditional novel forms proved an unending process as his own priorities changed. That he was not consistently successful in his efforts results from the elusive combi- nation of personal limitations and those of his time, but in these four books he reached his greatest success, per- haps because they each contain vital structural challenges that he had to answer during their composition. II "IMAGINATIVE LIGHT OVER AMERICAN HISTORY": THE SPY AND AFTER In 1862 The Atlantic Monthly assigned The Spy the place in American literary history that it has occupied ever since: "it was the first successful attempt to throw an imaginative light over American history, and to do for our country what the author of 'Waverly' had done for Scotland."1 Inspired by John Jay's story of an anonymous American agent during the War for Independence, Cooper applied his own knowledge of Westchester County-~its legends and its landscape--to EEE.§EXF é.22l§.2£.£§2. Neutral Ground. He chose for his genre the historical romance as perfected by Sir Walter Scott and borrowed such structural devices as the ambiguities of a Neutral Ground between two opposing armies, the hero as a mysterious benefactor, and the collaboration of upper and lower class protagonists. As in Scott's novels, things happen quickly in 222 Spy, Into the first hundred pages alone, Cooper packed introductory material, the appearance of a mysteri- ous gentleman, the arrival of a peddler whose words 26 27 carry extraordinary significance, the capture of a dis- guised British officer behind American lines, a meeting of lovers, and a skirmish between regular troops. Vitality of plot guaranteed The Spy's popularity: as The North American Review remarked in 1822, "The flight, the hot pursuit, the charge, the victory, pass before you with the rapidity, and the distinctness too, of the forked lightning which plays in the summer cloud; and the reader, not less than the writer, is irresistibly borne on by the subject."2 In writing EEE.§EXJ Cooper was mindful both of his material and of his audience. Having decided to fiction- alize history, his concern was with the totality of plot-- "3 He fleshed out what Scholes and Kellogg call "event. Jay's anecdote, which is briefly related in the novel's revised Preface, with material from the oral history of Westchester County. To unify dramatically the plot he devised, Cooper chose a structure similar to that of a play: Tpg_§py_is comprised of five definite sequences of related occurrences, divided like acts, each of which builds to a definite climax; complications in each part of the novel influence the action of subsequent sections. As such, Tpg_§py_is an example of what Howard Mumford Jones calls "the classical novel": "The classical novel is a story with a plot. The concept of plot carries with it the assumption of a firm intellectual and, as it were, externalized control of narrative, whether the tale be 28 simple or complex. By intellectual externalized structure I mean in the first place structure intelligible as idea, not as caprice, and in the second place structure approach- ing the conditions of drama as usually defined."4 Pro- fessor Jones' concept of "intellectual externalized struc- ture" thus provides a particularly appropriate explanation of Tpg_§pyfs durability: put simply, the book's plot dramatically supports its theme. Not only does EEE.§EX. have a suspenseful, mysterious, and exciting narrative, but the fictionalized event assumes a universal signifi- cance that constitutes the book's theme. The dramatic analogy5 is useful in analyzing Cooper's early work: novels structured dramatically neces- sarily lead the reader toward some climatic scene, which in retrospect should be able to withstand critical scrutiny. The author's design need not be apparent while the reader is immersed in the story but must be justifiable upon re- flection. In fact, Cooper himself compares his novels with the drama: he talks about the "dramatis personae" and of "lowering the curtain of our imperfect drama" in The Pilot (435) and Specifically calls The Red Rover a "drama" (511). In The Pioneers, he imitates the syntax of stage directions: "When the curtain rises on the reader, the Judge is seen walking up and down the apartment" (358). Habitual as such terminology must have become, Cooper's reliance upon Shakespeare for epigraphs suggests more than a mindless 29 adherence to custom. Cooper seems to have understood that the integrity of his historical romances, like that of Shakespeare's histories, depends on the successful and interesting fusion of varied material into dramatic form. The implications of this are far-reaching. A pri- mary purpose in telling a good story--which Cooper could certainly do--is the involvement of one's audience. Co- herence of plot is paramount, and action must transpire rapidly: for instance, The Pilot's first thirty-four chapters require five days, and The Water-Witch spans but a week. Intervals are often simply omitted: Lionel Lincoln's leave and recuperation hardly interrupt the book's action; a week—long lull in The Red Rover is briefly mentioned in Chapter 18; years pass in Chapter 17 of The Wept pf Wish-ton-Wish before the book rushes to its end. The Spy also transpires rapidly, between October 29 and November 14, 1780. Additionally, Cooper knew his audience well enough to include a love plot in The Pilot "to relieve the more strictly nautical features of the work" (x). His ability to spin a good yarn makes his early novels doubly dramatic: not only are they structurally reminiscent of the drama, but they generate the excitement implicit in the word "dramatic." Furthermore, COOper's concern with drama governs characterization: exigencies of plot rather than fidelity to human complexity determine the extent of delineation. 30 Contrary to Arvid Shulenberger's claim, COOper's later books are more realistic in this respect, for then, as Donald Ringe and Thomas Philbrick have documented, his narratives adhere more closely to factual sources and his characters attain complexity of motivation.6 But he is purposely vague about his early characters, such as Oliver Edwards in The Pioneers: "It must have been obvious to all our readers that the youth entertained an unusually and deeply seated prejudice against the character of the Judge; but, owing to some counteracting cause, his sen- sations were now those of powerful interest in the state of his patron's present feeling, and in the cause of his secret uneasiness" (311). Secrecy, of course, is essen- tial in the early books. Referring to Harry Wilder in 222 Red Rover, Cooper writes, "We shall not, at this period of the narrative, enter into a detail of the feelings and policy which induced our adventurer to plot against the apparent interests of those with whom he had so recently associated himself; it is enough for our present object, that the facts themselves should be distinctly set before the reader" (142). Likewise, in The Water-Witch Cornbury's presentiment of the illegality of Van Beverout's business is not immediately confirmed, but left to "the course of the narrative" (28). In such books, where the "mode of revealing"7 is C00per's basic ploy, battles or exciting escapes and rescues--not moments of profound insight or 31 decision-~prove most memorable. Not until later in his career does Cooper ask his reader to fret over a charac- ter's determination of his own fate. The importance of dramatic qualities causes one to wonder just how faithful the historical romances are to reality. Certainly, the characters are one-dimensional. Moreover, Cooper insists in prefaces written both in the 1820's and for later editions of the same novels that he has fictionalized history. Therefore, books like 222. Pioneers, The Last pf the Mohicans, The Red Rover, The Wept pf Wish-ton-Wish, and The Water-Witch--each an embodiment of American lore in the historical form--must be regarded as imaginative recreations of their respective episodes. Cooper's intent in Tpg_flgppf-"to perpetuate the recollection of some of the practices and events peculiar to the early days of the history" (v)--applies to all his early novels. The Pioneers especially fulfills this dictum: he includes a Frenchman, Le Quoix, "Because no picture of that country would be faithful without some such character" (494). Cooper himself provides in his 1850 Preface to Tag Pioneers the most useful means of determining the amount of truth in the early novels: things taken from the real world he calls "literal fact," but characters or incidents intended only to seem real he calls "general picture" (ix). He regards "delineation of principles, and of characters 32 in their classes" (ix) as appropriate in novels. Too much literal fact would ruin "the charm of fiction" (ix). Thus, when referring to fiction he rarely distinguishes between truth and plausibility. Of Thg'gpy_he says, "We do not absolutely aver, that the whole of our tale is true; but we honestly believe that a good portion of it is; and we are very certain, that every passion recorded in the volumes before the reader, has and does exist."8 He denies in the Preface to The Prairie that the lack of authority for an incident reflects negatively on its 9 validity. "Probability," which is his justification for including the forest fire in The Pioneers (404), is the main criterion for the imaginative recreation of history. As he argues in The Red Rover, specific facts need not be literally true as long as they resemble circumstances from 10 real life. COOper even defends anachronisms in the much- researched Lionel Lincoln as "connected with circumstances much more probable than facts" and as having "all the harmony of poetic coloring" (11). Neither the excesses of the Gothic and sentimental novels, nor "fastidious attention to originals" (The Pioneers, ix) is appropriate in historical romance. COOper frequently uses the term "narrative" to exclude an "imaginary and romantic picture 11 calling instead of things which never had an existence," for the recreation of character and incident as they might have been. 33 Fidelity to literal fact, however, often governs his rendition of setting. The Pioneers, an intentionally "Descriptive Tale," draws more than others upon "that which he had known, rather than that which he might have imagined" (ix). In rendering Judge Temple's home, for instance, "the Author indulged his recollections freely when he entered the door. Here all is literal" (ix). Particularly attrac- tive landscapes also receive careful treatment: for example, his lingering description of Glens Falls during the chase in The Last pf the Mohicans. Furthermore, Cooper prides himself on the accuracy of nautical detail and claims that The Pilot is meant to "present truer pic- tures" than those in Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate (viii). The foremost criterion in an analysis of C00per's early fiction, therefore, must be the novel's structure. The dramatic qualities inherent in the historical form and his reliance on plausible detail make structure crucial to a book's success. With these precepts in mind, we can approach COOper's first full-length venture in the his- torical romance--T§g Spy, which, as Arvid Shulenberger states, best represents Cooper's craft and themes in his 12 That this book, written first decade of writing novels. at the outset of his career, manifests skills of a sophisticated craftsman is to his credit, but Cooper himself has to admit that "faults . . . interwoven with the structure of the tale" (xi) eventually violate the book's dramatic integrity. 34 Just how deliberate a writer COOper was during the 13 The composition of 223 Spy is, of course, problematic. imminence of action and confrontation at the outset propels the reader into the book: destruction looms over the Neutral Ground and the Wharton household; hostile armies converge for battle; Henry Wharton, a British officer, has risked his life crossing American lines in disguise to see his family (and in the immediate wake of Major André's capture and execution). The storm, which rages during the opening chapters, holds the principals in close, uneasy proximity; with the advent of favorable weather, the stasis dissolves and the conflicts develop. Subsequently, individual chapters advance the action with the dramatic integrity of scenes in a play.14 And the structuring of the entire novel is intentional, though sometimes artifi- cial. Nevertheless, Cooper considered his book "a de- cayed edifice" (xi) because his method of composition was not deliberate enough. When it appeared to his publisher that Th2 Spy was becoming inordinately long, he ordered the final chapter to be "written, printed, and paged several weeks before the chapters which precede it were even thought of" (xi). Despite the authorial control evident in most of the book, Cooper could not neatly fit his narrative to the ending he had already submitted. His adaptation of John Jay's tale remained an exciting, though flawed, novel in the historical form. 35 C00per's attempt to use a complete and fascinating event to generate theme is reflected in TEE Spy's structure. Part I (Chapters 1-7) sets the general situation of the novel, introducing characters representative of contending forces in the rest of the book. The three middle sections of the five-part structure deal with specific individuals. Part II (Chapters 8-14) traces the decline of Harvey Birch's fortunes before his imprisonment. Similarly, the state of the Wharton family reaches a seeming nadir in Part III (Chapters 15-22). Part IV (Chapters 23-29), recounting the trial and miraculous escape of Henry Wharton, virtually concludes the main story. Having resolved these separate situations, the narrative resumes a more general relevance in Part V (Chapters 30-35) to "impart . . . some funda- mental truth."15 Although the causal relationships among the first four parts are generally firm, the attempted apotheosis of Birch and the rushed conclusion in Part V attenuate an otherwise compelling construct. Tremaine McDowell concludes that the inadequacy of the ending 16 One does reveals Cooper's lack of literary instinct. wonder, though, what Cooper could have made of the novel if his publisher had not restricted its length. As is, EES.§EX shows symptoms of stunted growth. C00per recreated the event in a conventional fashion: predictable conflicts initiate the plot; its patterns, in turn, suggest, by their repetition and incrementation, a 36 theme; setting lends context for the action and a symbolic restatement of the theme. A closer examination of Egg Spy's structure illuminates particular difficulties: how to unify the multi-faceted construct; how to present a hero whose real role is unknown to the major characters; how to round off a story that was growing like a contrary adolescent. Part I (1-7) opens with a stranger (Mr. Harper-- in reality George Washington) riding past an unnamed farm- house, whose owner suddenly scurries into his woodlot for cover. A storm, looming over the autumnal bleakness, amplifies the initial terror. Given these foreboding details, Mr. Wharton's desperate neutrality, maintained in the hope of protecting his property regardless of the war's outcome, seems threatened even by the presence of the peddler, Harvey Birch. With this predicament established, Cooper inserts a flashback (Chapter 2) to the Wharton's New York drawing room. There, before the war, a dapper Englishman, Colonel Wellmere, and a diffident colonist, Peyton Dunwoodie, meet during an apparent uneasy romantic truce. We are told, in Part I, that these men command the opposing regular forces. By the time their tr00ps engage in the first skirmish of the book (Chapter 7), within sight of the Locusts, the Wharton cottage, the feelings of all the characters are involved in the outcome: Henry Wharton, now a captive of the Americans, depends for his 37 freedom on an English victory; Frances Wharton, Dunwoodie's cousin and fiancée, trembles for her lover; her sister, Sarah, proudly predicts a British victory, in keeping with her enthusiasm for anything English; Mr. Wharton's pos- sessions are suddenly in a most precarious location. Chapter 7 climaxes and unifies Part I, but concludes nothing: even in defeat the British threaten the American forces and the Whartons; Henry, having escaped and been recaptured, remains guilty of the same offense as the executed André and faces probable death. Part II (8-14) begins to amplify Harvey Birch's dilemma. During Part I hints of his involvement with "Harper" indicate that Harvey is more than the peddler he seems; indeed, the other characters suSpect him of being a British agent since he has access to New York City and has been instrumental in spiriting Henry through the American lines. In Part II, Cooper contrasts the perse- cution that Harvey suffers as a suspected Tory with the abundance the other characters, who are no more deserving, enjoy. As the love relationships of Fanny and Dunwoodie and Sarah and Wellmere prOSper, Harvey is first chased by Captain Lawton and his Virginians and then threatened by the Skinners, nominally American guerillas of dubious intentions, whose plans of depredation are initially thwarted only by the spectral figure of Harvey's dying father. The contrast between Harvey and the others 38 culminates with the sumptuous dinner at the Locusts, to which everyone but Birch is invited, and which fills an entire chapter. The narrative immediately reverts to Harvey's humble cottage, to which the Skinners return, Harvey having buried his father that day. This time, they pillage and burn the place and carry Birch off to Captain Lawton. Harvey's deprivation by this time war- rants our sympathy. To become an admirable hero, how- ever, he will have to prove his worth. Since his earlier achievements-—serving Harper as a spy and helping Henry through American lines--occur offstage, his effectuality has not yet been objectified. The victimization of the Whartons in Part III (15-22) is Harvey's chance to prove himself to the reader. Birch escapes from Lawton and devotes himself to sur- veillance of the devious guerillas. Despite his alertness, the climactic fire, which in various ways attracts all the characters to the Locusts by the end of Part III, destroys most of the Whartons' possessions, leaves Sarah raving mad and Mr. Wharton mentally incapacitated. Harvey himself, on the other hand, has risen Phoenix-like from his own misfortunes: he issues cryptic warnings to Dunwoodie about the Skinners and alerts Sergeant Hollister to bring reinforcements against them at the Locusts; he unmasks the villainous Wellmere before his bigamous wedding to Sarah can be performed and then personally saves her from 39 the fire set by the Skinners. By the end of Part III, Harvey's decisiveness distinguishes him, especially from Mr. Wharton, who never makes up his mind on the war. Even though the other characters do not know Harvey's real motives and loyalty, his total dedication to the welfare of the others, which causes no conflict with his ulterior loyalty to Washington, enables Harvey to avoid the inef- fectuality of Mr. Wharton. Like the previous sections, Part III decides little: the sudden death of the lovely Isabella Stapleton removes her as Fanny's rival for Dun- woodie's affections, but Henry's trial looms ever nearer. The needless destruction of the Locusts--besides parallel- ing the burning of Birch's house at the end of Part II-- reinforces the lawlessness and moral ambiguity of the Neutral Ground. The conclusion of Part III leaves the collected characters little alternative but to proceed to Fishkill for the trial. Part IV (23-29) relieves Dunwoodie of his responsibility for the immediate fate of his cousin Henry and reaches a climax unexpectedly with Henry's escape. Washington, lacking plausible means as American commander of pardoning Henry, commissions Birch to save young Wharton, in return for the favor of hospitality which the Whartons extended "Harper" at the story's outset. Birch enters the American camp, disguised as a New England preacher accompanied by a Negro, whose clothing is eventually transferred to Henry, facilitating the 4O escape. Harvey's intervention on Henry's behalf, his most noteworthy action in the novel, demonstrates Birch's dexterity and total dedication to Washington; the relative obscurity of the achievement only confirms Harvey's loyalty. Concurrent with the main action of Part IV, Fanny agrees to marry Dunwoodie, so with the assurance of Henry's safety, most of the action of the book is complete. Only Fanny suspects Birch's connection with Harper, Harvey's secret role precluding acknowledgment of his patriotism. Thus, the story could end quite simply, with another battle and summaries of the principals' lives. Cooper, however, had already submitted that final chapter. Part V (30-35), therefore, must include the denouement as well as link the narrative to the last chapter. Chapters 30-33 perform the former function, re- solving the roles of the principals, except Harvey's. Fanny becomes the only person to know of Birch's con- nection with Harper after she climbs at night to the hut she had seen from the road as the party journeyed toward Fishkill. The implausibility of her climb tends to be- little Harvey and Henry's escape, but once there, she finds Harper, who allows her to see Henry and then leads her down the mountain, advising her to marry Dunwoodie immediately to delay any American pursuit of the fugi- tives. With Henry's approval (since his father is no longer accountable for his own actions), the wedding is 41 performed in Chapter 31. When the Virginians set out after Henry, Washington countermands the order. In Chapter 32, the fugitives pass troops readying for battle and reach asylum on a British ship. The battle in Chapter 33 in- volves the same troops that fought at the end of Part I. With the main action complete, Cooper devotes Chapters 34 and 35 to Birch's apotheosis. First, Harvey is seen refusing remuneration from Washington, in a scene based on the meeting recounted by John Jay between the still unidentified spy and, not Washington, but Jay him- self. Then, thirty-five years later, Birch dies fighting the British near Niagara Falls during the War of 1812. Cooper's own knowledge of that region provided the setting for the final chapter. In his attempt to administer poetic justice and reiterate Harvey's selflessness, how- ever, Cooper violates an otherwise unified time scheme and setting. Furthermore, new characters, the progeny of several of the novel's principals, introduced solely to discover Birch's true role in the Revolution, contribute instead to the self-conscious, mechanical manner of the ending. Even the reader's expectation of learning Harvey's fate does not fully justify C00per's elaborate conclusion. One certainly wants to know what happened to a figure totally alienated from the people he served, but Cooper's customary summary of lives, which in Egg Spy_encompasses everyone but Harvey, would have been a more appropriate mode. 42 Nevertheless, Part V does serve important struc- tural functions. The representative nature of the charac- ters is reiterated. Dunwoodie speculates to Fanny, "Will you send me out this night to meet my own brother [i.e., Henry]? or will it be the officer of Congress in quest of the officer of Britain?" (418) Washington, in his farewell to Birch, calls him the most trusted of all his agents (425). In Parts I and V, especially, Cooper connects the incidents in [pa Spy_with the rest of the War, giving his narrative credibility as well as universality. Part V also rounds off the shape of the narrative. Dunwoodie and Fanny finally marry; the armies sweep together in battle like the final curtain of a drama. But it is probably Harper's contemplation of the fugitives' dilemma that is most revealing of Cooper's method. Harper's discussion with Fanny balances his appearance in Part I and develops his character to Olympian proportions: "all who dwell in this broad land," he confides, after assuring Fanny he can control Henry's fate (407), "are my children, and my care" (412). And with Harper's assuming godlike stature, one is justified in calling his agent, Birch, a dgp§_gx_machina. One cannot avoid the conclusion, though, that C00per's desire to re-introduce Washington hinders the movement of the plot generated from the careful preparation for Henry's trial. 43 Still, the major structural problems result from¢ the nature of Birch. For reasons that are dramatic rather than intellectual, Harvey emerges as a simple but engaging hero. His ideas are not as stimulating as Natty's in The Deerslayer, nor does he face decisions as difficult as Jac0po's in Tpg_§r§yg. We thrill at and wonder about Birch, and his mystery and ambivalence are satisfying thematically. Most important, the sparse characterization does not, until the end, impede the plot's rapidity. In- stead of stressing Harvey's emotional complexity, Cooper assimilates our admiration for Harvey's constancy and bravery into our reactions to the entire event in the novel. Like the other static characters, Birch performs, and we see what he does more than what he thinks. He is ubiquitous in his achievements and usually reticent about himself. Also, he behaves appropriately for his low social class and humble occupation, but never descends to the level of the buffoon, as do other low-life characters in Egg §py. Having accepted as a condition of his employ- ment by Washington the fact that his role will never be published, Birch is as craggy and deceptive as the Neutral Ground itself. He adapts to the wartime wasteland and is not paralyzed with indecision. If C00per had been content to let Harvey's perseverance and dexterity Speak for his Spy, there would have been no need for the artificial ending we are left with. 44 Even though characterization immediately reveals Cooper's literary naiveté in EEE.§EXJ his use of the principals within the structure is vital to the book's meaning. The Wharton sisters, for example, are one- dimensional characters: they uphold Opposing causes in the War, and once we are told their loyalties, which remain static, their predictability precludes further intellectual interest in their views. Nevertheless, Cooper manages satisfactorily to assimilate such characters into plots of love and war. Recalling that the novel in the early nine- teenth century was frequently little more than a love story, we must regard Egg Spy's diversity as a considerable achievement. Dunwoodie's reconciliation of his love for Fanny and her family with his sense of duty fuses the plots; although the attribution of opposing views to the sisters is too pat, it also makes love and war finally inseparable. Compare Cooper's success in 222 §EX with structural problems in The Last pf the Mohicans: Major Heyward and Alice Munro try to carry on a prOper court- ship in the ominous, anarchic forest around Fort William Henry, but Heyward's ineffectuality limits his heroism to the love plot alone, while Natty, Chingachgook, and Uncas diSplace him in the war plot. War is the major business in Tpg_§py, too, but romances, especially as they parallel the war, contribute to the book's movement and the appli- cability of its themes. 