Kurjiaka, Susan K. H.

Lack of coherent meaning in Edgar Allan Poe's fiction reflects the fleeting nature of the moment between waking and sleeping. Poe believes that during this moment the imagination can reveal profound truths. He also acknowledges that in this liminal state the imagination has a destructive side that leads us to the abyss--a place of darkness that reveals no secrets. The majority of Poe's protagonists experience this moment--the hypnagogic state--and through these characters, Poe attempts to discover what lies within the abyss. Poe's critical works help us to recognize his ideas on the imagination and how it can lead us to this abyss. Many of his short fictions consist of fragments of hypnagogic journeys that end before the characters can discover "truths" within the abyss. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym contains Poe's only character to return from the abyss and tell his tale--yet not its secrets.

The character of Elinor Tilney in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey states, "A mother could have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all others" (180). Ironically, however, Jane Austen's portrayal of the protagonists' mothers is inevitably less than the paragon that Tilney describes. Mrs. Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Morland in Northanger Abbey, and Mrs. Price in Mansfield Park all fail their daughters. Mrs. Dashwood, like her daughter Marianne, falls into the excesses of emotion that mimic the Romantic era. Mrs. Bennet errs because of defects in her character and her failure to understand the elements necessary for a successful marriage. Mrs. Morland neglects her daughter, and Mrs. Price virtually abandons hers. Seen against the standards of motherhood from the eighteenth-century philosophers, the eighteenth-century courtesy literature, and letters from the author, the heroines' mothers present a portrait of bad mothering of the period.

This study examines Thoreau's poetic quest, discovering in his works a departure from the tradition of American Puritan orthodoxy. The American Puritans "ached" for certainty of salvation. This ache manifested itself by circumscribed introspection and individual freedom checked by tradition, community, and the Past. Orthodoxy held with ferocious certainty the dogma of "Innate Depravity." Dismissing certainty, Thoreau countered Puritan deprecation of Self with exaltation of Self. His quest--based upon spiritual Selfhood and Freedom--is fired by "Poetic Uncertainty," and centers upon Self separate yet intimate with Nature, Self's divinity as expressive of God's, "Sublime Belatedness," and the Past. Thoreau thus offers a uniquely "American" spirituality. His poetic quest exemplifies his unique stand in the spiritual history of our country.

Although the relationship between Harriet Jacobs and her grandmother in Jacobs's slave narrative seems at first a simple case of maternal and filial love, closer examination reveals a complex and carefully crafted interaction between author, persona, and character. Jacobs's manumitted grandmother attempts to gain autonomy by emulating white models for behavior in a dominant white culture that nevertheless continues to exclude her. Although strongly influenced by her grandmother, Jacobs's persona, Linda Brent, learns to negotiate the power struggles of slavery by defining herself. The price Jacobs/Brent pays for gaining a voice is the disintegration of her and her grandmother's supportive relationship. Jacobs controls the narrative development of this relationship in order to represent her northern middle-class white women readers in her text. She represents her readers so as to both accommodate and criticize the social differences between women of different races and social standings.