James Fenimore Cooper’s Views, Essay Example

Cooper’s Views on Society

James Fenimore Cooper is a famous American writer and critic who lived at the verge of the 18^th and 19^th century, and witnessed the early years of the US existence as a state. Cooper was a well-known conservative, and his views on the society were affected by the conservatism of his principles. Cooper was an eager advocate of the right to individual freedom that every member of society had, and protected the rights of property owners in his works.[1]  The views of Cooper were mostly undecided regarding the democratic rule; on the one hand, he believed in the possibility of its existence, while on the other hand, admitted that the majority rule could bring about chaos and disorder to the country.[2] Cooper published an essay An American Democrat in 1838, in which he voiced many societal concerns about the state development of the USA. For instance, Cooper claimed that any government was connected with social inequality:

“The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society”[3]

As Grossman noted regarding the views of Cooper voiced in The American Democrat. Cooper believed as firmly as ever in the superiority of democracy as the highest virtue for the society, though it surely has some defects depending on the location of the power holders.[4] More than that, Cooper admitted that while in a democratic state, people are those who really rule the state, they are to be distrusted most of all. Grossman also noted that the views of Cooper on society are similar to those of Tocqueville, who admitted that the existence of social classes was unavoidable in the USA as in many Europeans countries, but it could have less sharp boundaries, and the transcendence from one class to another one should be done easier.[5]

Cooper was a fierce protester against slavery, and he considered the phenomenon of slavery incompatible with the very concept of a democratic, progressive society:

“Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want”.[6]

One of the key topics of Cooper’s literary activity was the frontier society, and the life at the frontier. Cooper had a distinct philosophical position regarding the extension of US frontiers, and took a particular interest in exploring the lifestyles, rules, traditions, and relationships at the frontier. The works about frontiersmen, including The Leather-Stocking Tales, The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, etc. proliferated Cooper’s ideas about free life close to nature. These works of Cooper also held another message – that he US “civilizers” use decent pretexts to settle on the wild lands, but in fact, they bring only destruction and misuse to the beautiful and untouched American land.[7] Hence, as one can see, Cooper saw the negative side of the society as well; he advocated living closely to nature, and saw the evils of civilization, especially in the changeable, fundamental epoch of the US existence.[8]

The ideas of praising the wilderness and living closer to nature changed the ideas of Cooper about the society dramatically by the end of his literary career. As Motley noted, Cooper refrained from leading an active public life, and resorted to more pessimistic depictions of the American society as opposed to the frontier life; “he lost interest in the frontier as an experimental ground on which to explore the possibilities of American development”, and used the scenario of American degeneration more often.[9] In The Crater written in 1847, Cooper even used the frontier as a place of refuge from the degrading and corrupt American society.[10] Spiller saw the reason for Cooper’s growing pessimism in the fact that Cooper’s idea of the importance of the property right was violated in the USA, depriving Cooper of the first ground for his arguments for democracy: “the foundations of his theory of democracy were being undermined, further evidence that the new America had lost sight of its principles and was drifting rapidly toward mediocrity and social disintegration”.[11] Hence, Cooper’s search for the ideal of democracy and the proper way of American society’s functioning was directed to the roots of the American nation, to the settlement at the continent, and close reference to the authentic American tradition in contrast to the debilitating and disappointing present Cooper witnessed.

Cooper’s Views on Social Contract

James Fenimore Cooper had a large set of views on the social contract in the American society. The majority of his views were embodied in the critical essay The American Democrat. As it has already been noted, Cooper was an agile supporter of a democratic form of rule, and he argued in his essay that the rules of natural justice should become the basis on which the government of the USA would rule its people. The principles of natural justice also became vulnerable in the context of democratic rule, since they were subject to misuse by those in power. Hence, the Constitution of the USA should act as a form of the social contract between the state and its political rulers.

