AMERICAN MADNESS: THE FRONTIER IN THE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, HERMAN MELVILLE, JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, WILLA CATHER, AND O.E. RØLVAAG

The theme of madness along the frontier developed in American novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Willa Cather, and O.E. Rølvaag rely on the frontier and the theme of madness to depict characters’ aberrant behaviors. Using these depictions of madness, I explore questions of religion, violence, gender, and ethnic identity to analyze the psychological impact of the frontier and its role in American literature. Melville and Hawthorne rely on ideas of isolation and the religious fervor of Puritanism to show the forms of madness that plague their characters along the frontier. Cooper focuses on isolationist aspects of madness. Thus, I argue constant movement, senseless violence, and clashes between settlers and the indigenous create a crucible for the creation of an American identity. Willa Cather’s works continue this trend with a focus on the welfare of female, immigrant, and potentially queer protagonists. Cather depicts madness as an inevitable part of Nebraska and frontier life, which is produced by the economic conditions of an industrializing nation along the vestiges of the frontier. Rølvaag uses the theme of madness to explore the movement of Norwegians to the interior of the Midwest. Madness functions as a plot device to illustrate the collective anxiety of the Norwegian immigrant group and their integration into the mainstream of American identity. My dissertation reveals madness as a through line in this diverse body of literature that spans the nineteenth through early twentieth centuries, which complicates the jingoistic narratives popular in this nation’s past. Exploring the theme of madness in these texts provides new perspectives on American literature, perceptions of the nation and the frontier. Above all, it complicates the idea of American identity, its past, and its potential future.