45 While some of the geometry of Th3 Spy is "caprice," in several ways it makes "structure intelligible as idea." Donald Ringe has explicated COOper's use of the motif of false appearance to generate the ironies that constitute 17 the characters and their actions the book's theme: rarely escape the ambivalence typical of--and necessary in --the Neutral Ground. Second, juxtaposition encourages the reader to infer meaning: Washington's post-war fame con- trasts with Birch's apparent infamy; Henry and Dunwoodie, while on Opposite sides in the war, retain their sense of honor and duty deSpite conflicting personal obligations.18 Similarly, the fires at the end of Parts II and III rein- force the ironic contrast between Birch and the Whartons: Harvey is wrongly punished because of his complete, if covert, commitment; the Whartons suffer openly and receive almost everyone's sympathy and yet are never really com- mitted. Finally, brevity intensifies the novel's plot and renders it a coherent whole. Parts I and II take five days; Part III requires three days, with a week omitted before the burning of the Locusts; much of the three days of Part IV is comprised of the journey to Fishkill. Only when Cooper's aims become biographical, in Chapters 34 and 35, is his tight time-scheme relaxed. And unity of time is but one, quite superficial manifestation of the historical form. Without the unity inherent in the plot, temporal coherence would be 46 meaningless. Part I of 229 Spy, for instance, holds the germ of the rest of the action: the Whartons, Henry, and Birch incur risks; the next three parts play out the re- sults. Harvey's ubiquity and symbolical qualities, in conjunction with those of the Neutral Ground, unify the plot. More fundamentally, conflict unites the novel: as Marius Bewley notes, "In the Revolutionary novels the moral dilemma gives rise to, and controls, the dramatic action. It is the principle of cohesion among the scattered epi- sodes, which, without it, would merely range themselves in long and rambling narratives of random adventure."19 Reader interest thus lies in the tension between disruption and resolution. In The Last pf the Mohicans, for example, we ygpp_the father-quest and the daughter-quest to be com— pleted and the conflicts resolved. Similarly, the oppo- sition of the forces of disruption (Magua SE.§£°) and those of order (Natty 35.31.), comparable to that of strOphe and anti-strOphe, creates tension.20 Such dramatic situations suggest possible solutions, from which Cooper chose the ones that actually conclude the story. When a novel has the symmetry of Egg Spy, another type of tension is intro- duced, for we are pleased with balance in design and want it to be fully realized. Still, completion of event, whether symmetrical or not, is fundamental to historical romance. In fact, Cooper's attempt to complete the "life" of Birch might-well have discouraged him from further 47 biographical ventures. As Cooper admits in Tpg_ngp, "duty as faithful historians of the events recorded" (135) dictates what is to be included; the author must add enough material "that may be necessary to the connexion of the subsequent parts of the legend" (296). In the ending of 222 Spy, he oversteps the bounds of necessity. Conflict and recurrent motifs appear almost in- evitably in Cooper's work, and so does another technique-- setting as Neutral Ground. The significance of Tag.§py's subtitle-~"A Tale of the Neutral Ground"--must not be over- looked. As Ringe observes, "Beginning with TthSpy, the physical setting both defines the problem in, and sets 21 In this case, the moral tone for, many of his ideas." the ravaged no-man's land outside the realm of law empha- sizes the importance of the struggle for survival and the need for commitment. Gratuitous destruction is a constant threat. Inhabitants constantly fear the inroads of either army and their guerilla allies. Such an environment immediately tests the adaptability of the individuals. Harvey's thin, hunched figure often seems but one of the mysteries of the terrain, and he proves to be most success- ful in the primitive life-style dictated by the Neutral Ground. Cooper's novels inevitably include some version of the neutral ground: the sea, the ship, the wilderness, and the city can serve equally well as settings for 48 individual and social conflicts. One of the most basic struggles in his novels is the quest for supremacy--who will determine the law of a newly settled area (or the ship without a nation). One might question, as George Dekker does, how deliberate was Cooper's choice of a neutral area for Tpg_§pyfs setting: "The striking thing about this pattern," Dekker says, "is that it seems to emerge naturally from Cooper's materials: we suspect that the 'neutral ground' of any war would yield such human contrasts--if only the novelist would narrow his focus and wait for Mr. Whartons, the double agents, the Cowboys, the Skinners to reveal themselves, before disappearing again when the hostile battalions march openly onto the stage."22 Quite likely, in the case of Tpg_§py, Dekker is right. COOper chose "the Neutral Ground" for his setting because it had been the setting of the actual historical inci- dents, and the fact that Scott had used the same device as the setting for ethnic confrontations would only have reaffirmed the propriety of and the potential for such a technique in an American novel. Nevertheless, Cooper's satisfaction with the metaphor of the neutral ground, which lends itself to the dramatic nature of the classical novel, is apparent from the frequent reapplication of the motif. Structurally, a setting that permeates a novel as the Neutral Ground does The Spy provides a vital base for 49 a historical romance, which entails the activities of numerous characters more or less equal in prominence. Although Birch is the hero of EEE.§EXJ the novel's col- lective focus allows it (and the other historical romances) to function as "a dialectic between Opposing sides, with "23 And while plot and the answer held in suspension. patterning generate theme, theme in turn functions struc- turally--as the principle for the selection of subject matter. In order to evaluate Tpg_§py, we must consider the significance of its subject and the coherence of the event presented. Dekker's questioning of the achievement of the novel in terms of the inevitability of its conflict and character types is justified--so long as he does not demand characterization to an extent that might disrupt the historical form. As is, IES.§EX collects the principals into a story of a compelling, if sometimes simplistic, dramatic impact to objectify a significant social theme-- the matter of commitment to a cause. Although verity of landscape, attenuation of character, and invention of incident characterize Cooper's earliest fiction, the historical form, with all the dra- matic qualities it implies, makes them primarily books of action. Novels like ZEE.§EX that survive mainly on the merits of their plots simply do not engage readers on the basis of fascinating internalized conflicts: Natty Bumppo in The Last pf the Mohicans and The Prairie is fully 50 confident of his values; Judge Temple does not hesitate to administer justice although he has some conflicting per- sonal emotions regarding Natty; Birch invariably follows Washington's orders. Although false appearance is usually responsible for ambivalence in Cooper's early fiction, Mr. Wharton is one of several characters who embody some inner conflict. Cooper also tries to make Mr. Grey a complex figure in The Pilot, but the seamy side of the historical John Paul Jones remains hidden in cryptic allusions. Most notably, Lionel Lincoln cannot decide which side to support in the Revolution, but that novel's confusion obliterates any substantial ambivalence of character. The bisection of Thglflgpp,p£|Wigpfpppffligh proves instructive regarding characterization within a dramatic structure: initially, Mark Heathcote's pious militance orders the settlement; when the narrative resumes after a period of years, the demagogue, Meek Wolfe, personifying the malignant features of Puritanism, governs the community. During the 'twenties Cooper does not conceive of one protagonist to span such a fundamental conflict, and in this period of his career dramatic structure must project theme: setting and charac— ter, while extant, are functions of plot. These books are intended to entertain; American lore was rich enough in dramatic possibilities to provide COOper with material for an entire decade of historical romances. III "BEYOND OUR OWN BOUNDED VISION": THE BRAVO Following his success with the historical romance in The Spy, Cooper in his next eight novels continued to fictionalize American history. He utilized situations from colonial times (The Last pf the Mohicans, The Red the Revolution (The Pilot, Lionel Lincoln), as well as from the early National era (The Pioneers) as bases for his romances. This period (1821-1830) was the happiest of COOper's writing career: he was at peace with himself, and his work evidences satisfaction, even pride, in the heritage of his country. Of course, he thought America had its shortcomings, but one would never anticipate from these novels the bitterness that would come to the surface in Homeward Bound and Home 25 Found. In fact, The Water- EEESE (1830), his last American novel for almost a decade, is the most carefree book he ever wrote. Its plot (occurring c. 1710) was as remote from contemporary Amer— ica as COOper himself had become living in Europe for almost four years. 51 52 He had devoted a substantial portion of those years to politics: he had been a close observer of Euro- 'pean government and had given his verbal and financial support to the popular revolutions fermenting in the late 'twenties. He detected in the reactionary regimes of post-Napoleonic Europe unmistakable symptoms of malaise and by this time considered himself qualified to educate his countrymen about the Old World. His first European novel, The Bravo, reveals the oppressiveness of a proto- typical continental government, which--unlike American democracy--"boasted much of its antiquity, and dreaded in an equal degree, its end" (325). Thg_§r2yp's structure reveals Cooper's political interests and demonstrates the form he had been developing. Another venture in the historical form, the book differs from earlier novels chiefly in the pre-eminence its thesis assumes. COOper's intent in The Bravo is to illustrate the contention that "a government which is not properly based on the people possesses an unavoidable and oppressive evil of the first magnitude, in the necessity of supporting itself by physical force and onerous impositions, against the natural action of the majority" (vii). Cooper's method is entirely appropriate for the historical form: he in- tends, as he states in the Preface, "to set forth the familiar operations of Venetian policy" (v-vi). Thus, the completeness and inclusiveness of the "picture" is 53 essential to his ends, for as we have seen in examining The Spy, the historical form is most useful in depicting a total event. Although The Bravo is another example of COOper's use of the historical form, it manifests a sig- nificant deve10pment in his art: not only are all the familiar fictional elements directed toward the objectifi- cation of the thesis, but Cooper also takes a tentative step toward complexity in characterization by internalizing a conflict within his hero, JaCOpo. Although his intentions in writing the book were just as "American" as the impulses behind his previous work, EEE,§£222.W35 from the time of its publication a misunderstood production. In conveying to "his country- men . . . a picture of the social system of one of the soi-disant republics of the other hemisphere" (v), Cooper wished to inform, and even warn, America of dangers out- side the national experience. He asserted in the Preface that "A history of the progress of political liberty, written purely in the interests of humanity" is "a de- sideratum for literature" (vi). Although Cooper had hopes, apparently, of T§§_§£3yp's partially fulfilling this "desideratum," the American public largely misread the book as the work of an aloof aristocrat, not someone interested in the fortunes of his country. On the other hand, scholars of our own time, most notably Marius Bewley, have misinterpreted The Bravo as "a bitter satire on what 54 [Cooper] believed already existed in America, and which he saw the Democratic party alone as opposing."l Cooper's aim was, in fact, precautionary, not prescriptive. In his Preface he carefully distinguishes between the political systems of Venice and the United States: "It is scarcely necessary to tell the reader, that this freedom, be it more or less, depends on a principle entirely different from our own. Here the immunities do not proceed from, but they are granted to, the government, being in other words, concessions of natural rights made by the people to the state, for the benefits of social protection" (vi). Moreover, "a people of diversified interests and extended territorial possessions, are much less likely to be the subjects of sinister passions than the inhabitants of a single town or country" (vii-viii). Cooper defended TEE Bravo in A_Letter pp His Countrymen as "$2 Spirit, the 2 most American book I ever wrote." While there should be no doubt as to his intentions--for the book itself con- tains any number of denouncements of authoritarian govern- ment--Tpg’§£2yg, comprised of several stories of political oppression, all assimilated with one another and supported by a setting of remarkable vitality and symbolic resonance, stands at least as Cooper's most compelling political novel, if not the best novel he ever wrote. From its very outset, an opening chapter remi- niscent of the first scene of Julius Caesar, The Bravo 55 sustains the vital tension of form and content, a diffi- cult achievement in a book so definitely didactic. Immedi— ately, two minor characters, Gino Monaldi and Stefano Milano, engage in a chat that evolves from a jovial re- union to a serious conversation: "Hast thou an oar for that race?" [asks Stefano.] "Giorgio's, or mine, under the patronage of San Teodoro. The prize will be a silver gondola to him who is lucky or skilful enough to win; and then we shall have the nuptials with the Adriatic." "Thy nobles had best woo the bride well; for there are heretics who lay claim to her good will. I met a rover of strange rig and miraculous fleet- ness, in rounding the headlands of Otranto, who seemed to have half a mind to follow the felucca in her path toward the Lagunes." (20) Stefano's allusion to the political precariousness of Venice taints the otherwise festive occasion. The conversation contains additional references to the unspoken fears grip- ping the citizens; then a memorable personage appears: "His years were under thirty, though the calm gravity of his countenance imparted to it a character of more mature age. The cheeks were bloodless, but they betrayed rather the pallid hue of mental than of bodily disease. . . . The face was melancholy rather than sombre, and its perfect repose accorded well with the striking calmness of the body. . . . Out of this striking array of features gleamed an eye that was full of brilliancy, meaning, and passion" (17-18). "JaCOpo!" Gino gasps. "His companion raised three of his fingers, with an occult meaning, towards the 56 palace of the doges" (18). This apparently terrific man, Jacopo, is none other than "the Bravo," reputedly the state's surest stiletto. Stefano's three raised fingers allude to the inquisitional Council of Three, the body that formulates the oppressive policies of Venice. That such matters occupy the attention of Gino and Stefano, both commoners and foreigners, suggests the pervasiveness of political concerns in COOper's Venice. In the Opening chapter, and throughout the book, COOper assimilates setting, plot, and character into a dramatization of the decadence and duplicity of the Venetian system. An early passage not only describes the city's location, but derives symbolic meaning from its geological origin: Several torrents which flow from the valley of the Alps pour their tribute into the Adriatic at this point. Their waters come charged with the debris of the mountains, pulverized nearly to their original elements. Released from the violence of the stream, these particles have necessarily been deposited in the gulf, at the spot where they have first become subjected to the power of the sea. Under the influ- ence of counteracting currents, eddies, and waves, the sands have been thrown into submarine piles, until some of the banks have arisen above the sur- face, forming islands, whose elevation has been gradually augmented by the decay of vegetation. (31-32) Venice's crowds are motley and frenzied, for the city is a melting pot. Although her political power has waned, Venice is still a proud mercantile state and an ideal port. Nevertheless, just as the city's cosmOpolitan 57 nature is threatened by a "gradual filling up of the waters, by the constant deposit of the streams" (33), the city-state is also subject to political decay. Similarly, the populace, whose "dwellings arise literally from out of the water" (33),3 have been infected by Venice's corruption. The heart of the city is the piazza, in which crowds convene nightly to pursue their pleasures and intrigues. The impressionistic description of such a scene, in the opening page of the story, estab— lishes the ambivalence that pervades the entire novel: "The hurried air and careless eye; the measured step and jealous glance; the jest and laugh; the song of the canta- trice, and the melody of the flute; the grimace of the buffoon, and the tragic frown of the improvisatore; the pyramid of the grotesque, the compelled and melancholy smile of the harpist, cries of water-sellers, cowls of monks, hum of voices, and the universal movement and hustle" (9-10). The morbid undercurrent in the festive air stains people of all countries and classes as they proceed to "the common centre of amusement" (9). Gino and Stefano's conversation confirms and amplifies the uneasiness of the desperate pleasure-seekers: since Venice is aging as a commercial and military power, its rulers resort to constant intrigue to buttress its crumb- ling political structure. After only one chapter, it is painfully clear that the duplicity necessary for political 58 survival in Venice destroys any semblance of trust and freedom among its populace. Impersonality and expediency are the specific flaws of the Venetian government. A system devised to avoid both ruthless one-man rule and lumbering bureauc- racy emerges as a machine of political terror, as in- visible as it is pervasive: A political inquisition, which came in time to be one of the most fearful engines of police ever known, was the consequence. An authority as irresponsible as it was absolute, was periodically confided to another and still smaller body, which met and exercised its des- potic and secret functions under the name of the Coun- cil of Three. The choice of these temporary rulers was decided by lot, and in a manner that prevented the result from being known to any but to their own number and to a few of the most confidential of the more permanent Officers of the government. Thus there existed at all times in the heart of Venice a mysteri- ous and despotic power that was wielded by men who moved in society unknown. (196) Being immune to their own policies, the Council are free from judgment and can proceed to satisfy the state's ends-- and their own, if possible. Unchecked--the Doge being "little more than a pageant" (l66)--they "set at defiance every other consideration but expediency" (170). As the plot unfolds, the main characters confront individually the inhumane policies of these anonymous rulers. Defiance of the government, however, involves the difficult task of eluding its anonymous, seemingly omnis- cient agents, who infiltrate households and alleys alike. Like the Neutral Ground of The Spy, Venice, because of 59 governmental Oppression, is pervasively hostile to its inhabitants. Although each man has "the same right to hide his face as to hide his thoughts" (43), all dread accusation by the Council. Only those who successfully repress hostile gestures and expressions survive; as Giacomo Gradenigo remarks, "Neither my countenance nor my mind is unused to a mask--thanks to necessity!" (75) An offhand comment at the beginning of Chapter 21, that "few paused to greet each other in that city of mystery and suspicion" (315), indicates the intimidation felt by the entire population. The constant need for disguise-- physical, mental, and emotional--destroys the possibility of human contact; thus, Gelsomina laments to her lover, Jacopo, "Thou takest so many disguises of late, and so counterfeitest strange voices, that thine own mother might have distrusted her ear" (279). Not until Jacopo's cap- ture in Chapter 27 does Gelsomina learn that the man she loves as Carlo is the Bravo. As the Doge himself boasts, "A mask is sacred in Venice" (127). "It is the glory of our excellent and wise laws," he intones, "that he who seeketh to dwell within the privacy of his own thoughts, and to keep aloof from curiosity by shadowing his features, rangeth our streets and canals as if he dwelt in the security of his own abode" (127). Although these sentiments refer to the Bravo, who has just unmasked himself after the 6O gondola race, the reader knows that governmental surveil- lance leaves no one secure in the city. Conversely, Jacopo's notoriety obscures his real character, even when he is unmasked: his sinister reputation obscures his real nobility. Purposeful falsifications, usually fostered by the government, reiterate the causal relationship of the P4- themes of duplicity and decadence: "Thus Venice prided herself on the justice of St. Mark, and few states main- tained a greater show or put forth a more lofty claim to the possession of the sacred quality, than that whose real i maxims of government were veiled in a mystery that even the loose morality of the age exacted" (170). Jacopo is only one of the individuals sacrificed for the political facade. In fact, 2E2.§£EXQ contains three stories of such individuals; in the course of the novel's four distinct parts, these various plots are developed, fused, and eventually resolved. The first subplot, that of Antonio Vecchio, a humble, ingenuous fisherman who beseeches the state to free his grandson from forced naval service, is established in Part I (Chapters 1-6). Antonio desperately seeks the state's mercy. Heroically, he defeats the younger men in the gondola race (although Jacopo intention- ally relinquishes his lead to the old man). As a result, Antonio feels justified in requesting the boy's release in return for his prize. Although the Doge is personally 61 moved by this request, the hierarchy renders him powerless to comply. Consequently, Antonio dares confront the dreaded Council of Three, who reward his persistence with death by drowning. Antonio jeopardizes Venice's illusion of justice since his complaints reflect negatively upon the Council. Therefore, he is swiftly silenced. I““ Antonio's murder outrages the principlas of the 1 other two subplots. In Part II (Chapters 7-16), Jacopo L Frontoni's sympathy for the fisherman alienates the Bravo L‘- from the government, confirming his suppressed dislike of the state and allying him with Don Camillo Monforte's efforts to flee Venice. And the subject of the second subplot is Jacopo's relationship with the government that exploits him, a relationship that ends in the state's retribution. In the third subplot, Don Camillo and Violetta Tieppolo marry despite the Senate's edict that the young heiress wed someone whose influence would be of more benefit to the state. Just as JaCOpo's knowledge of Antonio's death ignites his active opposition of the Venetian political system, Father Anselmo, Violetta's confessor and spiritual guide and another witness to the assassination of Antonio, chooses to defy decorum and facilitate the wedding. Having shriven the old fisherman and seen the consequences of denying the state's commands, Anselmo blesses the young couple, thus solidifying the causal relationship between instances of political oppres- sion at Opposite ends of the social ladder. 62 The detailed connections among the subplots recom- mend the dramatic unity of The Bravo over that of The Spy. Part II of The Bravo culminates in Antonio's death and the abduction of Violetta by state agents, two seemingly unre- lated incidents linked by the assassination itself. Part III (Chapters 17-26) ends on a similarly ambivalent note: Camillo and his bride escape from the city at the expense of Jacopo's freedom. Earlier, Camillo had rescued Vio- letta from drowning in one of Venice's canals. By their successful flight, they avoid potentially fatal political immersion because of Jacopo's expertise. Finally, the Bravo has to resolve the ambiguities of his double role as government agent and the state's antagonist. The result of his fencestraddling in Part IV (Chapters 27-31) erases any relief felt upon Camillo and Violetta's success: although the Bravo's few sympathizers hope and then expect his execution will be stayed, he knows otherwise. Given the political code in Venice, punishment is inevitable, and Jacopo is publicly beheaded. Unlike The Spy, The Bravo is not disappointing in its conclusion. Complications generated among the subplots provide ample foundation for the novel's tragic climax: fully aware of the government's policies, the reader has long feared Jacopo's death. Dramatically, the diverse incidents throughout the book contribute to its end. Al- though it is possible to find divisions of the novel, 63 sectioning in The Bravo is not gratuitous; the subplots occur simultaneously and do not stand partially unassimi— lated, as sometimes happens in SEE §EX¢ Ten years of practice in the historical romance had moved Cooper toward mastery of the form. In TEE.B£3yp, the excitement inherent in the his- torical form is intensified. Concentration of time, place, and action underlies the terror the reader comes to associ— ate with Venice. The complex plot, which I have only out- lined, requires less than six days and thrives on a fan- tastic interrelationship among the characters. Moreover, by setting twenty-five chapters after sunset and usually after dark, Cooper undermines our sense of the week's duration: the almost constant darkness and the rapid repetition of the approach of night infuse a maddening monotony into the narrative. The rampant duplicity of the Venetian government and the mazelike city conSpire with the time scheme to sustain the city's aura. By placing the action of twenty-nine chapters in Venice proper (one occurs on the Lagunes, another in an unconsecrated cemetery outside the city), COOper allows us little relief from the oppression of the government: in the manner of the Gothic novel, EBS.