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Cooper's Last Novels, 1847–1850
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Until the appearance of James Grossman's biography in 1949, James Fenimore Cooper's last five novels had received little critical attention. The nineteenth century practically ignored them. Even William Cullen Bryant in his judicious memorial address delivered in 1852 passed over them with hardly a word, while thirty years later, Thomas R. Lounsbury flatly stated that “not one of them has the slightest pretension to be termed a work of art.” In the twentieth century, the first critics to concern themselves with the rehabilitation of Cooper's reputation—Vernon L. Parrington, Robert E. Spiller, and Yvor Winters—concerned as they were with the broader aspects of Cooper's thought, devoted little space to the discussion of tales that were not especially pertinent to their immediate purposes. During the last dozen years, however, the novels have begun to attract more attention, with Harold H. Scudder and W. B. Gates in particular pointing out various sources that Cooper used in composing two of the tales. Among the critics, Grossman has written the fullest analyses of the individual books, and, most recently, Howard Mumford Jones and Charles A. Brady have each treated the late novels at some length. All three have pointed out the strong religious emphasis apparent in several of them.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1960
References
1 The five novels are: The Crater (1847), Jack Tier (1848), The Oak Openings (1848), The Sea Lions (1849), and The Ways of the Hour (1850). I am indebted to the Faculty Research Fund of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, Univ. of Michigan, for a summer fellowship that made work on this study possible.
2 Prose Writings, ed. Parke Godwin (New York, 1884), i, 325.
3 James Fenimore Cooper (Boston, 1883), p. 254.
4 Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (New York, 1927–30), ii, 222–237; Robert E Spiller, Fenimore Cooper: Critic of His Times (New York, 1931), pp. 313–314; Yvor Winters, Maule's Curse (Norfolk, Conn., 1938), pp. 32, 43–44, 49.
5 Harold H. Scudder, “Cooper's The Crater,” American Literature, xix (May 1947), 109–126; W. B. Gates, “Cooper's The Crater and Two Explorers,” American Literature, xxiii (May 1951), 243–246; idem. “Cooper's The Sea Lions and Wilkes' Narrative,” PMLA, LXV (Dec. 1950), 1069–75.
6 James Grossman, James Fenimore Cooper (New York, 1949), pp. 221–243; Howard Mumford Jones, The Pursuit of Happiness (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), pp. 111–113; Charles A. Brady, “Myth-Maker and Christian Romancer,” American Classics Reconsidered, ed. Harold C. Gardiner, S. J. (New York, 1958), p. 81.
7 See, for example, Spiller's treatment, Fenimore Cooper: Critic of His Times, p. 313.
8 The Ways of the Hour, with illustrations by F. O. C. Darley (New York, 1861), p. 282. All quotations from Cooper in my text are from the collected edition illustrated by Darley and published in New York, 1859–61. The abbreviations used are as follows: C—The Crater, JT—Jack Tier, OO—The Oak Openings, SL—The Sea Lions, WH—The Ways of the Hour.
9 Thus, he believes her innocent (p. 143), suspects her (p. 253), believes her guilty (p. 353), and becomes convinced of her innocence (p. 432). He changes his mind at least three times.
10 Cooper criticizes the speed with which modern justice is administered, “as near an approach to railroad speed as is practicable” (WH, p. 329), and he makes the judge exclaim at each interruption of the trial, “But time is very precious” (pp. 379, 412, 427, passim).
11 See the excellent analysis of this scene in Grossman, p. 230. Indeed, as Grossman points out, the Indians do in fact justify the Parson's absurd notion because, in killing him, they come to share in the universal guilt in which they claim to have no part.
12 See especially the sailors' reaction at the appearance of Mulford whom they believe dead (JT, p. 397). The Negroes, on the other hand, laugh at them because they know Mulford lives, yet at the same time are willing to believe other delusions that lie without the sphere of their knowledge (pp. 417–419).
13 Le Bourdon plays the magician twice. On the first occasion, the search for the whisky spring, he tricks the Indians into believing that he can do the impossible. On the second, the demonstration of the bee hunter's trade, he leads them to believe that his normal activities are supernatural. To the Indians, both performances seem the work of a magician. In each, the bee hunter makes capital of their ignorance.
14 It is true, as many critics have noted, that Mrs. Budd seems a repetition of the character of the admiral's widow in The Red Rover, who has the same failing. Mrs. Budd is much more self-assertive and aggressive in her ignorance and her attitude leads to serious consequences, whereas the failing of Mrs. De Lacey is simply humorous. Perhaps Cooper came to realize the possibilities inherent in such a character when he came to write Jack Tier.
15 For example, her officious ignorance leads her to try to retie the painter of the Swash's boat during a squall. She loosens the rope, loses the boat, and with it their only hope for escape when the Swash founders (JT, p. 237). Mulford finally has to risk his life in a school of sharks to recover it.
16 Grossman, pp. 234–235. He considers the difference between Trinitarian and Unitarian to be too slight to be the subject of such controversy. Cooper, of course, considers the difference crucial.
17 For a full discussion of the relation between Mark Woolston's experience on the reef and the rise and fall of his Utopian society, see my article, “Cooper's The Crater and the Moral Basis of Society,” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, XLiv (1959), 371–380.
18 Indeed, in a footnote in The Oak Openings, Cooper illustrates the folly of a zealous Universalist, who, ignorant of the Greek of the New Testament, tries to make a distinction between “everlasting” and “eternal,” unaware that they are translations of the same Greek word (p. 210).
19 Peter's handicap, of course, is that he labors “under the curse of ignorance” (OO, p. 200), although he wants very much to learn and to know (pp. 455–457).