American Gothic And The Environment Summary

The Failure of Man; the Disappointment of the Capitalist View and the Prevalence of the Ever Present Environment

The natural world, is the environment that directly torments and haunts the pages in nearly all American Gothic tales, that is the thesis in which Matthew Sivils present to us in his essay, American Gothic and the Environment, 1800-Present (121). Throughout his essay he goes on to explain how different Authors use this idea to construct their stories, but there is also a deeper, more political view on why we fear, the environment. That reason is because nature cannot be controlled, and the American dream is to control and dominate all which surrounds it in the hopes to exploit and manipulate it for personal uses to gain power
In other words they make the woman an abject figure, something that is seen as disgusting but natural and is ever present beneath the surface. Barbara Creed describes this in her article, Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection, when analyzing Kristeva's theory of abjection in reference to the feminine. She says, "We can see its ideological project as an attempt to shore up the symbolic order by constructing the feminine as an imaginary 'other ' which must be repressed and controlled in order to secure and protect the social order. Thus, the horror film stages and re-stages a constant repudiation of the maternal figure. But the feminine is not per se a monstrous sign; rather, it is constructed as such within a patriarchal discourse which reveals a great deal about male desires and fears but tells us nothing about feminine desire in relation to the horrific" (70). Again that they don't necessarily fear women, but what they
This ship is on a course to set sail for an unknown territory that has never truly been discovered before as far as the novel describes, the Antarctic. Upon arriving there they notice a shift in the weather in which the change is drastic as it is described as being frigid to tropical. In this sense, their environment aids them, despite many of the crew have scurvy, not so much. Once arriving at nearly the center of this tropical area they notice a formation of islands, and inhabitants on the largest island, the island of Tsalal (Poe 131). Here is where we see the attempt at controlling and exploiting once again a natural environment. In this sense, we have land that is filled with resources, and upon noticing such resources, the men of the Jane Guy immediately set up in trading with the natives of the land, and even create a sort of colony amongst them for the time they are there in the hopes that they could use it to salt meat and dry it and trade in the future (Poe 142). This shows how they again unknowingly bring their capitalist ideologies into a new land, and try to control these people to do their will. Despite how the trades are successful and the natives are cooperating, the crew never lets their guard down and they are