§£EX2'S tone reflects the mental state of persecuted characters.4 "While it may be said that Cooper pushed the credibility of coincidence too far in weaving such a close-knit pattern, it seems more likely 64 that within his intent to portray the total interdependence of all facets of society, such manipulation is legitimate."5 Although the novel is set abroad, COOper re-uses devices that characterize his American novels of the 'twen- ties. Several chapters involving movement through the city utilize the same excitement found in the chases in The Last .2: the Mohicans, The Red Rover, and The Water-Witch. The familiar theme of appearance versus reality contributes considerably to the pervasive sense of mystery, and Cooper masterfully dictates how much the reader knows at any given time about such mysteries as Jacopo's true nature and Vio- letta's whereabouts. Jacopo's ubiquity and the city's organic hostility unify the novel as Harvey Birch and the Neutral Ground did ZEE..EX! Parallels like Antonio's search for his grandson and Camillo's search for Violetta impel the reader to compare seemingly diSparate incidents within a complex plot that finally emerges as an integral 6 event. The two love relationships in The Bravo--Camillo and Violetta, and Jacopo and Gelsomina--are fully assimi- lated into the rest of the structure. Whereas in The Spy COOper dawdles over scenes of sensibility involving Fanny Wharton and Peyton Dunwoodie, in The Bravo he minimizes the personal attributes of the lovers and any question of their constancy. Instead, he concentrates on the effects of Venetian policy on the relationships. 65 Camillo's attempts to escape with Violetta generate sus- pense vital to the book, but once they free themselves from political exigencies, the couple is removed from our sight. Likewise, the reader witnesses only the portions of Jacopo's relationship with Gelsomina that comport with The Bravo's political theme. His meetings with his amour, the daughter of the state's jailer, are subject to intrusions by her cousin Annina, whom the reader recognizes as an informer, and eventually by Jacopo's captors. Although we are never told for sure, it is likely that the political structure of Venice stimulated the romance in the first place: in his attempts to visit his father in prison, Jacopo probably had met and fallen in love with Gelsomina. Their kindred sympathies against the government sustain the relationship in difficult circumstances although Jacopo is continually plagued by being unable to reveal his true identity to her. And Gelsomina is prevented from identifying her lover as the hated Bravo by her duties in the prison and at her father's sickbed. Her isolation from society, demanded by her assigned responsibilities, is little different from that which Jacopo's notoriety engenders. Close correspondence between plot and theme assures 222.2E222'5 integrity. Complicity of characters, devices for suSpense, and primacy of theme manifest Cooper's artistic control. Although he dictates that "the appli- cation of the moral must be made on the familiar scale" (356), he conceives a plausible plot in which ordinary 66 people would be involved with the state. By relating representative instances of oppression in various social classes, 222.§£2X2'5 story assumes a national importance: the sympathies and interests of the government and the populace alike are involved in the outcome. More im- portant, COOper assigns a variety of moral values to his characters. Those most involved in "the system" are the most deceitful, but those who retain sufficient spontaneity respond to situations on more humane grounds. His most compelling narrative is controlled but not attenuated by its application to the study "of the vices of the Venetian system" (356). The variables that determine character derive, of course, from 223.5EEK2'S theme, but their consistent appli— cation establishes a composite scale of character traits, based on experiential and hereditary factors, that ranges from self-repression to self-expression. Those whose actions collude with the policies of political Oppression, Cooper implies, have repressed their own humanity. He devotes a sequence of interviews comprising two full chap- ters (yip., 4 and 5) to establish Signor Gradenigo, a member of the Council of Three, as the prototype of such calloused individuals. In the first interview, Violetta intercedes on behalf of Camillo's claim to his hereditary pr0perty in Venice, but Gradenigo merely promises that "it shall be done with that blindness which is said to be the 67 failing of justice" (74) and quickly changes the subject to his son's suit of Violetta. Upon her departure, Gradenigo urges his son, Giacomo, the next person to appear, to persist in his suit. The father cringes at possible political repercussions of the boy's dr0pping of Camillo's ring into the repository of accusations, the Lion's Mouth. In fact, throughout Gradenigo's term of office, he betrays dread for his own safety just as citizens not on the Council do. And in the sequence of interviews, Giacomo no sooner leaves his frightened father, than Antonio, Gradenigo's foster brother, enters seeking his grandson's freedom. The Signor will not tolerate two such threats to his security: "Out upon thee, fellow! dost thou make no distinction between the son of a fisher- man, one trained to the oar and toil, and the heir of an ancient house? Go to, presuming man, and remember thy condition, and the difference that God hath made between our children" (80). Gradenigo's subsequent interview with JaCOpo includes the Bravo's taunt, "I know that the Judgment of St. Mark . . . is never light when its own interest is touched" (83), as well as Gradenigo's plea that Jacopo prevent Antonio from further embarrassing the Senator. After the Signor advises his next auditor, Camillo, to persevere in his requests from the Senate, the duration of which already indicates the state's un— willingness to satisfy them, Gradenigo meets with the 68 Jewish usurer, Hosea. Although the Senator has earlier promised to reprimand Hosea, whose loans supposedly en- courage Giacomo's profligacy (another threat to the Sena- tor's eminence), Gradenigo only thanks the moneylender for identifying Camillo's signet. Already, the ring, found in the Lion's Mouth, provides the accusation against the Don that Gradenigo needs to further Giacomo's suit. As a result of the complexity of affairs revealed during the interviews, the extent of government intervention into personal lives is all too evident. As one of the Council of Three, Gradenigo is the ideal personification of the state's duplicity. He has been indoctrinated as a "creature of a conventional policy" (98) and can justify any action in the state's interest. He satisfies himself that "God has established orders throughout his creation" (99), thereby exalting himself above men like Antonio. Gradenigo's tenure on the Council expires after Antonio's trial, but the description of the experienced members' of the new Council indoctrination of the ingenuous Soranzo applies to Gradenigo as well: "They were like two trained elephants of the east, possessing themselves all the finer instincts and generous qualities of the noble animal, but disciplined by a force quite foreign to their natural condition into creatures of mere convention, placed one on each side of a younger brother, fresh from the plains, and whom it was their duty to teach 69 new services for the trunk, new affections, and haply the manner in which to carry with dignity the howdah of Rajah" (406). In The Bravo Cooper often sounds this sort of Shelleyan blast against those who attempt to suppress potential goodness. Cooper's sympathies naturally rest with the charac- ters who, unlike Gradenigo, will not compromise themselves by involvement in political machinations. Such people, having retained their spontaneity regardless of oppression, comprise the expressive pole of the spectrum of moral values. Cooper uses Antonio as the prototype of this group: the old man's uncompromising individuality, of course, eventually kills him; moreover, the strong con- trast between him and his foster brother, Gradenigo, dramatizes the fundamental Opposition between the Oppres- sive system and defiant individuals. Antonio is the exemplar of the unSOphisticated Lagunes fishermen, who correspond to the upright settlers of COOper's frontier novels: "We of the Lagunes," Antonio proclaims, "are not afraid to say what we have seen and done, for most of our business is with the winds and waves, which take their orders from God himself" (177). Antonio, however, is indiscreet, a vital flaw in Venice. Unfettered by long service in the galleys and the loss of five sons at war, his innate nobility sustains an optimism that pre- cludes penetration of the state's duplicity and results 70 in his fatal persistence. The contrast between young Giacomo, whose debaucheries embarrass his eminent father, and Antonio's sons, who have died for the state, reiterates the already apparent point: those who subscribe to the oppressive policies of Venice do not escape with their integrity. While most of the characters remain static on the spectrum that I have outlined, Don Camillo and the Bravo himself move toward its expressive pole as the book pro- gresses. However, Cooper focuses mainly on the results of Camillo's decision to defy the government. JaCOpo, on the other hand, is characterized in the process of change, making him the first Cooper protagonist to develop so significantly. As the title, The Bravo, suggests, JaCOpo is the book's main character, and Cooper mixes the modes of "revealing" and "becoming" to characterize him.7 Typical of the former method, Jacopo's seeming adherence to the policies of the state (oppression and expediency) is modified during the narrative until his true character is seen as something quite different. This process, however, involves revelation rather than develop- ment of character. Reputedly, Jac0po is a provocateur and assassin, but hints of his true personality are numerous. His facial expression is immediately "significant": "The face was melancholy rather than sombre,’ and his look is "full of brilliancy, meaning, and passion" (18). He is 71 cynical about state policy and non-committal when his answers could implicate other people; he tries to prevent Antonio from incriminating himself before the Council. Repeatedly, Jacopo squirms at allusions to his supposed ruthlessness. His compassion for his father and Gelsomina's family reveals a "good heart." These qualities are his from the start of the novel; as in the characterization of Harvey Birch, Cooper begins to reveal his hero's nobility before actions actually demonstrate his real worth. But Jacopo's indecision makes him a more apprehensible character, and his ability of involving himself in the affairs of govern- ment, without adopting the values of men like Gradenigo, underlines Jacopo's integrity. In demonstrating Jacopo's growth, Cooper adds a new dimension to his hero. We realize that Jacopo's initial state is one of deSpair and witness his development toward a higher selflessness--what Cooper repeatedly calls "dis- interestedness." Jacopo's service is a form of self- compromise for the sake of his imprisoned father; after the old man's death, Jacopo can risk his life against the state. While Jacopo has long resented his subservience to the government, not until Chapter 15, as he tries to prevent Antonio's death, is the possibility of change evident to us. Yet the Bravo's refusal to reveal himself to the state's agents at this point adds the guilt of his own complicity to his outrage at the crime. As in EEE.§EXI Cooper suggests that total commitment is a necessity. 72 When Camillo discovers Jacopo brooding alone in the unconsecrated cemetery (Chapter 18), the Bravo is on the brink of commitment. "I am here," he confides, "be- cause my spirit hath need of room. I want the air of the sea--the canals choke me—-I can only breathe in freedom on this bank of sand!" (263) He already "loathelsl yon city of crimes" (263). He relinquishes his Byronic despair for action after he confesses to Camillo his in- volvement with the government (he is emphatically not a murderer) and hears the Don's account of the abduction of Violetta by the state. The final phase of JaCOpo's development occurs upon his father's death, when the Bravo is himself in prison. Without hope, but serene in his opposition of the govern- ment and satisfied with the safety of the lovers, Jacopo no longer conceals from the Council his commitment to freedom and his disdain for the state. Antonio's assassi- nation has already demonstrated that commitment is a form of annihilation; Jacopo's death is suicidal in the same sense. Ironically, his selflessness is but a variation of the mental condition demanded of him originally by the government. He is killed by the state's expediency, which has been his spiritual antagonist from the start. Although Cooper never entertained the delusion that any man is exempt from human failing, his involvement of JaCOpo in the despised system marks a departure from his 73 usual portrayal of the hero. COOper ennobles the Bravo through his actions in others' causes and in his laudable feelings toward loved ones, but JaCOpo is not entirely exonerated from political complicity. Because of his complexity, the hero of EEE.§£EXQ possesses a humanity that Harvey Birch lacks: JacopO's struggles for commit- ment enlarge that commitment. By the end of the novel, Jacopo has passed from being an agent of the state into an embodiment of the human ideal: "Nature has given to every man enough of the frailty to enable him to estimate the workings of selfishness and fraud, but her truly privi- leged are those who can shroud their motives and intentions in a degree of justice and disinterestedness, which surpass the calculations of the designing" (355). The spectrum of characterization also provides the keystone of moral values attached to settings in EEE.§£EXS¢ Thus, the city, being the scene of oppression, is generally constrictive; on the other hand, outlying areas provide Opportunities to escape surveillance and are characterized by their openness. This dichotomy, which naturally re- sembles the spectrum of morality, springs originally from Tpg_§rgyp's political theme and eventually implies the consequences of the Venetian system. For it is a short step from the immediately notice- able secretive and confining aspects of the city to the fatal results of the government it embodies. The Bridge 74 of Sighs links the two prominent buildings in the heart of Venice-~the Palace of the Doge and the prison. The former is surrounded by the piazza, the port, St. Mark's Cathedral, and a main canal—-a representative sampling of the city's diversity. The description of the Palace's interior further establishes it as prototypical emblem of the state: "[The march of prisoners and guards] went through gloomy and secret corridors, that were hid from the vulgar eye, while thin partitions only separated them from the apart- ments of the Doge, which, like the specious aspect of the State, concealed the nakedness and misery within, by their gorgeousness and splendor!" (413) And likewise, the prison: "The building, unhappily like most other edifices intended to repress the vices of society, was vast, strong, and intricate within, although . . . of a chaste and simple beauty externally, that might seem to have been adopted in mockery of its destination" (287). Like Jacopo, COOper abhors the "city of crimes" (263): "the more selfish and exclusive the system becomes, the more severe and ruthless are the coercive means employed by those in power" (290). The chief buildings, like the Venetian government they symbolize, are deceptive in their appearance as well as in their construction. Their splendor seems decadent gaudiness in the waning years of the state. Arteries as narrow and deceptive as the palace's corridors emanate from the piazza and transport the con- stant and desperately gay "stream of human beings" (301) 75 "like water gushing through some strait aqueduct, into a broad and bubbling basin" (9). Streets and canals alike are peopled by chaotic masses, clandestine agents, and the Bravo himself. Secret communications, both public and pri- vate, occur in these obscure public ways. Clearly, the canals and streets, like the buildings, mirror the secrecy and duplicity rife in Venice. The city in The Bravo is depicted as silent and dark, but the most effective images of Venice are those of death. "Though Venice . . . was so gay in her squares, the rest of the town was silent as the grave" (56). "Venice, at all times noiseless and peculiar, seemed to sleep the sleep of the dead" (113). Jacopo's visage takes on "a hue not unlike that of death" (175) during Antonio's interrogation. The trial room is the "chamber of doom" (186) in the city that is ruled by a Senate "with a cer- tainty of power that resembled the fearful and mysterious march of destiny" (157). The nobles, aware like Violetta of being "the last of a line eminent for centuries" (71), seem paranoid about an evening's pleasures: "The patri- cians had withdrawn to the scenes of their own pleasures, or, in furtherance of that system of mysterious sway which it was their policy to maintain, they did not choose to remain exposed to the common eye, during the hours of license which were about to follow" (305). The rulers sense the senescence of the system, apparent to the reader 76 in its hollowness and artificiality, and their awareness only increases their frenzy to maintain the status 329. That the proponents of state policy should fear for their lives and find themselves alienated from the "stream of human beings" seemingly enjoying the city's gaiety confirms Cooper's contention that "the despotism of the self-styled RepUblic . . . was but another cause of its eventual destruction" (168). To Jacopo and Antonio, the areas outside Venice represent freedom. Even in the cemetery, the place of death, the Bravo finds a chance to think. As Cooper's imagery connotes, Venice is the true realm of death, so that Jacopo finds greater freedom for thought in a cemetery than in the city itself. The principal area outside the city--the Lagunes--is characterized by people who speak Openly. Our only firsthand glimpse of the bay occurs in Chapter 15, as a portentous lack of fish mars the moon- bathed calm and causes Antonio to muse, "There is not, in common, a more certain spot on the Lagunes than this" (223). Shortly thereafter, this symbolic sterility is explained: the state gondola carrying Antonio's murderers appears like pollution from an urban netherworld. During the assassination, the moon lights only the virtuous charac- ters.8 The sea's initial serenity, and presumably its fer- tility, is re-established after the drowning: "Like the human heart, it seemed to sympathize with the tranquil 77 beauty of the midnight view; but, like the human heart, it kept its own secrets" (223). The differences between city and bay are not simply the conventional opposition of urban corruption and natural beauty. The city is ugly in its ambivalence and affec- tation; the cemetery, though forlorn, is a place of free- dom. Setting, like characterization, can be classified according to degrees of freedom permitted: the canals are winding, treacherous, and restricting, but the Lagunes are calm, boundless, and fertile. However, the scheme is not absolute: Gelsomina's spontaneity infuses the prison with vitality; battles at sea have claimed Antonio's sons. In short, the moral nature of the inhabitants actually determines the qualities of the places. The Lagunes re- tain their pristine quality under Venetian rule, but that is probably because the rulers find no particular reason for further oppression of the fishermen. The thematic integrity of The Bravo, which extends not only through plot, but also into the schemes of setting and characterization, makes the book a milestone in COOper's career. He forged his eleventh novel into a propagandist tool without detracting from its literary viability. As the first of three books of Cooper's European Trilogy, The Bravo seemed to mark the beginning of sustained achievement in the political novel. However, his next two novels, The Heidenmauer (1832) and The Headsman (1833), related to The Bravo only by their political subject 78 matter, attest primarily to Cooper's continuing interest in contemporary politics. These two books bear painful witness to a sudden decline in his craftsmanship. The difficult equilibrium of form and content, meticulously upheld in The Bravo, proved tenuous indeed. The Heidenmauer belabors the implications of expediency in a German baron's exploitation of the Refor— mation to break a Roman Catholic monastery's control over his domain. Without the sense of place and the compelling plot of The Bravo, The Heidenmauer is little more than a series of tableaux. A riotous drinking scene involving the principals of each party in the conflict, the exciting destruction of the monastery, conversations during the Baron's penitential pilgrimage--such individual scenes are realized, but they are never fused like the subplots of 2§g_§r§yg, One-dimensional characterization--the Baron's lust for power, the priest's worldliness--never involve the reader to the extent Jacopo's dilemma does. The mysterious hermit, Odo von Ritterstein, is COOper's attempt to capitalize on a shady character like Harvey Birch, but the old man is little more than an abstract idealization of piety. His story and the roles of the other principals simply do not coalesce into the fast- moving, surprising vehicle that the historical romance could be. 79 In The Headsman Cooper is more successful in sus- taining his political theme. The novel develops a situ- ation similar to that of Gelsomina's family's in The Bravo: her father has the thankless job of prison-keeper, despite his disapproval of the government; similarly, Balthazar's family in The Headsman is reviled for their hereditary function of executioner. Unfortunately, Cooper's con- ception is never realized. He manages to dramatize the family's situation as outcasts during the preparations for the daughter's wedding, which is finally disrupted by the revelation of her identity. But the narrative stutters and then stalls when, at the end, Cooper employs the hack- neyed, unconvincing convention of exchanged infants to exonerate his hero. Although The Headsman is far inferior to EEE.§£EX2I it does dramatize another case of political oppression. Although the Trilogy is uneven in quality, critics are inclined to judge it collectively. For instance, D. E. S. Maxwell: "The novels are, as Bewly [gig] acknowl- edges, laboriously written and make very heavy going. . . . Although they provide a useful entrance to Cooper's themes, they are hardly worth direct and detailed study. Cooper as an expositor of the European situations he chose to investigate we cannot, in truth, take very seriously." Maxwell concludes, concurring with Carl Van Doren, that "For this welter of ideas, Cooper inevitably failed to work out an adequate form."9 80 While such opinions may be accurate for The Heiden- mauer and much of The Headsman, "cohesion of form and con- 10 tent" in The Bravo, as Paul Stein notes, is "remarkable." The book has rightfully been judged by Robert Spiller and George Dekker to be "one of the most impressive romances Cooper ever wrote."11 All the fictional elements are con- trolled by theme, but Cooper's statements do not degener- ate into polemic. Furthermore, he successfully incor- porates characterization and setting into an integrated dramatic structure, indicating his artistic development in his first decade, when entertainment retained priority over instruction. Perhaps his best touch in The Bravo is character- izing the Venetian government by its effects on its princi- pals. Rule by rank, rather than by merit, perpetuates the dehumanization of the system. Senator Gradenigo personi- fies Venetian polity, and his son follows in his footsteps. But the fate of the young Senator Soranzo, who sits with the Council of Three for the first time during Jacopo's trial, is most telling. Unlike most Venetian patricians, the Senator is happily married and of "good heart"; more- over, he has long dreamed of effecting reform through high office. But he finds himself unable to sleep after the trial, having "taken the first step in the tortuous and corrupting path, which eventually leads to the destruction of all those generous and noble sentiments, which can only 81 flourish apart from the sophistry and fictions of selfish- ness" (424). Cooper observes earlier in the novel that "the very reason why the despotism of the self-styled Republic was tolerable to its own citizens was but another cause of its eventual destruction" (168). Soranzo's self— compromise is eloquent testimony of man's susceptibility. Ironically, COOper's warning to his countrymen proved to be misdirected: "the people" rather than an absolute government would tyrannize America. IV THE DEERSLAYER: SOCIO-DRAMA ON THE GLIMMERGLASS Cooper devoted his aesthetic efforts in the first half of his career to the refinement of the historical form. Not until his resumption of novel writing in 1837, after several years' silence, did he attempt any funda- mental formal development in his work. The novels that initiated this second phase--especially Homeward Bound, Home pp Found, The Pathfinder, Mercedes pg Castile, and The Deerslayer--manifested his growing concern with the depiction of character. The "Home" novels revealed Cooper's outright rejection of the historical form as applied in his early historical romances and his quest for a new vehicle with which to comment upon social issues of his own day. Mercedes 9£_Castile was one of his first "initiation novels": although Columbus' voyage of dis— covery in 1492 provides most of the book's plot, the main character is Don Luis de Bobadilla, a young, somewhat irresponsible Spanish noble, who comes to recognize the consequences of his impulsive acts. But the last two 82 83 segments of the Leatherstocking Sage, The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer, best illustrate COOper's inclination toward the biographical form. The five Leatherstocking novels, taken as a whole, represent the evolution from the historical form toward the biographical form. Even in the first three install- ments of the 1820's, Natty increases in prominence. As an old man disillusioned with the settlements, the Natty of The Pioneers (1823) personifies one of several life- styles in the book, but does not embody the central con- flict in the novel, reserved instead for Judge Temple. However, in The Last pf the Mohicans (1826) as a young Indian fighter in the French and Indian Wars, Natty assumes the role of active hero; although he is a moral exemplar, he is not yet the Spokesman for a philosophy as well developed as in The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer. With The Prairie (1827) Cooper moves a step nearer the com- pletion of his hero's deve10pment: the Old Trapper may have slowed down from his days around Fort William Henry, but age has made him the more articulate about human nature. Natty is certainly an essential character in each of these three books, but his earlier roles are less substantial than those in The Pathfinder (1840) and in The Deerslayer (1841), when for the first time he faces serious moral dilemmas. Natty is in his middle thirties when he falls in love with Mabel Dunham in The Pathfinder, a predicament 84 that eventually forces him to decide between living in the woods or the settlements, and between satisfying his desire for Mabel and hurting his friend Jasper Western, who has loved Mabel for some time. Natty, ultimately, relinquishes his claim to Mabel despite her father's deathbed injunction that she marry Bumppo. Throughout The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer as well, Natty is Cooper's spokesman on all moral questions, but not until The Deerslayer do Cooper's biographical aims finally congeal.