Local Habitations as Gothic Terrain in Rose Terry Cooke

Abstract

Rose Terry Cooke, one of the nineteenth-century’s popular local color writers, depicts the Connecticut countryside as a death-infused landscape in which Gothic excesses, fears, transgressions and disintegrations emerge out of regional conditions. Vivid localized details transform into familiar Gothic tropes that speak of regional characteristics and Gothic horror. Drawing on the idea of a “dark nature” that informs ecogothic literary approaches, the chapter shows the details of daily life, the usual subject matter of local color fiction, revealing Gothic narratives of women’s married lives. In such stories as “Mrs. Flint’s Married Experience” and “The Ring Fetter,” depictions of the Connecticut River’s placid valleys give way to hidden and grim sites of isolation in which twisted human behaviors and relationships mark the story’s terrain as Gothic.