“A monarchy is the most expensive of all forms of government, the regal state requiring a costly parade, and he who depends on his own power to rule, must strengthen that power by bribing the active and enterprising whom he cannot intimidate”.[12]

As Fernandez noted, the important feature of the social contract theory is the idea that laws of the society are designed by people and for people, while consent is the basic cornerstone of the social contract for a fair and free society.[13] Cooper’s opinion in this respect was similar, since he argued that the excessive intrusion of the government into the life of the society was unnecessary and redundant:

“All that a good government aims at… is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities”.[14]

Cooper was generally of low opinion about the social contract in the American society, since he saw it as a restraining instrument imposing a certain mode of living, thinking, and interacting on people. The opposition to a binding social contract was the wilderness of the frontier at which people decided how to act not based on the social contract, but according to their senses and instincts. Therefore, as one can see, Cooper idealized the frontier much, and considered the frontiersmen freer and more equal than people in the American civilized society were doomed to be. According to Sniach, Cooper’s “white” novels’ characters were fixed by the “pin” of social contract, and were considered “never real human beings”, while the characters of The Leather-Stocking Tales represented the unconscious belief of Cooper in the natural inequality and unfairness.[15]

White also supported the observation of Sniach, analyzing the fundamental difference between the narrative in The Leather-Stocking Tales and The Pioneers. The author noted that while The Leather-Stocking Tales contained larger-than-life heroes whose social concerns were naturally resolved by resorting to violence in extreme conditions, while The Pioneers represented the set of earthly characters that decided to join the early American melting pot in which people were urged either to buy in, or to move on.[16] Hence, the attitude of Cooper to a social contract was negative, and it comes from the depiction and interpretation thereof in Cooper’s works, James Fenimore Cooper considered the social contract as disabling, forcefully civilizing feature of a democratic society securing the order, but making people’s lives less lively, more superficial, and shallow.

Cooper’s Views on Education

It is hard to trace the views of Cooper regarding education, since he was not a highly educated person formally. Cooper received his early education in the village school with the pretentious title of an Academy.[17]However, the period at which Cooper was growing up was characterized by intense attention to providing free higher education to masses. Hence, Cooper was soon sent to Albany where he studied with a number of other boys with the rector of St. Peter’s Church as a private pupil. This first serious teacher had a profound impact on Cooper’s views, on education in particular:

“a man of ability and marked character, he clearly exerted over the impressionable mind of his pupil a greater influence than the latter ever realized. He was in many respects, indeed, a typical Englishman of the educated class of that time. He had the profoundest contempt for republics and republican institutions”[18]

As Lounsbury noted, Cooper entered the junior class of Yale College, but his father died in 1802, and his study quickly ended.[19] Cooper reported being not highly interested in studies, and played much at the beginning of his education. As it was later found out, he had been excellently prepared for school, which enabled him to accomplish complex tasks much faster than other students did. However, his studies did not last long, since the frolic in which Cooper was engaged caused his later dismissal from the college.[20]

The misfortune of Cooper was to lose the opportunity to education, but further education was granted to him by life, and was much more suited to his adventurous nature. Cooper entered the navy, and started his ocean life. [21] Cooper liked the sea life, and spent a number of years living it; many sites he visited were later incorporated in his literary works.

Among the views on education, one can consider the famous quote of Cooper from the novel The Last of Mohicans:

“Your young white, who gathers his learning from books and can measure what he knows by the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his fathers’, but, where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know the value of years, and respects them accordingly.”[22]

As one can see from the present quotation, Cooper recognized the value of knowledge, and was fully aware of the value prescribed to knowledge and education in his society. However, he was sure that only knowledge coupled with experience could bring any feasible benefit to its holder. He also experienced much in his life, and enriched his knowledge without formal instruction, becoming a skillful writer, critic, and activist. Hence, he did not insist on the sole dominance of formal education as the only way to become an intelligent person.