* In the last of the Leatherstocking novels, Natty undergoes initiation into warfare and the ways of the world. COOper decides to pre- sent the affirmation of his hero's values and not just chronicle his achievements, as he did in earlier books. Thus, Natty is once again young, active, vocal, and eager to learn; moreover, we watch his feats and consider his ideas and finally become involved vicariously in his test- ing. In form, then, The Deerslayer displays both simi- larities and differences with historical romances like The Spy and The Bravo. While all three are in the historical form, only The Deerslayer has as its central purpose the depiction of the motivation of its central character. By *COOper felt that previous "pictures" of Natty's life were full enough in the other four novels "to excite some little desire to see the 'study,' from which they have all been drawn." (The Deerslayer [Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1841], p. vii.) 85 1841, COOper's HES of his hero has been substantially altered: (l) Natty begins to narrate his own story; (2) his role as agent is broadened to include that of moral guide and spokesman. But regardless of the increased im- portance of Natty as a character, The Deerslayer is not a book in the biographical form. For one reason, its seven- day duration does not enable Cooper to trace an entire life (he does that in the entire Leatherstocking Saga). More Significant, however, are his attempts to individual- ize lesser characters in the context of the activities of the week-long struggle with the Hurons on and around the Glimmerglass. It is Cooper's purpose to present Deer- slayer in his social milieu: the expository introduction in the novel's opening chapters Eglép of Natty's qualifi- cations and training; subsequent occurrences, including conversations, objectify his character. Cooper had to adapt his former novel structure to those new purposes. He had previously used omniscient narration to describe character; in The Deerslayer he moves toward an internalized point of view. To infuse immediacy into the narrative and to amplify character, he emphasizes dialogue and soliloquy—-both devices of the drama. Also, the frenetic pace of earlier novels did not lend itself to the objectification of mental process, so The Deerslayer progresses leisurely enough to develOp motivation. Marius Bewley evidently misses the impact of 86 the altered plot, for he says of The Deerslayer, "These severe limits of place and duration impart a unity to the novel that, despite the incidents, which are more than usually densely gathered for COOper, gives a prominence to moral theme and its deeper meaning."1 Actually, Cooper does retain his temporally compact plot and unified, symbolic setting, but incidents are fewer and less spec- tacular in The Deerslayer because he is more concerned with the effects of the event upon the participants. Critics have traditionally focused on The Deer- slayer's hero and his initiation. George Dekker, in labelling the main theme Christian probation, says, "What happens on Lake Glimmerglass is a series of concrete moral tests so exacting and so impeccably passed that the success- ful outcome of Deerslayer's lifelong probation as a 2 Donald Davie Christian soul is scarcely left in doubt." calls the plot picaresque "in the guise of exacting tests" --"the only plot apprOpriate to a saint's life; a succession of incidents each providing an opportunity for the saint, by resisting temptation and surmounting obstacles, to prove his saintliness."3 But such conclusions do not account for the new prominence of character, and thus dilute the book's statement and importance. These men recognize the book's biographical orien- tation, but overlook the fact that it exists within the framework of the historical form. The plot-—the confron- tation of Hurons and Natty's allies—-contains a number of 87 individual experiences in addition to Natty's initiation. Resultant comparisons between him and the others--Hurry Harry March and the Hutter family, especially--clarify his exceptional character: his moral standards, his sensi- tivity to nature, his wilderness expertise, all only slightly tarnished by imperfect perceptual powers. Natty may be an exemplary human being, but he does not behave "impeccably." And it is the way in which Cooper defines Deerslayer, by placing him in a social and natural context, that disqualifies "picaresque" as an appropriate description of the novel's plot. "Picaresque" wrongly implies spatial movement, separation of episodes, and de-emphasis of lesser characters. The portions of Natty's initiation are unified by setting and participants, and often with the motive of retaliation. Only when COOper utilizes the biographical form as such, as in Afloat and Ashore, do his books resemble the picaresque. Natty's significance as a human being and moral exemplar, however, depends upon our understanding of his character, his youth and training, and ultimately his disciplined life-style. AS The Deerslayer approaches its climax, Cooper capsulizes the book's theme in a remark by Natty, who is about to honor his "furlough" from the Hurons to face torture and probable death. He tells Chingachgook, "The time will come, I hope, when you'll Eggl_these things; for, after all, they must be felt rather than reasoned about" 88 (497). Natty thus describes not only the objective of his initiation, but also the foremost criterion for judging all the characters in the book: maturity, Cooper implies, depends upon accurate perception of one's environment and fellows as well as the self-discipline needed to adapt conventional reSponses to make them appropriate to particu- lar Situations. This continuing process of self-adjustment is essential for any character to win Cooper's approval. For example, in one of his late novels, The Oak Openings (1848), he mentions Scalping Peter's inability to compre- hend Ben Boden's method for tracking bees and then general- izes on the process of adapting to one's environment: Thus is it with us ever. The powers, and faculties, and principles that are necessary fully to comprehend all that we see, and all that surrounds us, exist and have been bestowed on man by his beneficent Creator. Still, it is only by slow degrees that he is to become their master, acquiring knowledge step by step, as he has need of its services, and learns how to use it. Such seems to be the design of Providence, which is gradually opening to our inquiries the arcana of nature, in order that we may convert their possession into such uses as will advance its own wise intentions. Happy are they who feel this truth in their character of individuals! (336) Fortunately, Natty is blessed with discipline and plenti- ful other "gifts" at the outset of his initiation: "His training had been perfect, so far as theory could go" (111). Before he has proven himself, however, he must attain the ability to react intuitively under stress. Or, in Harry March's terms, "I should like to see you behind 89 one of them pines and a full-painted Mingo behind another, each with a cooked rifle, and a-striving for the chancel Them's the situations, Nathaniel, to try the sight and the hand, for they begin with trying the narves" (57-58). But Deerslayer's initiation is also moral. His remark, "The rarest thing to find on 'arth is a truly just man (218), implying a progress toward moral perfection that is analogous with the refinement of wilderness and wartime ways, adds a spiritual dimension to the testing he undergoes. AS a youth, he has to prove his potential without violating his code. At the end of a lifetime of such effort lies ultimate purification: "Now I consait that, after death, when the body is laid aside, or, if used at all, is purified and without its longin's, the Spirit sees all things in their ra'al light, and never becomes blind to truth and justice" (497). As a mortal, however, Natty must continually contend with sensory and Spiritual delusions impeding his progress. One of Cooper's premises in The Deerslayer is that appearance is a function of familiarity; therefore, Natty's initiatory experiences with white peOple and in warfare provide a touchstone for his previous values. This is not to say that ZEE.EES£T slayer asserts an entirely behavioristic theory of learn- ing, for one's innate capabilities also affect cognition: even though Natty has undergone rigorous training with his Delaware mentors and the moravian missionaries, he 90 possesses faculties that other characters simply do not have. In fact, the interaction of various people, whose levels of perception vary, generates a significant amount of The Deerslayer's plot; in the case of Hetty Hutter, moreover, Cooper introduces a character whose faculties are literally retarded. She Simply lacks the mental facility to react appropriately to the world around her. None of the other whites succeeds as consistently as Natty Since "Like most Americans, they accept as a matter of course whatever is familiar to them and seldom give it a second thought."4 Judith Hutter assumes that every man will passionately desire her for her beauty, but is bitterly disappointed when her forwardness and waywardness alienate Natty, the man she eventually realizes is the most worthy she has ever known. Harry March's recklessness and callousness endanger the entire group of whites; yet, he never alters his misconceptions of the Indians and of human nature in general. All the characters must constantly confront un- familiar aspects of the environment, but Natty proves con- sistently to be the most perceptive and flexible. Cooper's description of the dawn of the fourth day makes his theme unmistakable: It is the moment when everything is distinct, even the atmosphere seeming to possess a liquid lucidity, the hues appearing gray and softened, with the outlines of 91 objects diffused, and the perspective just as moral truths, that are presented in their simplicity without the meretricious aids of ornament and glitter. In a word, it is the moment when the senses seem to recover their powers in the Simplest and most accurate forms, like the mind emerging from the obscurity of doubts into the tranquillity and peace of demonstration. (358) The motif of coping with novelty likewise unites seemingly sundry incidents: Hutter's telescope startles Chingachgook and Hist; Chingachgook wonders at Deerslayer's explanation of the earth's rotation; Natty himself puzzles over Hutter's chessmen; and Judith cannot comprehend Natty's virtue. On the other hand, situations that allow a character to utilize his senses distinguish Natty from the others. For instance, as he awaits a signal from Harry in the form of a loon call, he discerns the cry of an actual loon because it is not as exact as the imitation would have been. Hurry Harry, though, closes his mind to the humanity of Indians, thus sustaining a distorted attitude toward them: "Like most vulgar-minded men, he had only regarded the Indians through the medium of their coarser and fiercer characteristics. . . . It was the habit of his mind to regard all Indians as being only a slight degree removed from the wild beasts" (348). Stock responses, Cooper implies, must be purged by deliberate effort; furthermore, inexperience is not so much a flaw as a deficiency. Sensory perception, then, is one--and probably the most important--criterion for comparing the principals in 92 The Deerslayer. Each person must rely on his capabilities, innate and developed, to adapt himself to the "neutral ground," in this case a virgin wilderness. The Glimmer- glass region has "no lawgiver except the human conscious- neSS,"5 so the conflicts between Indian and white man and among the whites reflect individual doubts. Instead of differentiating characters by their political orientation as he did in Tpg_§r3yp, Cooper uses Natty's doctrine of gifts to judge how well each person develops himself. With Deerslayer himself as both exemplar and judge, EEE.QEE£7 slayer's plot can indeed be considered, as Donald Davie says, "casuistical."6 The incompatibility of Hurry Harry March and Natty Bumppo, as they proceed together through the woods toward the Glimmerglass were Natty is to meet Chingachgook and Harry to rejoin the Hutter family, immediately establishes a moral judgment on the reader's part. March is likable enough despite his stubbornness and constant bragging, but he obviously lacks Natty's idealism and prudence. Hurry loudly chides Natty for having never killed a man: "The sooner you wipe that disgrace off your character, the sounder will be your Sleep" (19). March is also disdainful of authority: "When we live beyond the law, we must be our own judges and executioners" (26). Not only is he headstrong, he also possesses a flaw that can be fatal in the woods--recklessness. He carelessly Shoots a buck, despite the danger that hostile Indians will hear the 93 Shot, and we learn that the Hurons in fact had been listen- ing. Later, March and his boisterous companion, Tom Hutter, impetuously invade the Huron camp after scalps, a practice sanctioned by the Province of New York but criticized by Natty as foreign to white gifts. The rash- ness of the expedition again causes its failure--Hurry and Hutter are captured. In his first novel, Precaution, COOper had warned against rushing headlong into romance, and consistently in his novels of the frontier, characters who lack prOper restraint only hurt themselves, to say nothing of their friends. Because of his rashness and his general lack of consideration, Harry March's big- brother—taking-Natty-to-town attitude will be Shortlived, for Deerslayer has to compensate for Harry's Shortcomings. And the moral implications of Harry's impulsive self-assertiveness are just as devastating. While Natty meditates on the Glimmerglass' holy beauty, Hurry remains preoccupied with fantasies of Judith. Primarily motivated by lust, he cannot imagine why she finds Natty his superior. Harry mindlessly shoots at a voice in the night and kills an Indian girl. Not only does he consider the Indians as animals, but he persists in the face of powerful pleading: "Still, though daunted by [Hist's] reproaches, the handsome barbarian could hardly be said to be penitent. He was too much rebuked by conscience to suffer an outbreak of temper to escape him; and perhaps he felt that he had already 94 committed an act that might justly bring his manhood in question. Instead of resenting, or answering the Simple, but natural appeal of Hist, he walked away like one who disdained entering into a controversy with a woman" (348). Devoid of Deerslayer's regard for humanity. Hurry lacks the initiative to better himself. He cannot attain Natty's nobility without the latter's training, regardless of his physical prowess and combat experience. Kay House, in describing the various foils for Natty, groups March, Thomas Hutter, and Judith together as prototypes of worldliness.2 Such an observation is only partly correct. March and Hutter become so similar that they almost merge into one character: "But neither of these two rude beings, so ruthless in all things that touched the rights and interests of the red man . . . was much actuated by any other desire than a heartless longing for profit" (282). While they may be motivated by a mutual desire for revenge upon their Indian captors, it is at this same time--immediately after their release--that COOper's earlier distinction between them blurs. Initially, March's bravado and Hutter's sullenness contributed to their quib- bling like a slapstick team over Harry's rights to Judith; however, when they return from their brief captivity, the pair are greedy, vengeful villains, totally without moderating qualities. Obviously, this similarity dis- tinguishes Natty from both March and Hutter, but their 95 remorselessness also differentiates them from Judith, a promiscuous but repentant person. Weak-willed Judith may be, but She recognizes her faults and comes to trust in Natty to lift her out of sin. She is also well aware of her motives and h0pes to remedy past disadvantages, namely the lack of a mother's steady moral influence. Judith, whom Frank M. Collins calls Hetty's "Sluttish Sister,"8 is in fact not a bull-headed reprobate like March or Hutter. Still, She is a tainted person, cursed by her past. Despite redeeming qualities like alertness to Indian treachery and sensitivity to natural beauty, She, like March, lacks the steadiness of Natty's moral vision. Quite simply, she is disabled by guilt because of past sexual deviations and religious indifference. Judith is left doubt-ridden, still seeking her identity. She feels She belongs to no one person or moral philosophy. Thus, when She learns that Hutter is not her father, she chooses to do without any surname, rather than keep his. As she peruses her late mother's letters, found by Natty in Hutter's trunk, she begs, "God send it may contain some- thing to tell poor Hetty and myself who we really are" (443). The letters, however, have been carefully trimmed, presumably by Hutter, to prevent identification. Thus Judith lacks any real heritage, a factor essential in Natty's development, and unlike him she never finds her- self psychically. 96 Unanchored as she is, Judith turns to Natty and, in admiration and love for him, tries to model herself after him. Since she is unaccustomed to his mode of action, she lacks the restraint he has developed and rushes headlong into a proposal of marriage. She becomes an undisciplined enthusiast. She urges Natty to break his "furlough," which makes her a temptress in his eyes. She desperately attempts to capture Hetty's innocent sponta- neity when she begs him not to feel like a stranger with her. However, She never reaches a point where she can £221 how to act. One week is simply not enough time for Judith to change; nevertheless, unlike March and Hutter, She knows She Should change and, therefore, does not wallow in her worldliness. Judith never finds the forgiveness that, according to Christian thinking, would free her cognition from the impairment of guilt. Natty is not her Christ. Yet, his model would be better by far than the old ways She stumbles back into after he chooses the celibate life. Lacking his self-discipline, she regresses into the misuse of her most formidable gift--her body. On the other hand, Hetty possesses a "perception of the right [that] seemed almost intuitive" (66), but her mental debility precludes effectual action on her part. Her mind is "enough enfeebled to lose most of those traits that are connected with the more artful qualities, and to retain its ingenuousness and love of truth" (66). That 97 is, because of her past and her nature, She is the direct opposite of Judith--"guileless, innocent, and without dis- trust" (67). Ultimately, though, the results are Similar: without discernment Hetty cannot respond appropriately in novel Situations. For example, she tries to convince the Hurons to spare Deerslayer because the Bible says that man Shall not kill his fellows, but she cannot even begin to refute Rivenoak's argument against her View. Since she lacks Natty's insight that men's gifts differ according to race, upbringing, and environment, she arbitrarily imitates others, never really knowing when any response is appropriate. Thus, when Deerslayer asks-—very unpointedly--if she would ever marry, she chides him "much as a parent rebukes a child for an act of indiscretion" (502), adOpting the manner of her mother, the only one she knows in such a Situation. And one of Cooper's finest touches occurs in his depiction of Hetty's purely associ— ative powers. After she rebukes Deerslayer for killing an Indian, She has to reverse herself in his defense: "You know yourself, Huron, how one of them fell. I saw it, and you all saw it, too. 'Twas too bloody to look at; but it was not Deerslayer's fault. Your warrior sought his life, and he defended himself. I don't know whether the good book says that it was right, but all men will do that" (548). Not only is she mimicking Natty's manner of speaking ("You know yourself, Huron" and "'Twas too bloody 98 to look at"), but She adopts his very reasoning-~self- defense and necessity. Although her faculties hinder her, Hetty's good nature exposes the moral vulnerability of the characters who abuse their more abundant gifts.9 In this, of course, She resembles Natty, but She is a docile holy fool, serv- ing Cooper only as a part-time seer. Her desultory associ- ation of Biblical quotations and actual situations results in some fine insights and some hilarious mistakes. Al- though Hetty wins Cooper's approbation for her chastity, her preachment is often little more than a parody of Deer- slayer's steady wisdom. Nonetheless, She sometimes, as at her death, Speaks prophetically, foreseeing Natty's entry into heaven and urging March to model himself upon Deerslayer. Hetty uses what gifts she has: her mother had given her some religious training to complement her inherent virtue. Unlike Judith whose faults developed from negligence, both her own and others', Hetty is pre- vented by innate deficiences from the fullness of true nobility exemplified by Natty. Deerslayer's character, of course, includes most of the virtues possessed by the others, but lacks their inadequacies. He has the vitality of Hurry and Judith, but he is rarely reckless or insecure. Deerslayer's moral insight is not dimmed by Hetty's debilities. His gifts, in fact, accrue from the combination of his white nature 99 and Indian training. The sobriquet "Deerslayer" commemo— rates his hunting ability, but Natty also adheres to ideals taught him by missionaries and conforms to no human author- ity blindly: "I hold to a white man's respecting white law," he asserts, "so long as they do not cross the track of a law comin' from a higher authority" (49). Therefore, he refuses to scalp his victims, while March Shows no such compunction. Natty strives to act as an instrument of God's will, and he regards Nature as the manifestation of God's glory.10 Although Deerslayer is "just arriving at manhood" (xi), he already possesses a defined character that allows him to act deliberately and morally. Unlike Harry, he is discreet in his acts and words. He is also manly without being crude, one whose appreciation of natural beauty in no way renders him effeminate or ineffectual in combat: Still, he felt, though it was unconsciously, like a poet also. If he found a pleasure in studying this large, and, to him unusual opening into the mysteries and forms of the woods [i.e., the Glimmerglass], as one is gratified in getting broader views of any subject that has long occupied his thoughts, he was not insensible to the innate loveliness of such a landscape either, but felt a portion of that sooth- ing of the spirit which is a common attendant of a scene so thoroughly pervaded by the holy calm of nature. (45) Natty's responses to novelty, like his feelings upon his first viewing the lake, are governed by a tempered combi- nation of emotion and reason. Likewise, his compassion 100 for friend and enemy alike is combined with his sound reason, qualifying him as a reliable judge of human be- havior. Not at all a cold person, Natty possesses the quality that Cooper always lauded most highly--disinter- estedness. He "feels" for others, but does not let emotion blind him to their shortcomings; conversely, he can judge others without losing his awareness of them as human beings given to eccentricities and failings. Or, in D. H. Lawrence's terms, "Deerslayer keeps the centre of his consciousness steady and unperturbed."ll Natty possesses "every disposition to hear reason, a strong, innate desire to do justice, and in ingenuousness that was singularly indisposed to have recourse in SOphisms to maintain an argument, or to defend a prejudice" (47). He has what COOper calls in The Sea Lions "in-and-in breeding which converts habit into instinct" (113). By suggesting as I did at the outset of this chapter that The Deerslayer is biographically oriented, I did not wish to imply that Natty changes and grows as a character, in the fashion of more recent "initiation stories." His character has been formed previous to the story's opening: his habits are "thoughtful and regu- lated" (32); he possesses an "innate desire to do justice" (47); he has "a sort of philOSOphical prudence, that appeared to render him superior to all motives but those which were best calculated to effect his purpose" (120). 