Nature’s Role in American Literature: Transcendentalism vs. Naturalism
Nature’s Role in American Literature
In The Scarlet Letter, Nature stands in clear opposition to Puritan society. This opposition is symbolically manifested by the Prison Door and the Rosebush. The Prison, a place where criminals are punished for their sins, represents Puritan society. Prisoners, however, see a beautiful rosebush before entering the prison. The beauty of the rosebush is a reminder that Nature is sympathetic towards those people punished by Puritan society. This is even more clearly seen in the characterization of Pearl, Hester Prynne’s daughter. As the product of an adulterous intercourse, she is rejected by Puritan society, yet she is gladly accepted by Nature.
In Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, an autobiography, the author lives near Walden Pond, in a cabin he built himself, for two years, surviving with basic needs. Nature is portrayed in a purely Transcendentalist way: as a journey of spiritual discovery and a manual for self-reliance. Thoreau wants to show that life in nature is the life of the free man who aims to free himself from the slavery of industrial society. Thoreau, like other transcendentalists, believed that Truth cannot be achieved through reason. It can only be felt intuitively once the individual detaches himself or herself from society and initiates an introspective search for his or her true self in Nature, which is precisely what he does in Walden.
Transcendentalism is also a powerful influence behind other authors, particularly in Sarah Orne Jewett’s works. A view of Nature similar to that of the Transcendentalists can be appreciated in her novel The White Heron. Nature is seen as a relief from civilization and is represented as a transforming agent because it can change people’s minds. Moreover, Nature can keep you in touch with the self and evoke powerful emotions. The protagonist Sylvia undergoes a transforming experience upon contemplation of the entire forest when she climbs a tree in search of the heron. She, therefore, decides not to reveal the location of the bird the hunter is pursuing. After contemplating the forest, she empathizes more with Nature as a whole (including the heron) than with the hunter, who represents civilization. We might say that contemplation of nature changes her into a different person.
A different approach to Nature can be seen in Jack London’s literary works. Instead of a relieving place, Nature is seen as a physiological entity. Laws of nature control individual choice and free will (as opposed to the Transcendentalists, who believed that Nature can be transcended by the individual through intuition). In Law of Life, an old man is abandoned to his fate in the snow. He will not survive because of the extreme conditions. He maintains a stoic mentality: death is not terrible; he is resigned, patiently awaiting death (he says to himself things like “it is well, all men must die”), because he cannot control the laws of nature. In To Build a Fire, however, the protagonist does not accept fate as the first one. He tries to survive no matter what, not accepting that he cannot defy nature.
In conclusion, Nature is one of the most outstanding features of American literature, and it is approached in many different ways by different authors. On the one hand, Thoreau and Hawthorne share the same approach to nature, as a way of liberation from an oppressive society. Similarly, Sarah Orne Jewett portrays nature as a way of escaping from civilization but also as a power for changing the individual’s mind by experiencing its magnificence. On the other hand, Jack London has a very different approach to nature; it is seen as a force that controls individual choice and free will, not as a biological entity.