101 He knows that his gifts qualify him for feats of marksman- ship, not of learning. His self-knowledge and confidence, combined with savvy and innate virtue, distinguish him from his more vulgar cohorts. Given all this, Natty still must prove himself: "The Deerslayer," in Paul Stein's words, "illustrates through the choices made by Natty on his way to manhood the self-defining process by which true moral nobility evidences itself."12 Natty adapts to un- familiar situations because he is not confined to unsub- stantiated preconceptions; he adjusts his thoughts and actions as his perspective widens. The seven days he Spends on the Glimmerglass provide a wide range of tests of this ability and finally affirm his potential in matters martial, romantic, and moral. Natty's killing of his first human enemy in the celebrated seventh chapter of The Deerslaypr is but one facet of his initiation, and not the first in the book. Natty is the first to spot the Hurons hidden along the Susquehanna even though the exertion of others keeps the Indians from the ark. And when he does kill Le Loup Cervier, Natty is simultaneously "just grazed" (126) by his foe's bullet, indicating physically the impact of the initiatory process. Nevertheless, his successes during the week on the lake cannot be separated from his lapses in performance and judgment, for he does not pass his tests flawlessly. Natty resists sexual temptation when 102 Judith dons the finery found in her father's treasure chest, but he simultaneously neglects to set a watch out- side, permitting the Huron youth to reach the castle un- noticed. During Deerslayer's furlough, he must overcome the temptation not to return, as urged by Hurry and Judith. And after Judith has given Killdeer to Natty, his pride momentarily gets the better of his judgment, and he wantonly shoots an eagle, violating his code--"I never yet pulled a trigger on buck or doe . . . unless food or clothes was wanting" (475). Remorseful, Deerslayer returns to honor his furlough and to face ordeals by tomahawk, knife, and rifle. The Huron torture provides definite tests of his perseverance: "This hunter cannot quit my young men now," Rivenoak tells Hetty, "they wish to know if he is as stouthearted as he boasts himself to be" (559). Natty's behavior under torment and in the ensuing battle completes his probation: "Warrior I may now call myself, I suppose, for I've both fou't and conquered, which is sufficient for the name" (588). As Natty's initiation proceeds, the other princi- pals are confronted with a most significant novelty--a truly noble man. Hurry, Judith, and Hetty individually come to recognize his worth. Judith enthusiastically succumbs to Natty's goodness, but the men are more dis- passionate observers of the young man. After Natty negotiates Hutter and March's release, Hurry grudgingly 103 admits, "I'm beginnin' to think more of you, Since your late behavior, than I used to do" (274). But Natty treasures most highly the approbation of the Hurons. The dying Le Loup Cervier bestows the sobriquet "Hawkeye" to imply Skill in combat, but, of course, the new name also suggests moral wisdom. Natty's reputation, which swells with the news of his victory over his first foe, is great enough among the Hurons for them to grant him a furlough to the castle--"'and it isn't often--' added the hunter, with a pleasing consciousness that his previous life justi- fied this implicit reliance on his good faith—-'it isn't often they consait anything so good of a paleface'" (425). After Hutter's death, Judith honors Natty with Killdeer, the finest rifle he has ever seen; "Then keep it, Deer- slayer, and become King of the Woods. . . . It can never be in better hands" (422), she says, evoking the signifi— cance of Excalibur for Arthur's kingship. The ultimate, but most understated, recognition of Natty comes from Hetty in her final lucid moment: "I feel, Deerslayer . . . that you and I are not going to part for ever" (581. The assumption is that Hetty will go to heaven; therefore, her words prophesy Natty's apotheosis. Concluding her role as seer, Hetty urges Hurry to go and live his life after Deerslayer's model. A major difference, then, between Cooper's early and later novels is that in the latter even the minor 104 characters develop relationships among themselves. Previ- ously, interaction had been among characters who repre- sented different groups, such as armies or tribes or social classes, and played roles that had been determined by their group. One character might discover significant facts about another, as Frances Wharton learned Harvey Birch was allied with "Harper" and as Gelsomina found the lover She knew as Carlo to be the Bravo, but in The Deerslayer the white men, isolated together on the Glimmerglass, have to get to know one another. Not only do Hurry and the Hutters recognize and appreciate Natty, but they learn about themselves and one another. Judith rejects Hurry as a suitor and begins to atone for her past errors; Hetty, although infatuated with Hurry, recognizes his moral short- comings; and even though Hurry himself accepts Natty as his superior, he is too stubborn to alter himself. Even among the Hutter family, discoveries are made, but these are largely in keeping with the mode of "revealing" that had been minimized by the time Cooper wrote The Deerslayer. The girls, for instance, find out through their mother's letters that Hutter is not their actual father although they cannot piece together his full history. However, Cooper develops the sisters' relationship in depicting their mutual love, their differing feelings for their late mother, Hetty's disapproval of Judith's moral laxity, and Judith's compassion for Hetty's retarded mental condition. 105 None of the lesser characters is presented to the extent Natty is, of course, but they are all individualized in their responses to one another. Likewise, their common predicament--being isolated from the settlements by the hostile Indians surrounding the Glimmerglass--forces them into a new awareness of their environment. Even the Hutter family, who have been living on the lake and have suffered Indian raids, have never before been subjected to siege. Thus during the novel the white's collective preconceptions of the land's mystery and the lake's openness are tested. Initially, the Glimmerglass reminds them of "solemn solitude and sweet repose" (33), but the forest is dark and terrifying. On the water, openness prevents villainy. There are no storms, no bothersome waves. Hutter, a reputed ex-pirate, lives in his "castle" on the lake, where he feels most secure; "Trust to the castle," he shouts to Natty as the Indians capture March and himself, "and, above all things, keep clear of the land" (115). He does not follow his own advice, however. After his second attempted scalping expedition, the Hurons ambush and scalp him alive, in retaliation for his venturing ashore. Even at night, the lake is lighter and seemingly less ominous: "it was within the shadows of the mountains that the gloom rested most heavily on the water" (279). The epigraph to Chapter 10 warns of the deceptive qualities of the woods--the 106 "confused sound of rustling leaves" and the "seeming answer." Naturally, the forest is darker than the lake, but most important the hostile Hurons lurk within the woods. The whites' experience during the week-long siege modifies their original ideas of the environment. Ashore to convince the Hurons to free Hutter and March, Hetty sleeps easily among leaves and is escorted toward the Indian camp by a family of bears. Although Hetty's idiocy warrants her exemption from Indian and natural violence alike, the woods also become less ominous to the other whites. Cooper moves his narrative position ashore again to describe March and Hutter's second scalping expedition, as they find only an empty camp; Deerslayer, ashore against Le Loup Cervier and later as a captive, finds the land an arena for trial, but one that does not pre- clude his success. The castle-dwellers also come to recognize the lake's dangers. Natty carelessly lets a young Huron reach the castle unchallenged; a Huron hidden in a canoe almost tricks Natty; and Judith has to warn him about the rifles Rivenoak has concealed in his canoe during the negoti- ations for Hutter and March's release. Late in the story, after Natty is recaptured by Rivenoak, the Chief's taunt reminds Natty of what he already has learned, that his gifts do not apply to marine warfare: "'My young friend 107 is a moose!‘ exclaimed the Huron. 'His legs are very long; they have given my young men trouble. But he is not a fish; he cannot find his way in the lake. We did not shoot him; fish are taken in nets, and not killed by bullets. When he turns moose again he will be treated like a moose'" (526). Neither Natty nor Chingachgook manages well on an element incompatible with his gifts, but when they are thrust into new situations for which their previous train- ing has prepared them, they survive admirably, regardless of terrifying misconceptions built on insufficient knowl- edge. It should come as no surprise that Cooper sets his story in the wilderness, which is a "neutral ground" that "seems to belong to no native tribe in particular" (36) "between the skirts of civilized society and the boundless forests" (17). As A. N. Kaul observes, the virgin land functions like Natty's consciousness: "Here there is no established civilization . . . only possibilities of good 13 But the Glimmerglass region is not only the and evil." place for Natty's initiation and other characters' indi- vidual growth: setting is also part of the unfamiliar phenomena to which they adapt themselves. After seven days of "so much that is important" (589), to borrow Judith's phrase, neutrality is no more, at least in the characters' minds. Of course, the land is still not con- trolled by anyone, but it has become part of the white 108 experience, something they will never forget, and something that will facilitate the eventual civilization of that region and the entire wilderness. The interaction of characters, major and minor alike, with their environment and with one another testi- fies to the possibilities of the historical form: within the total event--the week-long ethnic struggle--Cooper develOps in detail a greater number of characters in $22 Deerslayer than he ever did in the novels of 'twenties. Nevertheless, the form of the novel also evidences Cooper's attempt to impart a biographical orientation upon his material. First, he creates the sense of greater duration than the actual week of the story. If that time at least gggmg longer, one conceives its importance more readily. Thus, by noting each sunrise and sunset and letting repetition suggest duration, COOper emphasizes the signifi- cance of the week's incidents upon Natty. Furthermore, the importance of the occurrences reinforces the sense of passing time. The book's first sentence, "On the human imagination, events produce the effects of time" (13) refers to the great changes during the century separating Cooper and his readers from the fictional world, but the sentence also reinforces the sense of altered perSpective that Judith notices and confides to Natty: "I have known you but a day . . . but it has awakened the confidence 109 of a year" (144). And again: "So much, and so much that is important, has taken place within that short time, that the sorrows, and dangers, and escapes of a whole life have been crowded into a few days; and they who have suffered and acted together in such scenes, ought not to feel like strangers" (589). Cooper seems to have been interested in creating a fairly complex social situation, not in depict- ing "a whole life." Yet the illusion of duration that he imparts to The Deerslayer makes sense in a novel about the alterations in man's perceptions. The book's biographical orientation is also apparent in its point of view, which tends toward first- person central. If Natty's opinions are to become para- mount, his perspective will present them most directly. COOper retains in The Deerslayer the omniscient narrator that he had utilized in his early, rapid-paced novels to control the release of information for dramatic effect, but he relies more heavily than previously upon dialogue and soliloquy to allow Natty to voice his own thoughts and ideas. Cooper had employed fictional personae as early as 1828 in Notions g: the Americans and again in The Monikins (1835) and in the "A. B. C. Letters" (1834—1836). It is likely that he did not consider Natty Bumppo articu- late enough to narrate his own story, but Cooper's attempts to increase Natty's role of spokesman without sacrificing plausibility were more deliberate than is often recognized. 110 Information that might have been assimilated into the narrative lies undigested within Deerslayer's conversation: "Well, well, Rivenoak,--for so I hear 'em tarm you,--this is plain English enough, though spoken in Iroquois. I understand all you mean, now, and must say it outdevils even Mingo deviltryl" (318) Normally, the narrator would explain that Rivenoak was speaking Iroquois and that the conversation had been rendered into English for the reader's sake. Again: "Now, as for myself, I overlook altogether your designs ag'in my life; first, because no harm came of 'em; next, because it's your gifts, and natur', and trainin', and I ought not to have trusted you at all; and, finally and chiefly, because I can bear no ill-will to a dying man, whether heathen or Christian" (129). The narrator's description of Natty's motives would have avoided this overt rendition of character. COOper's alteration of his narrative mode--allowing Natty to narrate and explain more--is not entirely successful, in effect adding pomp to an already pompous character. Ironically, in most instances, this flaw is gratuitous Since the narrator had already supplied the information. Awkward as it is, Cooper is fashioning a fictional vehicle to depict the life of a central character. Cooper's biographical intentions within the his— torical form lend themselves to didactic ends. His care with characterization and with elaborate comparisons 111 among the principals results in Natty's emergence as the human ideal. While the novel may have allowed COOper to escape temporarily from contemporary dilemmas,l4 it seems more likely that The Deerslayer "is concerned less with the march of American civilization than with the question "15 If the former were his of popular American values. concern, Cooper most likely would have handled this story as he did his more Spectacular historical romances, which were at least partially intended to eulogize the process of civilization and Americanization. Certainly, COOper expressed in The Deerslayer nostalgia for forgotten Indians and a pristine Otsego, but he also employed contemporary issues in the characters' conversations to make his rather sweeping statement about morality. He makes it very clear, for instance, that unredeemed pragmatists, like March and Hutter, are a curse to any society. For eight years, since his return to the United States in 1833, Cooper had lam- basted the "go-aheadism" he thought was poisoning America. By the time he wrote The Deerslayer, the Three-Mile Point had reaffirmed his disgust for those who disregard property rights as well as unscrupulous newspapermen who exploit the Situation sensationally. Characters, like Tom Hutter and Hurry Harry March, who reSpect no law and seek only to satisfy selfish interests, earned Cooper's vilification in almost every novel he wrote in the 'forties. This frequent, reiterated disdain for godless and lawless 112 expediency attests to his inability to escape the pressures of mid-nineteenth century existence, even if he wanted to. In fact, Cooper's preoccupation with the theme of ownership, early in The Deerslayer, intrudes upon his treatment of the more pervasive issues, which I have been discussing. Natty and Harry's conversation as they approach the Glimmerglass leads the reader to expect serious con- tention for control of the region, but Cooper avoids a sustained treatment of the theme in favor of developing more general matters. Still, he cannot mask his hatred for March and Hutter, and the breakdown in their charac- ters anticipates the hysterical tone and shallow charac- terization that mar The Redskins and The Crater. But generally, Natty's perSpective functions as a moral constant for the Glimmerglass group and for Cooper's readers. The full characterization of the young hunter as a moral exemplar makes The Deerslayer the most eloquent of the Leatherstocking novels. It is definitely a book that must be read for more than its plot, for the theme COOper generates is a significant one. AS Donald A. Ringe says, The Deerslayer "unites in one well-executed whole the dual streams that had been developing in his work: the sense of the American past in both its temporal and spatial aspects and the question of values as they 16 were developing in contemporary American life." Romance conventions detach the narrative from the limitations of 113 specifically contemporary applications and render its statement timeless. Retrospectively, The Deerslayer is a transitional step toward Cooper's implementation of first-person narration in Afloat and Ashore (1844) and Satanstoe (1845), novels shaped by the lives of their heroes. Although Miles Wallingford and Corny Littlepage, the respective protagonists of these books, are less spectacular than Natty, their eloquence qualifies them to tell their own stories. In 1841, these biographical novels were still in Cooper's future, but his completed Leather- stocking Tales already stood as his most ambitious under- taking of that sort. The Deerslayer supplies the most thorough description of the formation of Natty's character; by comparing him with others to clarify his uniqueness, Cooper clearly establishes Natty as a human ideal. V "I SHALL NOT ATTEMPT THE HISTORICAL MOOD AT ALL": SATANSTOE When Cooper returned to the publication of novels in 1838, his books evidenced his increased interest in characterization. The last two Leatherstocking Tales, The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer, as well as the books that appeared after them focused on individual predicaments. Not until 1843, however, with the publication of 522 Mygpg, art turn clearly toward the biographical form. The three novels subsequent to The Deerslayer retain the historical form, and in each Cooper uses internalized conflicts to sustain the stories dramatically: in TEE.TEQ_Admirals (1842), Bluewater must decide whether to support his life- long friends Oakes or the English Pretender, whose French allies threaten Oakes' fleet; Raoul Yvard, the reckless privateer in TEE.Wipgfgpdfflipg (1842), is torn between French Rationalism and his lover, Ghita, who demands he become a Catholic before She will marry him; Wyandotté (1843) forcefully portrays ambivalence in both Captain 114 115 Willoughby and Saucy Nick (Wyandotté). But Ngd_My§£§, comprised of an old shipmate's life "edited" by Cooper,1 was his first narrative in the biographical form, relating through a first-person point of view Ned's career and Opinions, which are often far less genteel than Cooper's. AS Thomas Philbrick documents in James Fenimore Cooper and the Development p£_American Sea Fiction, stories of careers of common sailors were exceedingly popular at this time, Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840) being but one of countless others. The impact of Ned Myers upon Cooper's craft was immediately apparent: his next novel, Afloat and Ashore (1844), uses first-person point of view to relate the life and Opinions of Miles Wallingford. Both the length of time and the variety of scenes that Miles deals with prove the perfect vehicle for Cooper's socio- political and moral observations. Structurally, Afloat and Ashore is one of Cooper's most significant novels, as Philbrick has admirably demonstrated.2 Nevertheless, Cooper's next novel, Satanstoe, was his best effort in the biographical form. Cooper announces in the Preface to Satanstoe, "The reader will see that the early career, the attachment, the marriage, &c., of Mr. Cornelius Littlepage are completely related in the present book" (vi). The novel is pur- portedly Corny's reminiscence of his coming-of—age, emphasizing his twentieth and twenty-first years (i.e., 1757 and 1758). He mentions a boyhood trip to Boston 116 and describes his departure for college, but elaborates upon his post-graduation visit to New York City and his journey the next year to Albany and into the upstate wilderness. Corny's father charges him with supervising the initial settlement of recently purchased lands, but Corny's mission entails the adaptation to the ways of the wilderness and, eventually, a desperate battle against hostile Indians. Unlike Afloat and Ashore, Satanstoe treats only Corny's youth and young manhood; nevertheless, his experience is the novel's structural Skeleton. More- over, we view the story through his eyes, and the other characters fade into the background, functioning either to forward the book's action or as foils for Corny. He himself describes the biographical nature of the novel: "I shall not attempt the historical mood at all, but con- tent myself with giving the feelings, incidents, and interests of what is purely private life, connecting them no farther with things that are of a general nature, than is indispensable to render the narrative intelligible and accurate" (10). Yet, Corny has to admit that his narrative has historial validity: "He who makes a faithful picture of only a Single important scene in the events of a single life, is doing something towards painting the greatest historical piece of his day" (10). Although his account from the perspective of the 1780's3 is autobiographical 117 and often subjective, it also functions historically in that it provides the groundwork for Cooper's Anti-Rent Trilogy. His experiences in the late 1750's encompass the initial phase of a new society, so he is not only a repre- sentative of the process of colonization but is also the patriarch of the northern settlement. Corny intends his "chronicle of manners" to "preserve some vestiges of household life" (10) of the already vanishing "hobbledehoy condition" (435) on his patent. Satanstoe also contains some of the causes of the social turmoil depicted in The Chainbearer and The Redskins. Events of importance that Corny personally experi- ences give his narrative an added historical dimension. "I have not lived in a quarter of the world, or in an age, when and where, and to which great events have been alto- gether Strangers" (16), he justly claims, and Cooper utilizes Corny's participation to Show "what it was like to be there" and to ground the narrative historically. Corny's first-hand account of Lord Howe's assault on Frot Ticonderoga, which Cooper adapted from Holmes' Annals, Mrs. Grant's Memoirs pf §p_American Lady, and William Dunlap's History p£_ppg New Netherlands,4 presents the impact of the struggle on an individual, supposedly typical, participant, just as Thackeray does in the Battle of Waterloo in Vanity Epip, In 1825, on the other hand, Cooper had used Lionel Lincoln's experience in the Battles 118 of Lexington-Concord and Bunker Hill, presented in the omniscient point of view, to create a sense of the totality of those events. This shift in intent is, of course, con- gruent with the general pattern of Cooper's aesthetic development from the historical to the biographical. Even though Satanstoe contains "the foundations of great events . . . remotely laid in very capricious and uncalculated passions, motives, or impulses" (v), its subject is primarily psychological, not sociological like The Bravo's. Therefore, we must attend to the sequence of Corny's development and allow for alterations in his per- spective, especially those between the story's occurrence and the time of composition.5 Three elements inform the narrative: Corny's background and representative nature qualify him as protagonist and narrator; his comparison of geographical regions--New England, Westchester County, New York City, Albany, and the woods--anchors Satanstoe's thematic statement; and a fundamental movement from societal restraint to self-imposed discipline underlies the activi— ties of the youthful characters. The novel's symbolic core, as well as the fulcrum of its plot, is the thrilling sequence on the Hudson River: Corny's desperate struggle to save Anneke Mordaunt and himself from the violence of the Spring flood is crucial to his maturation (i.e., equilibrium between freedom and restraint). In retrospect, Corny sees this as his fundamental objective in the 119 occurrences that comprise Satanstoe, and he is the only one of his group really to attain it. Since Corny's perspective shapes the novel, it is likely that his self-projection may influence the nature of his friends and their experiences,* but Corny does not' shape the lives of others from the mold of his own. He characterizes them according to degrees of self-discipline, but that is apprOpriate for individuals who are also com- pleting adolescence. In fact, these lesser characters function quite satisfactorily as foils to Corny's matu- ration and as stimuli for his growth. The peOple he meets in New York cause him to examine the relationship between self-indulgence (assertion) and self-restraint (suppression) in his own character, and different modes of behavior help him eventually reaffirm his intention to cultivate a moder- ate temperament. The novel's two main nine-chapter se- quences, in the Albany area and then in the wilderness, broaden Corny's perspective to include most of his Colony and dramatize his determination to find a mean between Jason Newcome's extreme inhibitions and Guert Ten Eyck's extreme impetuosity. Corny may dabble in Dutch indulgence at Albany, but he commits himself to the morality most nearly like that of the settled Westchester society. In *The fortune-teller, Mother Doortje, exploits this all-too-human trait when she forms her advice to Corny and his companions on the basis of the images each projects. 120 short, the book's settings and characters are constants against which Corny and the reader can judge Corny's growth. Just as some critics ignore The Deerslayer's historical form and thus overemphasize Natty's role, those who overlook Satanstoe's biographical form miss the sig- nificance of Corny Littlepage. George Dekker, for one, reading the book as the last of a series of novels about colonial independence, dismisses it as a failure: "Neither does this novel have any of the characteristic personal tensions--freedom vs. authority, progressivism vs. con- servatism--which usually lie just below the surface of COOper's best fiction. This is partly because COOper's narrator, in Spite of conflicting loyalties, is a rela- tively placid fellow."6 Dekker is willing to regard Corny's experience as representative of American colonial life, but he disregards the impact of the events upon Corny as an individual. His mature confidence directs the relaxed, picaresque narrative. By the time he tells the story, this tension between assertion and suppression tempers his judgment of social groups and individuals, and his description of settings symbolically reflects the fundamental conflict. An appreciation of Satanstoe, therefore, involves an understanding of how the basic question of freedom vs. restraint affects Corny's own maturation, and then how his life--the informing element 121 of the novel--relates more broadly to his own time and to subsequent deve10pments. The social position of the Littlepages qualifies Corny from the start as an informed, involved narrator. Holding "a respectable position between the higher class of the yeomanry and . . . the aristocracy of the Colony" (14), his family can send him to college and invest exten- sively in unsettled land. Moreover, Corny is of the first generation to possess both Dutch and English blood, the dominant nationalities of York Colony. Such a lineage makes him a true colonial and excepts him from "the tendency to excess," which is "the great characteristic of the Dutch" (289). Finally, as respectable Yorkers, the Littlepages maintain a moderate moral philosophy: in America, our morals were, and long have been, separated into three great and very distinct classes; viz.--New England, or puritan-morals; middle colonies, or liberal morals; and southern colonies, or latitudinarian morals" (288). Corny proudly affirms, "I had the opinions of my own colony" (50). His formal education, culminating in a degree from Nassau Hall (Princeton), makes him better informed, more able to generalize and reason, and a relatively detached observer--, but college in no way completes his instruction. Corny may become an able casuist as a result of studying "moral philOSOphy," which was "closely attended to" (41), 122 and he also develops into an acute social observer, ex- pounding his views against the,"accidental superiority" (141) English nobility possess in the colonies. "It is a failing of colonies," Corny concludes (sounding much like COOper himself), "to be diffident of their own opinions“ (98). Even though Corny will still learn a great deal about his colony, its society and its wilder- ness, he early possesses the ability to join his obser- vations to reasonable opinions, thus qualifying himself as a reliable narrator. Corny's schooling and social position engender in him self-awareness, which is largely free of self- consciousness. Candor distinguishes the respectable class who, like his family, possess the social stability to give dignitaries, such as the Patroon of Albany, their due: "[The passage of an eminent man] does not occur every day in the colonies, and I felt exceedingly happy that it had been my privilege to witness it" (39). Corny's modesty sometimes includes self-praise: "I am not conscious my acquisitions at college have ever been of any disadvantage to me; and I rather think they have, in some degree at least, contributed to the little success that has attended my humble career" (43). Corny certainly possesses social refinement, but this does not obscure his compassion and sense of humor. He treats human foibles sympathetically, without being 123 patronizing: "At any rate, it was not in the power of fifty pounds per annum to render Mr. Worden [the good- natured Anglican minister of the Littlepages' church in Westchester] apathetic on the subject of the church; for he continued a most zealous churchman down to the hour of his death; and this was something, even admitting that he was not quite so zealous as a Christian" (44). Unlike Jason Newcome, Corny does not take his education, among the finest to be had in the colonies, overseriously: "We had a tutor who was expert among the stars, and who, it was generally believed, would have been able to see the ring of Saturn, could he have found the planet; which, as it turned out, he was unable to do" (41). And Corny is not above an occasional pun: "Queen Street, indeed, is the great artery of New York, through which most of its blood circulates" (68). Certainly, his vitality belies Dekker's willingness to dismiss him as "a relatively placid fellow." Fortunately, Corny possesses human failings. Like many of COOper's gentry he has a sense of superiority, a penchant for preachment, and a love of the status app, but in moderate doses that humanize him. While he may reiterate his disdain for greedy pragmatists like Jason Newcome, Corny does not drone on while atOp his hobby- horses in the manner of the Effinghams and the other Littlepage narrators. And he is not old enough at the 124 time of the story's occurrence to take an authoritative role in conversation. Yet, sometimes he reveals more than he wishes to, as in the following passage displaying his tendency to belabor self-praise: I could discover that my person in this crowd attracted attention as a stranger. I say as a stranger; for I am unwilling to betray so much vanity as to ascribe the manner in which many eyes followed me, to any vain notion that I was known or admired. Still, I will not so far disparage the gifts of a bountiful Providence, as to leave the impression that my face, person, or air was particularly disagreeable. This would not be the fact; and I have now reached a time of life when something like the truth may be told, without the imputation of conceit. My mother often boasted to her intimates, "that Corny was one of the best-made, handsomest, most active, and genteelest youths in the colony." This I know, for such things will leak out; but mothers are known to have a re- markable weakness on the subject of their children. As I was the sole surviving offSpring of my dear mother, who was one of the best-hearted women that ever breathed, it is highly probable that the notions she entertained of her son partook largely of the love she bore me. It is true, my aunt Legge, on more than one occasion, has been heard to express a very similar Opinion; though nothing can be more natural than that sisters should think alike, on a family matter of this particular nature, more especially as my aunt Legge never had a child of her own to love and praise. (109-110) Out of this combination of relatively minor fail- ings and a cluster of favorable traits--generosity, affa- bility, bravery, responsibility--, Corny emerges an admirable, but human, figure. Moreover, like Natty, Corny is distinguished by an "ability to have a per- ceptive rather than an exploitive relationship with his 7 fellow creatures." His patience toward Jason continues 125 despite the latter's repeated efforts "to transfer the fee-simple of the mill-lot at Ravensnest, from the owner- ship of those in whom it is vested by law, to that of his own humble, but meritorious person" (452). Corny appreci- ates natural beauty, but he is more articulate than Natty about his "poetic responses" and fashions his account into S 7 an objective, coherent narrative. Many of the earlier Cooper protagonists had similar high standards of behavior, but Corny is as fully developed and believable a character as any. Though he may well have become more opinionated by the time he composes his memoirs, Corny's light tone is entirely appropriate in dealing with the often comic period of adolescence, and, he fully succeeds in recreating a sense of his own development--"I am acting in the part of an honest historian" (94), he reminds us--from childish provincialism toward adult SOphistication. The episodes in Satanstoe consist of Corny's exposure to unfamiliar modes of behavior. Only when he can decide how he should act, does his initiation--and single life--end, for he is then qualified to wed Anneke Mordaunt.8 His development is toward less restraint than his parents had imposed upon him; once he breaks the apron strings, he strives to incorporate a decorous spontaneity into his behavior. Removes from Westchester to Albany and then into the woods, areas of successively increased 126 personal freedom, permit Corny tastes of less polished life-styles. His companions also face the problem of adjusting to new locales. Thus, Guert's recklessness, while regarded by some peOple as excessive, is far more apprOpriate in Albany than in the woods, where he is killed because of his haste. Likewise, Jason is better suited to his schoolroom than to the carefree atmosphere of Albany. Satanstoe, like The Deerslayer, has a funda- mental moral conflict to unify its episodes: Corny eventually assimilates aspects of clashing temperaments into an adult life-style appropriate to his surroundings; unlike Jason and Guert, Corny can vary his behavior in keeping with local codes. His first significant experience is his boyhood journey to Boston to watch the embarkation of the Louis- bourg expedition. "The things I saw on this occasion have had a material influence on my future life," Corny notes: the military preparations enthrall him, and so does the "marked difference between New England and New York" (19). Subsequently, he cheerfully assents to serve with Lord Howe against the French, and the difference between Yankee and Yorker morals rarely leaves his mind. The arrival of Jason Newcome in Westchester enables Corny to define differences between New England behavior, which Jason personifies in his mind (as well as in Cooper's), and that of York Colony: "It has often 127 occurred to my mind," he reflects, “that it would be better had New England a little less self-righteousness, and New York a little more righteousness, without the self" (20). When Jason tells of his family's reckoning up the costs of each child's education, Corny judges that petty; he also sees Jason's penchant for correcting New Yorkers' language as humorless. Cooper himself considered Jason's lack of personal freedom typically Yankee and has Corny inveigh against it: "every thing and every body were brought under rigid church government among the Puritans; and, when a community gets the notion that it is to Sit in judgment on every act of one of its members, it is quite natural that it Should extend that right to an inquiry into all his affairs. One thing is certain; our neighbors of Connecti- cut do assume a control over the acts and Opinions of indi- viduals that is not dreamed of in New York" (135-136). But worst of all, Jason is a hypocrite. In one of the funniest scenes in Satanstoe, Corny and Guert discover the Reverend Mr. Worden and Jason playing All Fours in a clearing. Both characters make a conscious claim to righteousness during the story, but the easygoing Anglican minister is far less pretentious than Newcome, whose piety turns out to be guilt-motivated and superficial: Jason gave unequivocal signs of a disposition to con- ceal his hand, by thrusting the cards he held into his bosom, while he rapidly put the remainder of the pack under his thigh, pressing it down in a way completely to conceal it. . . . Very different was the conduct 1....1" ' 128 of the Rev. Mr. Worden. Taught to discriminate better, and unaccustomed to set up arbitrary rules of his own as the law of God, this loose observer of his profes- sional obligations in other matters, made a very proper distinction in this. Instead of giving the least mani- festation of confusion or alarm, the log on which he was seated was not more unmoved than he remained, at our sudden appearance at his side. "I hOpe, Corny, my dear boy," Mr. Worden cried, "that you did not forget to purchase a few packs of cards; which, I plainly see, will be a great resource for us, in this woody region. These cards of Jason's are so thumbed and handled, that they are not fit to be touched by a gentleman, as I will Show you. Why, what has become of the pack, Master Newcome? It was on the log but a minute ago!" (330-331) On the whole, Corny is a compassionate critic of Jason's ; 14'} A ‘ mannerisms, but his Yorker disapproval of New England repression remains serious: "No one can be more convinced than myself how much sectarians are prone to substitute their own narrow notions of right and wrong for the law of God, confounding acts that are perfectly innocent in them- selves with Sin" (163). The contrast between Worden and Newcome in this episode is emblematic of the opposition between Westchester and New England morality. "Liberal morals" and the mixture of Dutch and English blood make the Yorkers an affable lot, who enjoy their leisure as much as they work for social status. The Littlepages and their peers neither pry into personal affairs nor suppress urges for pleasure. Corny considers his temperate behavior representative of his home county: "I was good-natured and well-disposed to my fellow-creatures, and had no greater love of money than 129 was necessary to render me reasonably discreet" (56). But Jason's greed and his "ultra leveling . . . notions of social intercourse" (50) make him a potential threat to a stable class society. In the Trilogy, Yankee avarice finally obliterates any regard for the landlords' rights, and pettiness "does a vast deal of mischief . . . especi- ally in those parts . . . where our own people [i.e., New Yorkers] are brought in contact with their fellow-subjects from the more eastern colonies" (491). Cooper in Hemp pp 52229 had called this phase in a community's development "perhaps the least inviting condition of society that be- longs to any country that can claim to be free, and re- moved from barbarism. The tastes are too uncultivated to exercise any essential influence, and when they do exist, it is usually with the pretension and effort that so commonly accompany infant knowledge" (163). Corny's boyhood and college years prepare him for the initiatory events of 1757 and 1758. His first ex- posure to "society" in New York City begins the basic pattern of his maturation--alternation between feelings of isolation and identification--, for as he meets new people and experiences unfamiliar ways, Corny has to over- come his sense of his own difference by adapting himself to the new situation. In New York, for instance, his "first time . . . among the gay idlers" (107) results in his awe at the refinement of the young ladies and soldiers 130 he meets. Although his family is of a class which allows him to circulate freely in society, he is at age twenty too unsophisticated to recognize immediately his own virtues and the "town's" faults. In his naiveté, he deprecates his chances of competing with refined men like Major Bulstrode, the son of an English lord, for the favor of the lovely Miss Mordaunt. Fortunately for Corny, his instincts counteract his lack of SOphistication. His saving Anneke from a lion at Pinkster--the second in a series of such rescues--reminds her of his earlier willing- ness to fight another boy in defense of her honor. Immedi- ately after this repeated triumph, Corny inadvertently reveals to the suave Bulstrode his blooming affection for Anneke. Bulstrode takes a firm liking to Corny, but the Major's accomplished air allows him to express gracefully his own attachment to Anneke while cleverly exposing Corny's youthful and seemingly foolish fervor. Corny is, at best, disconcerted by Bulstrode's aplomb: "when I parted from my companion I fancied myself a much wiser man than when we had met" (113). The same evening, Corny attends the theatre with his new friends, another novel experience that reaffirms his naiveté. His account vividly recalls the thrill: "the ornaments, and the lights, and the curtain, the pit, the boxes, the gallery, were all so many objects of intense interest. Few of us said any thing; but our eyes 131 wandered over all with a species of delight, that I am certain can be felt in a theatre only once" (124-125). William Dunlap's History pf the American Theatre (1832), ‘which James Pickering cites as Cooper's source for the passage just quoted, also stresses how impressive "the effects produced upon a young mind, by the first enjoy— ment of the splendid illusions, and seductive excitement of a theatrical exhibition [could be]. The crowd of well- dressed people, tier above tier, added to the novelty of the building and its decorations; the lights, the music, the drop curtain. . . . "9 And Anneke seems as taken with the play as Corny (and the young Dunlap). The fact that the players are British soldiers suggests that the colon- ists lack sophistication about the drama, a point apparent in the general enthusiasm of the young people in the audience. However, neither Anneke nor Corny approves of the risque Beaux' Stratagem, time comic after-piece. While Corny is a careful observer of the lady's responses and is cautious not to offend her sensibility, he clearly dis- approves of the bawdy farce in his own right. But just as it seems that Corny and Anneke are discovering common interests, Corny considers the play's popularity to be in Bulstrode's favor and then hears a rumor from his aunt that the Major is to marry Anneke. With that Corny's sense of isolation becomes acute: he immediately with- draws from the ladies and Sits "in a distant part of the _ ~l'll-t'u . m-I 132 theatre, though one in which I could distinctly see those I had abandoned" (128). Corny still views himself a new- comer, whose bonds with this new society are tenuous. Nevertheless, his degree of involvement is such that he can conceptualize his own provincialism. A result of Corny's experience in the theatre and in the entire city is his approval of the reserve of Anneke and her friend Mary Wallace. His account of Pinkster implies his con- tinual awareness of behavioral alternatives, described in the familiar terms of freedom and restraint: "the more dignified and cultivated had self-denial enough to keep aloof, Since it would hardly have comparted with their years and stations to be seen in such a place" (90). They migpp have been less inhibited, Corny realizes. Corny's exposure to Dutch Albany and especially the carefree Guert Ten Eyck renews the same question--now free is one to be in his behavior? Significantly, Corny reaches his twenty-first birthday just before he and Dirck Follock set out for Albany, on March 1, 1758. "Turned the corner!--well, that's unlucky," Guert will quip a few days later, upon learning Corny's age, "but we must make the best of it" (194). Mrs. Littlepage recog- nizes the importance of Corny's northern journey on which he is to sell goods for his father and then proceed on to survey the sprawling 40,000 acre Mooseridge patent: "You are going," she muses, "to a part of the country where 133 much will be to be seen" (160). Of course, she does not anticipate the meaning Albany will assume in Corny's mind, for his activities there cause him to question for the first time whether he is even worthy of Miss Mordaunt. Guert-inspired exploits, like sledding on a main street and stealing the Mayor's dinner (of which Anneke's party is to partake), undermine Corny's dignity in Anneke's Opinion: "I have seen Mr. Littlepage, and think he has grown since we last met," she tells Dirck, "he promises to make a mpg one of these days" (196). Corny finds Albany a delightful town, but her perplexing displeasure with his enthusiasm temporarily gives social acceptance, especi- ally his desire to impress her, priority over his responsi- bilities to his father's interests. Even the town itself fascinates the new-comers-- "our eyes were about us, as we drove through the streets of the second town in the colony" (174). COOper, writing from Paris in 1831, recalled his own youthful experiences in Albany: "To me Albany has always been a place of agreeable and friendly recollections--it was the only out— let we had, in my childhood, to the world, and many a merry week have I passed there with boys my own age, while my father waited for the opening of the river to go south."10 Albany is an "outlet" for Corny, too. George Dekker's contention that the journey to Albany is symbolically one into the past does not account for the essential quality link. .. ; 134 of the Dutch in the city.11 To them Corny attributes the spontaneity of Albany society, which offends the proper young ladies from downriver. While Corny is immediately attracted to the dashing Ten Eyck, Anneke's disapprobation of his antics causes Corny to reconsider even the reason for Guert's popularity, especially with the matriarchal Madame Schuyler: "But even the most intellectual and refined women, I have Since had occasion to learn, feel a disposition to judge handsome, manly, frank, flighty fellows like my new acquaintance, somewhat leniently. With all his levity, and his disposition to run into the excesses of animal Spirits, there was that about Guert which rendered it difficult to despise him" (236). Corny, being from a more conservative region, hesitates about sledding--"But are we not a little too 91d for such an amusement, in the streets of a large town?" (182) Thus, he can sympathize with Anneke's unwillingness to accept Guert's invitation to a sleighride: "Anneke would not consent; her instinctive delicacy, I make no doubt, at once presenting to her mind the imprOpriety of quitting her own Sleigh, to take an evening's drive in that of a young man of Guert's established reputation for reckless- ness and fun, and who was not always fortunate enough to persuade young women of the first class to be his com- panions" (237). _—ux-—‘— I'D”)... 4". 135 Whereas Yankees strike Corny as inhibited and hypocritical, the frisky Dutch make Albany festive, a city seemingly content in its traditions. The fun-loving Ten Eyck, in his enjoyment of Sleigh-riding, horse-racing, practical jokes, and good hospitality, is their prototype. By the time Anneke, Mary, and Corny depart with him on J“ the frozen river for a dinner engagement in Kinderhook, Corny has clearly assigned Westchester a moderate position: "Had our party been altogether composed of Albanians, there would probably have been no drawback on the enjoyment, for use would have prevented apprehension; but it required the few minutes I have mentioned to give Anneke and Mary Wallace full confidence in the ice" (244). Both girls, natives of the Manhattan area, overcome their doubts about riding down the river and quickly become involved in the pleasures the day brings; nonetheless, their hesitation proves to be a foreshadowing of the near catastrophe that ensues the same evening. Jason, it should be noted, does not even partici- pate in the outing. If Cooper had limited character deve10pment at this point, we would have the kind of static comparisons found in his earliest books. Instead, he takes the four young people, Anneke, Mary, Guert, and Corny, whose per— sonalities we know, and plunges them into crises that cannot help but test their characters and even alter them. "It was the commencement of the spring" (240), Corny recalls, and the girls cannot deny Guert's invitation 136 to the thrilling sleighride on the river. Just as Corny courts Anneke, Guert has been trying to convince Mary Wallace of his own worth. Both of the girls, however, have given their suitors little overt encouragement. But Spring's mildness and Guert's infectious gaiety con— spire to create unusual excitement: "Mary Wallace had never before been so gay"; "Both of the girls were full of Spirits" (244). Anneke even expresses her preference for spontaneity: "I would prefer surprising my friends from the heart, instead of from the head" (246). Later, Mrs. van der Heyden's comfortable manner renders the party's departure entirely graceful, completing what has already been a most enjoyable time: "Mary Wallace had managed, with a woman's tact, to make her suitor appear even respectable in female society . . . and Guert was getting confidence" (248); moreover, Anneke's actions intimate to Corny her love. But on the way from Kinderhook to the river, "the earth had stiffened" (247), and after a Shout from a down- river sleigh goes unheeded by Guert, Corny begins to worry about "the fragile nature of ice" (250). His caution, which recalls his mother's fear of the water ("A ferry is a ferry; and the Hudson will be the Hudson, from Albany to New York. So water is water." [32]), contrasts with Guert's rashness, or rather his inability to see past his own preconceptions. Guert refuses to anticipate danger, 137 so the young people "submit to the exhilaration of so rapid and easy a motion, when a sound which resembled that which one might suppose the simultaneous explosion of a thousand rifles would produce, was heard" (252). Guert's explanation of the frightening sound dis- closes the natural analogue of the river and his companions' boiling affections: "I am afraid that the rains and the __ mu “I? thaw together, have thrown so much water into the river, all at once, as it might be, as to have raised the ice and broken it loose, in Spots, from the shore. When this "It: .- C happens gppyg, before the ice has disappeared below, it sometimes causes dams to form, which heap up such a weight as to break the whole plain of ice far below it, and thus throw cakes over cakes until walls twenty or thirty feet high are formed" (253). Corny's realization of the party's jeopardous position exposes the perils of relying upon impulse, as Guert has been doing. Cooper uses the river's turmoil to symbolize the dangers of self-indulgence: "We were certainly in motion . . . on the ice of that swollen river, in the quiet and solitude of a night in which the moon rather aided in making danger apparent than in assisting us to avoid it!" (254) Corny has already begun to suspect Jason of being socially disruptive, and later he will recognize the myriad dangers of the wilderness; likewise, the convenient and exciting river is quickly transformed into a potential killer. Volume I of Satanstoe 138 ends abruptly with the impatient Guert driving the horses on in "rapid motion" (255) in the hope of reaching Albany. Fear has replaced exhilaration: as long as impulse guides the party, the situation is a "gloomy scene" (255) indeed. In Chapters 16 and 17 (the first two chapters of Volume II), the perils of the thaw are realized. Even the [ewe thrill of possible catastrophe disappears in the face of 1 actual danger: "The fierce rapidity with which we now 4 moved prevented all conversation, or even much reflection"; § "More than once it seemed as if the immense mass of weight that had evidently collected somewhere near the town of Albany, was about to pour down upon us in a flood--when the river would have been swept for miles, by a resistless torrent" (256). Symbolically, the source of the danger is located at Albany, the home--at least in Corny's mind--of over-accentuated social indulgence. Total release, socially as well as on the river, would eliminate all safe-guards: "At such times," Corny observes, "the tides produce no counter-current" (258). The party's predicament tests the characters' emotional stability and defines each individual by his respective proportion of discipline and impulse. "The girls continued silent, maintaining their self-command in a most admirable manner" (259). Initially, the humans control their "animal spirits" (236), but the horses' behavior signals what men will do without restraint: 139 "The liberated horses started back with affright—-snorted, reared, and turning away, they went down the river, free as air, and almost as swift" (263). While the party's safety depends upon the ice dam and controlled release of water along the shore (“if these floodgates sufficed, we migpp escape; otherwise the catastrOphe was certain" f“‘ [226]), "Guert's coolness of manner, and his admirable conduct" (261) secure the group temporary asylum on an island "frozen sufficiently to prevent any unpleasant consequences" (263). Corny and Guert reconnoiter for I F! t)" possible escape routes, and upon their return Corny finds Anneke alone, praying, having abandoned herself to fate. Admiring her faith, Corny nevertheless knows that God helps those who help themselves, the lesson that Deer- slayer had learned when his floating canoe returned him to his captors. The state of the river reiterates this point: "the water had forced its way through the dam above, and was coming down upon us in a toreent" (271). Consequently, the world is transformed into a primal environment where only quickness and clear thoughts prevent brutal destruction. Moreover, Corny and Anneke lose contact with Guert and Mary. Chapter 17's epigraph suggests the archetypal rebirth represented by Corny's part in the river experience: 140 "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So it was when my life began; So it is now I am a man; So be it when I Shall grow Old, Or let me die! "The child is the father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety." (272) . i-Ui «U1 ( For the first time, Corny must survive on his own. He and Anneke subdue any impulse to panic, Corny knowing they may have to act instinctively when an Opportunity for escape presents itself. And subsequently, Corny, while he will ; not always be familiar with locale and customs, will choose a more fit guide than impulse. In addition to the imagery of freedom and restraint that permeates the river sequence, imagery of movement uni- fies itS climax. The values that Corny attaches to motion correspond to his Opinions about the perils of relying solely upon either impulse or restraint. He and Anneke maintain a position on the moving ice where they can "keep the blood in motion by exercise" (275). The river's motion, however, lacks the natural controls of the human body and is thus dangerous. "The river was running like a Sluice," he concludes, for the elements are undergoing "an agony surpassing the usual struggle of the seasons" (275). Furthermore, "the movement of our [ice] island" (276) is most discomforting. Corny's descriptive analogy clarifies the threat of natural upheaval: "spring had come, like a 141 thief $2 the night; and the ice below having given way, while the mass above had acquired too much power to be resisted, everything was set ip_motion" (275; italics mine). These final words signal the escape: "I passed an arm around her waist--waited the proper moment--and sprang forward" (276). This action, compounded of wait- mu“ ing and springing, reaffirms the importance of the correct r combination of discretion and bravery, of thought and action. Subsequently, the torrent confirms Corny's decision. ”1"? _ "The mass that had been the means of saving us, was slowly following [downriver], under some new impulse, received from the furious currents of the river" (276-277). "Of ice, very little remained" (280). "Occasionally fragments floated downward; but, as a rule, the torrent had swept all before it" (280). In short, "The Hudson resembled chaos rushing headlong between the banks" (277). Even the island the party had rested on is flooded, so no safe footing exists within the symbolic realm of pure impulse. When Corny and Anneke return to Albany, the rap- port he felt with her during that first day of Spring diminishes. He is still not certain of her love (she does not admit until later, immediately prior to the Indian assault upon Ravensnest, that her love for him existed before his heroic conduct on the river). Although Anneke's father and Albany society as a whole revere his heroic behavior, Corny's doubts stemming from the advantages 142 Bulstrode seems to possess return. The dashing Englishman is about to go to war against the French at Ticonderoga; moreover, it is well known that his father has approved his suit of Anneke. Corny feels that to exploit his heroism to further his own suit would be unfair to Bul- strode, a theory which, at the time he is writing, thirty years later, seems the "notions and sentiments of a very young man" (292). Again, alienation follows identifi- h't'l “5‘11 ' .- ‘1 fl cation: Anneke's disdain for the silliness of visiting a fortune-teller "sent the blood to my own face, in con- fusion" (308), and during his friends' farewell to Bul- strode Anneke's remoteness warrants Corny's addressing her as "Miss Mordaunt" (319). The Major's "frankness," and "good-temper" (320) are necessary to overcome Corny's isolation and reconcile him to the group. When Corny himself leaves Albany, soon after Bulstrode, he once again faces a new environment; this time he must prove himself capable of military and ad- ministrative endeavors. In an area of few people and less law, Corny is able to sustain the responsibility necessary to be a good landlord and husband; no longer does he rely upon the untried judgment of someone like Guert. Instead, Corny is attentive to the advice of his Onondaga guide, Susquesus, who seems at first suspect but who proves him- self to be a loyal mentor. By the time Corny and his companions go to the aid of the Mordaunt party, whose 143 patent (Ravensnest) borders the Littlepage's, his expertise qualifies him to act wisely of his own accord: "I passed an hour in attending to the state of things in and around the house, in order to make certain that no negligence occurred still to endanger our security" (479). By July, when he speaks thus, Corny has Successfully fused bravery (assertion) with prudence (restraint). Typical of Cooper's neutral grounds, the New York wilderness is a realm of ambiguity. Heightened by the French and Indian War, which pits white man against white man and red man against red man, uncertainty is constant, not Simply the result of seasonal change, as it had been on the river. The whites, of course, cannot fully antici- pate the dangers. Instead, they act according to their motives for entering the wilderness: Corny plans to survey Mooseridge Patent and fight the French; Jason covets a portion of Mordaunt's land; and Guert--Guert goes because Corny does, and because the trip will be an ad- venture commensurate with his "buoyant Spirits" (488). The Mordaunt party, in turn, are naive about the woods: Anneke and Mary are "delighted with the wilderness" (352) and only Herman Mordaunt has the foresight to fortify the house "to remove all danger of an assault" (352). Susquesus at first seems to personify the ambiguity of the wilderness; Significantly nicknamed "the Trackless," his past and loyalties are unknown. Susquesus is 144 inscrutable and thus sinister, but his knowledge of the woods quickly impresses Corny: unlike the white man's compasses, "the Trackless" can find his way "beneath the obscurity and amid the inequalities of a virgin forest" (361). Corny's recognition of the need for reliable gui- dance is brought home forcefully by his experience during the fighting at Ticonderoga. Not only he and his comrades, but the entire English army are hampered by the unfamiliar setting: "Want of guides," Corny asserts, "was the great evil under which we labored" (371). Consequently he-- aware, unlike Guert, of the possibility of danger--adheres to Susquesus' advice, restraining himself until he knows how to act. By the time of the skirmish at Ravensnest, Corny's competence is such that he can anticipate Susque- sus' strategy, but Guert still acts impulsively in assum- ing the clifftop vantage point, "in which the Onondago refused to remain" (463) and which worries Corny also. The wilderness sequence in Satanstoe progresses exactly like the river sequence: from Corny's weariness at "the monotony of our present manner of living" (355) through the "mélég" (466) at Ravensnest, stasis (i.e., apparent security) gives way to frenzy (i.e., frenetic movement). Even Corny, who is not particularly given to impatience, notes the tedium of wilderness life. And aS the English flotilla sails for Ticonderoga--and the day 145 begins--, he notices that Major Bulstrode is "perfectly inactive . . . at the probable approach of death" (369). However, the tempo of things soon accelerates and rushes out of control when during the battle "the Highlanders [are] moving on like a whirlwind" (377; italics mine), recalling the chaotic Hudson. The conclusion of this same sentence-—"when a sheet of flame glanced along the enemy's line, and the iron and leaden messengers of death came whistling in among us like a hurricane" (377)--echoes the sentence describing the first report of the river's break-up, thus reiterating the perils inherent in chaos. The battle proves disastrous for the English, illustrating to Corny the importance of decisiveness: "It had been far better for our men had they been less disciplined, and less under the control of their officers; for the sole effect of steadiness under such circumstances, is to leave the gallant devoted troops who refuse to fall back, while they are unable to advance, only so much the longer in jeopardy" (378). Discerning the weaknesses in acting impulsively (as Guert does in the river sequence) and in behaving rigidly (as the troops do in battle), Corny in- stead commits himself to conduct resembling Natty's dictum about feeling how to act: Corny subscribes to no absolute rules for behavior; one's training and natural ability prepare him to reSpond Spontaneously and appropriately. 146 Following the British defeat at Ticonderoga, the white settlers must live with the danger of Indian attack, a peril placing extraordinary demands on the colonistS' behavior. For instance, during the night in which Susque- sus and Corny hear the tortured Petrus' howling, Corny must restrain himself from going to the dying slave's aid, for, as Susquesus contends, Littlepage would only endanger his comrades and himself. As death claims people ever closer to Corny,12 he and Guert go to the defense of Ravensnest, where the presence of the ladies makes social propriety an issue once again. This time, as Anneke observes, decorum must be modified, for "no one in this house can count on a Single day of existence" (447). She feels that this circumstance justifies her declaration of love to Corny ("persons surrounded as we are by dangers . . . have an unusual demand on them for sincerity" [447]). The pre-battle pressure brings a different reaction from Mary Wallace and Guert Ten Eyck. She "appreciates propriety so highly" (459) that She refuses to satisfy her lover's anxiety about her affections. Brokenhearted, Guert impulsively leads a party of settlers atop the cliff overlooking the fortified house just as the fire the Hurons have set against its walls flares, revealing his position. Corny attributes to the blaze the same symbolic qualities he formerly attributed to the river: "Not only were the knots burning fiercely, but a large sheet of flame was 147 clinging to the logs of the house, menacing us with a speedy conflagration" (462). Another natural force out of control, the fire's light allows the Hurons to claim some casualties among Guert's party before Mordaunt douses the flames. But by this time, in the darkness, "the battle had . . . become a m§l§gfl (464). During the struggle, Fe: Guert is swept away--a prisoner of the Hurons. Mary responds as violently as the river when She f learns that Guert is a captive: "That pent-up passion, which had so long struggled with her prudence, could no IR"! 0-- ~ .t ‘ longer be suppressed. That she really loved Guert, and that her love would prove stronger than her discretion, I had not doubted, now, for some months; but, never having before witnessed the strength of feeling that had been so long and so painfully suppressed, I confess that this exhibition of a suffering so intense, in a being so deli- cate, so excellent, and so lovely, almost unmanned me" (468). When Guert and Jaap escape from the Hurons, "a general war" (476) ensues, in which Guert falls--after his precipitate pursuit of his captors isolates him from his fellows. Mary's loss of "her reserve, in the gpgp of tenderness and sympathy, that now sygpp all before it" (481; italics mine) once again evokes the rapidity of the wind and the water during the river sequence. Jason Newcome views the battle in an entirely different manner. He reasons that if the Hurons conquer 148 the patent, and then are subdued, the new victors will own the land by the right of conquest. Corny, of course, re- gards Jason's theory, which is a political variant of Guert's impulsiveness, as self-indulgent and illegal. Jason's theorizing, which comes off as little more than ridiculous in Satanstoe, actually foreshadows much of the F““ action of The Chainbearers and The Redskins: then the psychological theme of Satanstoe assumes socio-political implications as well, and the Littlepages, firmly committed Hm”. f .t' 't. to a reasonably just policy of ownership, must contend against the collective manifestation of Jason's selfish- ness. Individually and socially, man has few restrictions imposed upon him in the wilderness, but his excessive free- dom means constant worry. Apparently, this was not always so, for the usually reticent Susquesus momentarily vents a remembrance of an earlier, more innocent world in which man lived without fear: "All Injin land once!" This last remark was made in a way I did not like; for the idea seemed to cross the Onondago's brain so suddenly, as to draw from his this brief assertion in pure bitterness of spirit. "I should be very sorry if it had not been, Sus- quesus," I observed," [sic] myself, ["1 Since the title is all the better for having been so, as our Indian deed will Show. . . . "Red-man nebber measure land so. He p 'int with finger, break bush down, and say, 'there, take from that water to that water.'" (394) 149 But even the Trackless recognizes the actual Situation of the formerly tribal grounds, adapting himself expertly to the perils. The customary summary of the characters' lives in Satanstoe's final chapter concludes Corny's portion of the Littlepage Manuscripts, his comments still organized around the novel's theme of freedom vs. restraint. Mr. Worden returns to more civilized regions because his "missionary zeal had . . . effectually evaporated" (484). Shortly after Guert's death, Mary recovers from her "tempest of feeling" (486). Corny briefly eulogizes Guert, recalling especially his "unextinguishable love of frolic" (488). Most of the final chapter, however, deals with the happy conclusion to Corny and Anneke's courtship, for from the day of the battle "she had no undue reserve with me" (486). Corny himself, although wiser for the experiences of his twenty-first year, commits "the only piece of romantic extravagance that I can remember" (495) by arriving at Lilacsbush, the Mordaunt's home, the day before he is invited. Prior to meeting Anneke on this occasion, Corny discovers the recuperating Bulstrode, who affirms Little- page's theory regarding the need for a respectable class to control the vulgar mass. This seemingly heavyhanded polemic coda provides the transition between Satanstoe's theme of individual discretion and The Chainbearer's treatment of social conscience. ll ‘Itlllli 150 But on the whole, Satanstoe contains so few overt allusions to the Anti-Rent issue that James Grossman re- gards them as "mere dutiful argument, crammed into a single page as if COOper suddenly remembered his responsibility to this thesis and wanted to get it over with."13 Cooper himself, however, anticipated this objection: "Each of these three books," he wrote in the Preface to Satanstoe, "has its own hero, its own heroine, and its own picture of manners, complete" (vi). Corny cannot be expected to know about events fifty or Sixty years in the future; how- ever, the close Similarity between the themes of the three novels makes many of Corny's experiences and thoughts unintentionally (on his part, but not COOper's) relevant to later developments. While Corny experiences severe difficulties in establishing a settlement as Mooseridge Patent, the prob- lems multiply for his successors in The Chainbearer and The Redskins. His son, Mordaunt, relates in the former novel the story of his first visit to the patent; almost immediately he is captured by the Thousandacre family, Yankee squatters exploiting the Littlepages' lumber. Not only do these intruders threaten Mordy's property and life, but the Littlepages' agent, Jason Newcome, conspires with the squatters to cheat the owners. Although the land is no longer vulnerable to Indian attack, Opposition to the landlords smolders within the society itself. And 151 two generations later, organized strife erupts in 323. Redskins. This time the narrator, Hugh Roger Littlepage, must disguise himself to visit the patent because of the calico-clad Anti-Renters who terrorize the area and defy landlords and lawmen alike. This overt threat to the land- holding system of New York State was the impetus for Cooper's Trilogy in the first place; as he wrote Egg Redskins, the New York legislature had refused to support the landlords' claims, and the case was referred to the Federal Government. The Trilogy must, therefore, end in- conclusively, but regardless of the outcome COOper felt this popular revolt was the most substantial threat to the American system and the most worrisome symptom to date of the tyranny of "the people." Despite his anger which makes The Redskins into little more than polemic, COOper took considerable pains to unify the Trilogy. Various devices, some inherent in his subject, facilitate our assimilation of the story in its entirety. Donald Ringe categorizes the families, the land, Jaap, and Susquesus (both of whom appear in all three novels) as bonds among the books and concludes, "An analysis of the three books reveals structural elements and carefully selected details recurring through the series."14 Ringe also notes that the motif of "ever- recurring threat of violent change" faces all three landlord-narrators.ls To indicate change within 152 continuity Cooper uses houses, a technique he had tried in the Effingham novels, The Pioneers, and Home as Found: the stone house in The Chainbearer is built where the log structure of Satanstoe stood, but is replaced by a mansion in The Redskins. Similarly, the Indians that threaten Ravensnest in Satanstoe give way to land-hungry squatters and Jason Newcome in The Chainbearer and finally in 2E2 Redskins the "InjinS"--the Anti-Renters masked in calico. But Susquesus, who is described in The Redskins as one of the "monuments of the past, to connect generations that are gone with those that are to come" (125), most effectively unites Satanstoe with the rest of Trilogy. A witness to the area's settlement and growth, the Trackless embodies the synthesis of discretion and decisiveness that Corny seeks. The mystery of Susquesus' past creates vital suspense in The Redskins, as it had in Satanstoe. Finally, the Onondago's history is revealed as an example to the Injins: Susquesus' respect for tribal law had prevented him, even as a chief, from taking another man's squaw, and he had gone into the woods to live alone, away from temp- tation and disappointment. The life of the venerable Susquesus "is one of utter and undeviating constance . . . not only to the law of the tribe, but also to the land . . . --he has been a rooted part of Ravensnest for four generations, a symbolic presence, enigmatic and brooding."l6 The Littlepage Trilogy in its entirety is the chronicle of the settlement and deve10pment which spans rm, th- ‘. 153 nine decades, from the 1750's to the 1840's. Satanstoe, Cooper's attempt to justify the ways of landlords to men, is fundamental to the Trilogy's affirmation of a thesis Cooper had conceived years before he wrote the novels: "As property is the base of all civilization, its exist- ence and security are indispensable to social improve- F‘" 17 ment." As the first installment of the history of a fictional patent, Satanstoe demonstrates the "cost and trouble" (310, 333) of land development: COOper's full characterization of Corny in the biographical form refutes a all! the Anti-Renters' charge that landholders are "aristo- crats," for young Littlepage tolerates all people and does not try to increase his holdings at the expense of others. The germinal society at the patent corresponds to the initial stage of settlement that Cooper described in H933 gs Fpppdf-the time when "parties meet as it might be, on a sort of neutral ground, one yielding some of his superiority, and the other laying claims to an outward Show of equality" (162). Still, Cooper recognizes, the potential for discord exists and begins to be realized in The Chainbearer because of the cultural incompatibility of Yankee immigrants and New York landlords. Lawlessness, overt in The Redskins, precludes the realization of the ideal society outlined in Home pp Found, "the third and last condition of society in a 'new country' . . . in which the influence of the particular causes enumerated 154 ceases, and men and things come within the control of more general and regular laws" (164). Susquesus is eventually abstracted into an ideal, and life at the patent is as contentious as the flooding Hudson was tumultuous on March 21, 1758. Just as Natty Bumppo leaves Templeton at the end of The Pioneers to live as he wishes, Corny finds his only glimpse of ut0pia in the momentary reminis- cence of Susquesus, himself an alien from his own tribe. The frustration of Corny's quest for a stable, moderate society only increases his humanness, reiterating the instrumentality of Cooper's choice of the biographical form in achieving his unusually full characterization of his narrator-protagonist. Unlike most of Cooper's genteel characters, Corny is the assimilation of exemplary ideals and human foibles, which results in his becoming a truly apprehensible figure. And Satanstoe, Cooper's most successful novel of the 1840's, marks his full deve10pment of the biographical form into a vehicle for a sustained psychological theme, which in turn is essential to the socio-political thesis of the entire Littlepage Trilogy, without detracting from the book's vitality. AS such, Satanstoe equals the structural triumph of The Bravo, Cooper's finest novel in the historical form. 1W4“ ,.~ :- VI A VITAL IMPOSITION to]. The five novels Cooper wrote after the Littlepage Trilogy extended some of the moral questions he had probed throughout his career. Familiar themes and forms recurred after The Redskins although COOper's artistic innovations were largely complete by 1846. He utilized the conventional South Sea voyage, complete with shipwreck, to frame the main story of The Crater (1847), an anti-Utopian novel detailing the germination of a society harmonious only so long as its members all possess the disinterestedness that COOper always admired. The brief history of the colony, which its exemplary founder and first governor, Mark Woolston, likens to the Garden of Eden, concludes abruptly: peOple as querulous and self-centered as those who disrupt the Littlepage patent introduce rampant moral corruption; then, while Mark and his more upright friends have re- turned to America, the islands on which the colony is established are swallowed by the sea. 122$.ZEEE (1848) also utilizes the historical form, only slightly altered for serial publication. Each installment of the novel, 155 156 twice the length of Cooper's usual chapters, is a cliff- hanger. More cynical than The Crater or Wyandotté, Jack gig; gloomily depicts the grotesquerie of the human con- dition. Again in The Oak Openings (1848), Cooper used the totality of a pseudo-historical event (white settlers' attempting to escape slaughter by hostile Indians in Michigan at the outset of the War of 1812), this time to dramatize the conversion of Scalping Peter, the most no- torious enemy of the whites in the area. Inspired by the meekness and magnanimity of Parson Amen, who dies praying for his Indian Slayers, Peter personifies the conciliatory potential in Christianity, which might unite the whites and the less fortunate (because heathen) Indians, an elaboration of Natty Bumppo's ideals for coexistence. Curiously, Cooper himself appears in The Oak Openings, journeying years after the story proper to visit the aged Peter and his devoted white friends, who still live to- gether harmoniously. Then in The Sea Lions (1849), Cooper returned to the biographical form, fusing a voyage for seals and buried treasure with Roswell Gardiner's quest for faith in Christ. Like Satanstoe, The Sea Lions is comprised not of a whole life, but only of the most crucial portion of its hero's life. ' Even at the end of his own life, with his health failing, COOper could write enthusiastically about what was to be his last complete book, The Ways 9: the Hour 157 (1850): "My story is one of to-day," he told Bentley, "and does not so much relate to the manners of Manhattan, or pictures of its ordinary society, as to certain peculiari- ties connected with its justice, and its mode of adminis- tering the law. Still the work is by no means polemical but gives its pictures incidentally and naturally in a well- sustained and straight forward story."1 And Cooper still saw himself as an innovator: "The new book is on a novel plan for me, and will make a highly interesting work, I think."2 EEE.EEX§ p£_ppg,fipp£ is a mystery novel: the characters face the task of unraveling the ambiguities of a robbery and fire in which two peOple apparently die. Although the story ends in the fashion of "the classical novel," there can be no neat solution, for the human capacities of observation and sanity are shown to be fallible. After thirty years as a novelist, Cooper was willing to try a courtroom thriller, a book unlike any of his others: the nostalgia and noble heroes of his his- torical romances had hardly appeared in his final decade; instead, human shortcomings and realities of the present had formed a disquieting, unresolved vision--one that made the need for faith in God all the more apparent. The study of the structural deve10pment of Cooper's novels can be valuable, providing it respects the books' integrity, for the evolution of form that I have described contradicts two widely held opinions of COOper's art. 158 Most critics have regarded Cooper as aesthetically defi- cient. Charles A. Brady, for one, asserts that in COOper's novels "story is the center, and character is peripheral,"3 an Opinion that rules out significant structural develOp- ment. Henry Seidel Canby feels that "there is no design in Cooper's progress, no searching for themes fitting his genius."4 Even Marius Bewley, himself recognized as a Cooper sympathizer, has said, "Perhaps no American writer was less curious about form or method than Cooper was."5 On the other hand, Cooper is sometimes criticized for being deliberate to the point of never altering the structure of his books. Almost sixty years ago, James Routh tried to demonstrate the formulaic nature of the Leatherstocking Tales: "It is perhaps not strange that Cooper, writing the first three of these novels in quick succession, should use the same technique throughout," Routh noted. Then, he concluded, "But the reappearance of it thirteen years later in Pathfinder, and the subsequent use in Deerslayer, indi- cates that the usage was something more than a temporary fashion, and was rather of the nature of a fixed, or nearly fixed, formula."6 Even Canby, whose indictment of form- lessness I have just quoted, reverses himself: "COOper wrote by formula. In all his good novels there is a chase--and the chase is the plot. In all his novels, good or bad, where the scheme would in any way allow it, there are two character types, the romantic Unknown and the humble (though often romantic) Naif."7 159 Lately, however, critics have begun to recognize that Cooper's work represents some sort of development. R. W. B. Lewis agrees with Arvid Shulenberger that Cooper moved from "a circumstantial and detailed reality"8 toward expression of ideals: "Cooper's fiction," Lewis writes, "--the Leatherstocking Tglgg anyhow--moved consciously away from a semi-historic authenticity (framing, in the early novels, those romantic posturings at mid-stage) toward a sort of sustained fantasy, in many respects much mprg authentic: a re-creation in story of the dream- legend of his contemporaries. The peak of that development was Egg Deerslayer."9 The consensus on this issue, though, consists of writers like Donald Ringe, Thomas Philbrick, Carl Van Doren, and Warren Walker, who agree that "romance gave way to realism." Walker adds, "In his later years, [Cooper] turned more often to fiction as the vehicle for 10 Ringe elaborates: "What his criticism of the times." COOper did throughout his career was to refine his ideas about God, man, and society in the light of his increasing experience; to express different elements of his view at different times; and eventually, in his best work, to unite the major streams of his thought into the well- planned books that artistically express his ideas."11 It has been my purpose to amplify such pronounce- ments, to demonstrate the evolution in structure implicit in Walker's and Ringe's statements. For one thing is 160 clear: Cooper as a "shaper" (to borrow Snell's term)12 of his material neither declined nor stagnated. Initially a historical romancer expressing imaginatively events and deve10pments in America's past, Cooper altered his course toward political novels in the early 1830's. Public in- difference, however, contributed to his renouncing his r-e vocation, and only after five years given to other kinds of writing did he return to the novel. By 1838, problems of the present had supplanted the charm of the American past, and Cooper's characters increased in complexity as ..!_..._r he COped with paradoxes of the human condition. The bio- graphical form facilitated his expression of a complex of new ideas, and Cooper utilized that structure with modi- fications frequently in his later years. Stanley T. Williams' evaluation of COOper's work in Literary History 9: Epg_United States misrepresents this phase, wrongly implying a waning of Cooper's artistry after The Deer- slayer: "he cared less and less for form and method and more and more for what he could say through the novel as 13 Certainly ideas became progressively more a medium." important to Cooper, but not to the point of his disre- garding structure: he cared enough in the 1840's to alter form radically to convey his ideas. Static aspects of the evolving structure are also vital to Cooper's artistry. His talents--to sketch land- scape, to weave exciting yarns, to evoke the spirit of past cultures--never permanently deserted him despite 161 pressing contemporary issues. But one of the most reliable devices in his repertoire was the motif, which unified his best novels thematically: appearance vs. reality in The Spy; degrees of political Oppression in The Bravo; the confrontation of novelty in The Deerslayer; self-indulgence vs. self-restraint in Satanstoe. These novels simply can- not result from fortuitous or slovenly composition. Of course, no one but a doctoral candidate would praise a writer's thematic control EE£.§23 As Leslie Fiedler remarks, "The larger part of Cooper's work must be consigned, not without regret, to the respectable oblivion of the Master's thesis and the Ph.D. disser- 14 tation." Certainly, when I claim that The Deerslayer has thematic integrity, I am not commending its plot as exciting--for there the book fails. Its interminable conversations will not interest most readers, and that is not to disparage the readers. On the other hand, 223. Deerslayer does objectify a significant statement of the formation of the human character. I think the difficulty in Cooper's later books is not with structure, but rather that Cooper forgot (refused?) to involve his readers be- fore develOping his ideas. Such a fault, however, is not inherent in the sort of novel he wrote in the 'forties: Satanstoe proves that. COOper, in short, must be judged first as a novelist, one who Shapes his material into an imaginative world to entertain and/or instruct his audience. His 162 historical romances--The Spy, The Last RE the Mohicans, The Bravo--remain his most readable books. Later, ideas dominated his fiction, often to the point of suffocating character and plot. Still, his most memorable characters-- besides Natty Bumppo--inhabit The Two Admirals, Wyandotté, Afloat and Ashore, Satanstoe, and The Oak Openings. The fact that COOper could verbalize in such novels the impli- cations of his earlier romantic heroes' unvoiced ideals is a major reason for regarding him as more than a Slick writer, fleshing out again and again some formula. In- stead, he continued to adapt, sometimes haltingly, the structure of his books to his evolving ideas and aims, innovating to the end and perfecting both the historical and biographical forms. -r_,-,_._ NOTES NOTES Chapter I lMaule's Curse: Seven Studies ip the Histor 2E American OBscurantism (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1938), p. 34. 2Donald A. Ringe, James Fenimore Cooper (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1962), p. 23. 31bid. 4Morton Lee Ross, "The Rhetoric of Manners: The Art of James Fenimore Cooper's Social Criticism," Diss. State University of Iowa 1964, analyzes Precaution, The Pioneers, Home Engound, and Satanstoe, respectively. 5James Fenimore Cooper and the DevelOpment of American Sea Fiction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 233. 6Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 214. 71bid. 8John C. McCloskey, "The Campaign of Periodicals After the War of 1812 for National American Literature," PMLA, 50 (1935), 262-273, documents a portion of this, but Iimits his illustrations largely to passages from Portico. 9Cf. James Fenimore Cooper, Earl Critical Essays (1820-1822), ed. by James F. Beard, Jr. (Gainesville, FIorida: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1955). 163 164 10 Russel B. Nye, American Literar Histor 1830 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, I9 975), p. 187. 11James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers or, The Sources of the Susquehanna. A Descriptive Tale (New York: W. A. Townsend and Company, 1859), p. 494. 12Early Critical Essays, p. 98. 13Ibid., p. 100. 14The Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Coo er, edIfiby James Franklin Beard—TCambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1964), III, 58 [Letter 364, to Micah Sterling, October 27, 1834]. 15James Fenimore-Cooper, A Letter to His Countrymen (New York: John Wiley, 1834), p. _l2. 16Letters and Journals, II [pub. 1960], 360 [Letter 304, November 14, 1832]. 17Ibid., III, 28-29 [Letter 349, to John Whipple, January 14, 1834]. laIbid., p. 7. 191bid., pp. 5-6. 20Ibid., p. 225 [Letter 437, to Mrs. Cooper, July 5, 183 6| and p. 330 [Letter 499, to Horatio Greenough, June 31 (or July 1), 1838]. 21Ibid., p. 42 [Letter 357, to Mrs. Cooper, June 12,18834]. 22Ibid., p. 28 [Letter 349, to John Whipple, January 14, I8 834]. 23Ibid., II, 384 [Letter 317, to Horatio Greenough, June 13, 1833]. 24Ibid., III, 54. 165 25Cf. Ibid., p. 60, note 1. 26Ibid., p. 336. 27In September, 1837, Carey & Lea, Cooper's Ameri- can publisher, refused him an advance on Gleanings in Europe: Italy: "Since you were here we have not put to press a s1ng1e new volume & the success of your last eight volumes, we are sorry to say, presents us with no inducement to go on." (Ibid., p. 290 [9/13/37], note 1.) For a year already, Bentiey had been complaining from England that Cooper should return to fiction, since the travel books were not selling. 28£§i§., p. 269 [Letter 469, July 6, 1837] and p. 268 [Letter 468, July 4, 1837]. 291bid., p. 213. 30£§id., p. 289 [Letter 476, to Carey, Lea, and Blanchard, September 8, 1837]. 31Scholes and Kellogg, p. 76. Cf. David Brion Davis, "The Deerslayer, A Democratic Knight of the Wilder- ness," in Twelve Original Essays 92 Great American Novels, ed. by CharIes Shapiro (Detr01t: Wayne State University Press, 1858), p. 2: "Cooper was primarily a moralist, that is to say, an expounder of a particular code of morality." The second quotation in this sentence appears in Letters and Journals, III, 204 [Letter 423, to Richard Cooper, Februaryglg, 1836]. 32Edwin Muir, The Structure of the Novel (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1929), p. 21, quoting Ramon Fernandez, Messages (trans. Montgomery Belgion). 33Ringe, p. 92. 34Philbrick, p. 160. 3SIbid., p. 145. 36Eg£§g£§ and Journals, IV [pub. 1964], 455 [Letter 759, to Richard Bentley, April 16, 1844]. 166 37Philbrick, pp. 151-152. 38Scholes and Kellogg, p. 236. 39Philbrick, pp. 164-165. 4°1bid., p. 244. 41Scholes and Kellogg, p. 76. fig . L 42As already mentioned, the Littlepage Trilogy is, in its entirety, historical. 43Paul Stein, "In Defense of Truth: Structure and Theme in James Fenimore Cooper's Novels," Diss. Case Western Reserve University 1968, p. 127. 1w 44Ibid., pp. 24, 25. 45Scholes and Kellogg, p. 169. Chapter II 1January, 1862, p. 55. Quoted by Marcel Clavel, Fenimore COOper and His Critics: American, British, and French Criticisms of the Novelist' s EarIy Work (Aix-en- Provence: Imprimerle Universitaire de Provence, 1938), p. 98. 2Quoted by Tremaine McDowell, "A Historical Intro- duction," in The S : A Tale of the Neutral Ground (New York: Charles Scr inerTs Sons, 1931), p. xxxix. 3Scholes and Kellogg, p. 214. 4Jeffersonianism and the American Novel (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1966), pp. 25-26. 5Dramatic adaptations of The Spy_(and other Cooper novels) flourished. Clavel, p. 131, notes that two play versions of Thg_§py, for example, vied for public approval in Paris in 1827. 167 6Cf. Ringe, p. 92, and Philbrick, pp. 121, 144, 14s, and 209. 7Stein, p. 127. 8James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (London: G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1822), pp. lx-X. 9 , The Prairie: A_Tale (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), p. vii. 10 *' The Red Rover (London: Henry Colburn, 1827), p. 1x. But cn. The P1oneers, p. ix, where Cooper uses "rigid adhesion to trut th" to refer to delineation of "that which he had known." 11 , The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (Philadelph1a: Carey & LeaT—T876TT’p.— iii. 12 Cooper' 5 Theory of Fiction (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Publications, 1955), p. 35. 13COOper had written the first two parts of The _py rapidly and to his satisfaction; the rest of the—Book progressed more slowly because, for one thing, he was in- volved in preparing Precaution for press. Cf. Letters and Journals, I, 44 [Letter 27, to Andrew Thompson Goodrich— June 28, 1820], where Cooper notes that sixty manuscript pages are complete. In his manuscript of Precaution, two- hundred- -eight of his pages approximated two volumes of three-hundred to three-hundred- -twenty pages each (cf. L & J, I, 50 [Letter 32, to Goodrich, July 17,1820]), each manu-- script page containing eight- -hundred words (L & J, I, 42 [Letter 27]). Therefore, sixty manuscript pages _of The §2y_wou1d equal three times that number when printed, which 18 approximately the length of the first two parts (four— teen chapters) of the novel. 14Cf. Shulenberger, p. 60. 15Ringe, p. 27. l6McDowell, p. xiv. 17Ringe, pp. 29-32. 168 181bid., p. 31. 19The Eccentric Form (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 19595, p. 81. 20James Franklin Beard, "Afterword," in The Last 2: the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (New York: The New American Library, 1962), pp. 4749426. 21Ringe, pp. 21-22. 22James Fenimore CooEer: The American Scott (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1967). p. 34. 23Bewley, p. 81. Chapter III 1Bewley, p. 60. Cf. Kay Seymour House, Cooper's Americans (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1965), p. 157, who suggests that The Bravo is a study of "a state that follows (into and beyond the Gilded age) Hamiltonian 'aristocracy.'" 2Clavel, p. 394. The statement was written by Cooper in 1844 during the preparation of brief notes for a study of American literary figures by Gristld. 3Cf. Thg_Bravo, p. 9: "Hundreds of pedestrians were pouring out of the narrow streets of Venice into the square of St. Mark, like water gushing through some strait aqueduct, into a broad and bubbling basin." 4Cf. Robert D. Hume, "Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel," PMLA, 84 (1969), 286b. 5Stein, p. 102. 6of. Philbrick, p. 254. 7Stein, p. 127. 169 8Betty E. Nichols, "Theme and Setting: Inter- related Elements in James Fenimore Cooper's The Bravo." (Unpublished), p. 17. 9American Fiction: The Intellectual Background (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 102. Cf. Carl Van Doren, The American Novel: 1789-1939, Revised and Enlarged edition (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940), p. 33: "he was not sufficiently master of his material, stout as his opinions_might be, to make good VT romances out of it." ; 10Stein, p. 89. 11Dekker, p. 132. Cf. Robert Spiller, Fenimore ) Cooger: Critic 9: His Times (New York: Russell & Russell, 1 ; Originally copyrighted, 1931), p. 218: "Thg_Bravo is . . . one of the best of Cooper's romances. The plot is involved, the action constant, the characters believable types, and the setting as glamorous as any of Scott's. F’- a( Chapter IV lBewley, p. 89. 2Dekker, pp. 189, 135. 3Donald Davie, The Heyday of Sir Walter Scott (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1961), pp. 128, 127. 4Ringe, p. 84. 5A. N. Kaul, The American Vision: Actual and Ideal Societ ‘in Nineteenth-Century Fiction (New Haven: Yale UniverSIty Press, 1968). p. 123. 6Cf. Davie, p. 127. 7House, p. 323. 8"Cooper and the American Dream." PMLA: 81 (1966)! p. 83. 170 9Dekker, p. 175. 10Cooper depicts Natty's reverence in implausible images like tapers, domes, and columns. In this case, the narrator's knowledge contradicts the character's sensi- bility. 11Studies in Classic American Literature (Rpt. New York: The vikIEg Press, I961; Originally copyrighted, 1923), p. 60. 12Stein, p. 182. 13Kaul, p. 123. 14Cf., e.g., Lawrence, pp. 51, 53. 15Ringe, p. 84. 16Ibid., p. 88. Chapter V le. Ringe, p. 162n., and James Grossman, James Fenimore Coo er (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, I9 ; reissued 1967), p. 184. 2Phi1brick, pp. 131-165. 3Cf. Dekker, p. 219: "Cornelius (Corny) Little- page, writing a few years afterward about events which took place during the 1750's, does not foresee the Anti-Rent riots of the 1840's or even the revolutionary activities of the 1770's." 4Cooper's own note, p. 376, mentions Holmes' and Mrs. Grant's books. Cf. also Dorothy Dondore, "The Debt of Two Dyed-in-the-Wool Americans to Mrs. Grant's Memoirs: Cooper's Satanstoe and Paulding's The Dutchman's Fire- side," American Literature, 12 (1945)}_32-58, and James H. Pickering, "Satanstoe: COOper's Debt to William Dunlap," American Literature, 38 (1967), 468-477. 171 5Cf. Leslie J. Smith, "The Two Corny Littlepages: A View of Satanstoe," (Unpublished), p. l. 6Dekker, p. 227. 7Loren Eiseley, "The Last Magician," Pla bo , 17 (August, 1970), 138, referring to modern man's reaction against pollution. 8Cf. House, p. 21: "The heroine's inflexible demands determine what the plot reveals, and the plot in turn must select the man worthy of the heroine." 9Pickering, p. 473. loggppgpg E29 Journals, II, 51 [Letter 240, to William Buell Sprague,—fiovem53r 15, 1831]. 11Dekker, p. 225. IZSmith, p. 10. l3Grossman, p. 203. 14Ringe, p. 281. Cf. Robert Zoellner, "Fenimore COOper: Alienated American," American Quarterly, 13 (1961), 62: "Only two elements continue from generation to generation and from novel to novel . . . : the all- nourishing earth, and Susquesus. . . . " 15Ringe, p. 282. 16Zoellner, p. 63. 17James Fenimore Cooper, 222 American Democrat or Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of_AmEEIca (New YEEk: Vintage BooksT—l956), p. 135. Cf? The Redskins, p. 396: "Let this attempt pp property succeed, ever g2 indirectly, AND IT WILL BE FOLLOWED UP BY OTHERS, WHICH WILL AS INEVITABLY DRIVE US INTO DESPOTISM, AS A REFUGE AGAINST ANARCHY, AS EFFECT SUCCEEDS CAUSE." 172 Chapter VI 1Letters and Jougnals, VI [pub. 1968], 43-44 [Letter 993, to RicHard BentIey, May 19, 1849]. 2Ibid., p. 20 [Letter 981, to John Fagan, March 30, 1849]. 3Charles A. Brady, "James Fenimore Cooper: Myth— Maker and Christian Romancer," in American Classics Re- considered, ed. Harold C. Gardiner, S. J. (New York:_— Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), p. 68. 4Classic Americans (New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1959), p. 124. 5"The Cage and the Prairie: Two Notes on Symbolism," The Hudson Review, 10 (1957), 409. 6"The Model of the Leatherstocking Tales," Modern Language Notes, 28 (1913), 79. 7Canby, pp. 133-134. 8Shulenberger, p. 9. 9The American Adam: Innocence Tra ed and Tra- dition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: Tfie University of Chicago Press, 1964; Origina11y copyrighted, 1955), p. 102. 10Both quotations are from Warren Walker, James Fenimore COOper (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1962), p. 25. For Similar statements by Ringe and Philbrick, cf. Chapter 1, supra. Cf. also, Van Doren, p. 34. 11Ringe, p. 23. 12George Snell, The Shapers pg American Fiction: 1798-1947 (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1947). 13Robert E. Spiller pp a1., Literarnyistor p£ the United States (Revised Edition in One Vqume; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957), p. 269. 173 14Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and Death in the American Novel (New York: Criterion Books, 1960), .-I74. LI 91‘ OF REFERENCES LI ST OF REFERENCES A. Cooper's Works Cooper's Novels, 32 volumes, illustrated from drawings by F. O. C. Darley. New York: W. A. Townsend and Company, 1859-1861. The American Democrat or Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America. New York: Vintage Books, 195 The Deerslayer; or, The First War ath. A Tale. Phila- delphia: _Lea and BIancKard,1841. Early Critical Essays (1820-1822). Ed. by James F. Beard, Jr. Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1955. The Last p£_the Mohicans: A Narrative pf 1757. Phila- ' delphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1826. A_Letter Ep_His Countrymen. New York: John Wiley, 1834. 222 Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper. Ed. by James Franklin Beard. 6 volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960 (I, II), 1964 (III, IV), 1968 (V, VI). Ned M ers, or ALife Before the Mast. Philadelphia: Lea and'BIancfiara,1813'. The Pioneers, or The Sources of the Susquehanna. .A Descriptive —Ta1e. New —York: Hurd and Houghton, 1866. The Prairie: A Tale. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867. 174 175 The Red Rover. London: Henry Colburn, 1827. The Spy: A_Ta1e pf the Neutral Ground. London: G. and W. B. Wfiittaker, 1822. The Spy: A Tale 9: the Neutngl Ground. With "A Histori— caI'Introductionfiby Tremaine McDowell. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931. B. Critical Works Beard, James Franklin. "Afterword." The Last pg the Mohicans: A_Narrative pg 1757. James Fenimore Cooper. New York: The New American Library, 1962, pp. 417-427. Bewley, Marius. "The Cage and the Prairie: Two Notes on Symbolism," The Hudson Review, 10 (1957), 403-414. . The Eccentric Form. New York: Columbia Uni- -+—--————————«———- verSIty Press, 1959. Brady, Charles A. "James Fenimore COOper: Myth-maker and Christian Romancer." American Classics Recon- sidered. Ed. by Harold J. Gardiner, S. J. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958, pp. 59- 97. Canby, Henry Seidel. Classic Americans. New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1959. Clavel, Marcel. Fenimore Cooper and His Critics: American, British and French Criticisms pi tHe Novelistjs Earl Work. Aix-enZFrovence: Imprimerie Uni- versitaire de Provence, 1938. Collins, Frank M. "Cooper and the American Dream," PMLA, 81 (1966), 79-94. Davie, Donald. The He da pf Sir Walter Scott. New York: Barnes & Nob e, Inc., 1961. Davis, David Brion. "The Deerslayer, A Democratic Knight of the Wilderness." Twelve Original Essa 5 pp Great American Novels. Ed. by Charles Sfiapiro. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1958. Dekker, George. James Fenimore Coo er: The American Scott. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1967. 176 Dondore, Dorothy. "The Debt of Two Dyed-in-the—Wool Americans to Mrs. Grant's Memoirs: Cooper's Satanstoe and Paulding's Tfie Dutchman's Fireside," American Literature, 12 (1940), 52-58. Eiseley, Loren. "The Last Magician," Playboy, 17 (August, 1970), 72, 138, 169-170. Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death $3 the American Novel. New York: Criterion Books, 1960. Grossman, James. James Fenimore Coo er. Stanford, Cali- fornia: Stanford UniverSity Press, 1949; re- issued, 1967. House, Kay Seymour. COOper's Americans. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1965. Hume, Robert D. "Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel," PMLA, 84 (1969), 282-290. Jones, Howard Mumford. Jeffersonianism and the American Novel. New York: Teachers C611ege Press, Columbia University, 1966. Kaul, A. N. The American Vision: Actual and Ideal Society ip_Nineteenth-Century Fiction. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963. Lawrence, D. H. Studies ip_Classic American Literature. New York: THe Viking Press, 1966; original copy- right, 1923. Lewis, R. W. B. The American Adam: Innocence Tragedygpg Tradition-ifi'§p3_Nineteentp_Century. Chicago: The Univergity of Chicago Press, 1964; original copyright, 1955. Maxwell, D. E. S. American Fiction: The Intellectual Background. New York: Columbia University Press, McCloskey, John C. "The Campaign of Periodicals After the War of 1812 for National American Literature," PMLA, 50 (1935), 262-273. Muir, Edwin. The Structure 9: the Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929. Nye, Russel B. American Literary History: 1607-1830. New York: Alfred A. KnOpf, Inc., 1970. 177 Philbrick, Thomas. James Fenimore CoOper and the Develop- ment pf American Sea Fiction. Cambridge, Massa- cHusetts: Harvard UniversiEy Press, 1961. Pickering, James H. "Satanstoe: COOper's Debt to William Dunlap," American Literature, 38 (1967), 468-477. Ringe, Donald. James Fenimore COOper. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1962. Ross, Morton Lee. "The Rhetoric of Manners: The Art of James Fenimore Cooper's Social Criticism." Diss. State Univeristy of Iowa, 1964. Routh, James. "The Model of the Leatherstocking Tales," Modern Language_Notes, 28 (1913), 77-79. Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Nar- rative. London: Oxford University Press, I968. Shulenberger, Arvid. Cooper' 5 Theory of Fiction. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Puincations, 1955. Snell, George. The Shapers p£ American Fiction: 1798- 1947. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1947. Spiller, Robert. Fenimore COOper: Critic .of His Times. New York: Russell & Russell, 1963;0rigina1 copyright, 1931. , et a1. LiteraryHistory of the United States. Revised Edition in One Volume. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957. Stein, Paul. "In Defense of Truth: Structure and Theme in James Fenimore COOper's Novels." Diss. Case Western Reserve University, 1968. Van Doren, Carl. The American Novel: 1789-1939. Revised and Enlarged Edition. New York: TEe Macmillan Company, 1940. Walker, Warren. James Fenimore Coo er. New York: Barnes & NoEIe, Inc., 1962. Winters, Yvor. Maule' s Curse: Seven Studies in the Historyo ofm Merican Obscurantism. Norfalk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1938. Zoellner, Robert. "Fenimore COOper: Alienated American," American Quarterly, 13 (1961), 55-66. GENERAL REFERENCES French, David P. "James Fenimore COOper and Fort William Henry," American Literature, 32 (1960), 28-38. Gates, W. B. "COOper's Indebtedness to Shakespeare," PMLA, 67 (1952), 716-731. Hart, Francis Russell. "The Experience of Character in the English Gothic Novel." Experience in the Novel [Selected Papers from the English‘TnEEiL tuteI. Ed. Roy Harvey Pearce. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1968, pp. 83- 105. Hastings, George E. "How Cooper Became a Novelist," American Literature, 12 (1940), 20-51. Howard, David. "James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales: 'without a cross.'" Tradition and Toler- ance ip_Nineteenth Century Fiction. EdT—BaVId Howard, John Lucas, and John Goode. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966, pp. 9-54. Jones, Howard Mumford. "Prose and Pictures: James Feni- more C00per," Tulane Studies ip_English, 3 (1952), Kermode, Frank. The Sense pf 22 Ending. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Kligerman, Jack Mark. "Style and Form in the Fiction of James Fenimore Cooper." Diss. University of California, Berkeley, 1967. McDowell, Tremaine. "James Fenimore CoOper as Self- Critic," Studies in Philology, 27 (1930), 508-516. Philbrick, Thomas. "Cooper's The Pioneers: Origins and Structure," PMLA, 79 (1964), 579-593. 178 179 Philbrick, Thomas. "The Sources of Cooper's Knowledge of Fort William Henry," American Literature, 36 (1964), 209-214. Reeve, Clara. The Progress 2: Romance. New York: The Facsimile Text Society, 1930; Reproduced from the Colchester Edition (London: 1785). Ringe, Donald A. "Cooper's Last Novels, 1847-1850," PMLA, 75 (1960), 583-590. . "COOper's Littlepage Novels: Change and Sta- bility in American Society," American Literature, 32 (1961), 280-290. . "Cooper's The Crater and the Moral Basis of Society," Papers of TEe Michigan Academ of Science, Arts, and—Letters, 44(1959), 371:380. "James Fenimore COOper and Thomas Cole: An Analogous Technique," American Literature, 30 (1958), 26-36. . "Man and Nature in Cooper's The Prairie," Nineteenth Century Fiction, 15 (1961), 313-323. Vandiver, Edward P., Jr. "COOper's The Prairie and Shakespeare," PMLA, 69 (1954), 1352-1354. . "James Fenimore COOper and Shakspere," The Shakespeare Association Bulletin, 15 (1940), 110— 117. Waples, Dorothy. The Whig Myth of James Fenimore Cooper. New Haven: Yale UniversiEy Press, 1938.