Some other ideas about education are reflected in Cooper’s The American Democrat. Cooper recognized certain natural privileges that have to be granted to children by the right of their birth, but claimed that children should not take them for granted, and should refine and develop the knowledge, education, and intelligence they inherited:

“The day laborer will not mingle with the slave; the skilful mechanic feels his superiority over the mere laborer, claims higher wages and has a pride in his craft; the man in trade justly fancies that his habits elevate him above the mechanic, so far as social position is concerned, and the man of refinement, with his education, tastes and sentiments, is superior to all.”[23]

The present opinion of Cooper about the role of education shows that James Fenimore Cooper still attributed the key role in the social hierarchy to education. Cooper could not imagine an aristocrat without intelligence and education, while people from lower classes were mainly attributed the manual, hands-on educational experience. Thus, Cooper was a proponent of proliferating education in the USA as a way of improving the intelligence of the American society, and advancing the whole nation’s development, growth, and evolution.

Cooper’s Views on the American Character Identity

James Fenimore Cooper was an outstanding social critic with his own distinctive view of the American character identity. However, there are two different aspects of the present issue reflected in the views of Cooper – he drew a deep divide between the civilized, public American society, and the frontiersmen who fascinated his imagination for many years. The most valued trait in the American character was considered individuality: “All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity”.[24] Hence, as one can see, Cooper advocated the individual initiative, individual approach to anything created or undertaken by American people for the sake of remaining oneself.

Another aspect of Cooper’s philosophy of the American character identity was his strong belief in the power of the American society’s freedom to nurture a strong and independent nation. According to his words from The American Democrat,

“Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.”[25]

Cooper was famous for numerous accounts of the American character identity, but a specific place in his literary work was also occupied by the depiction of Native Americans, i.e., Indians who used to be treated highly negatively in the times of Cooper. As Sullivan reasonably noted, Cooper transcended the usual boundaries of searching for the American national identity, and went farther to the roots, that is, the settlement on the American continent inhabited by the Natives:

“cultural nationalism and Romanticism to be sure, and the quest for national identity on a deeper level; guilt and concern over the destruction of Indian culture, in conjunction with a conscious commitment to the idea of civilization; and finally, vague feelings of discontent and disillusionment in this age of progress and manifest destiny, feelings for which the loss of the Indian was a powerful metaphor.”[26]

Cooper was often criticized by his promotion of the American character identity in the form of American exceptionalism; several novels from The Leather-Stocking Tales contain fragments in which the characters discuss being a half-Indian as an evil, or exploring the uniqueness of the American nation.[27] Indeed, Cooper devoted many works to the discussion of the American racial exclusivity; the author is also accused of romanticizing the frontier wilderness as the basis for the formation of the American individualism and democratic spirit.[28] Cooper moved even further in his appreciation of the role of Americans, ascribing his nation with a messianic role on the American continent:

“That messianic vision was an integral part of the pretty setting of Cooper’s civilized westerns. He captured its symbolism in the indomitable and uncompromising presentation of his frontier protagonist, Natty Bumppo. Anne C. Lynch, in the pages of “Harper’s” in 1852, expressed the power of the messianic vision and by extension Cooper’s symbolic representation of American exceptionalism”[29]

However, not all critics keep to such radical criticism of Cooper’s depictions of the American nation; McWilliams recollected The Memorial of James Fenimore Cooper in which the valuable role of the author as a historian of American culture and character, and chronicler of the American frontier was credited.[30] It is obvious that the depictions of Cooper contained a certain extent of romancing the true American character, but Cooper perceived the frontier as a new American scene where the new native material could be collected, and new American personalities were born, which was not always true.[31]

Evaluating the views of Cooper on the American character identity, one can note that Cooper tried to mitigate the fundamental conflict of race in America that was particularly intense at the time of his life and creative activity. Instead of claiming the rights for American exceptionality, Cooper tried to look for a new nucleus of the American society in the hearty friendship of Chingachgook and Natty.[32] However, some of his depictions, though precise and plentiful, fail to reveal the true nature of the American character. However, Cooper can reasonably be credited with the vivid and detailed depiction of Americans, both civilized and uncivilized, and with tracing the development of the American civilization at the verge of the centuries.

References

Alan Gribben, “James Fenimore Cooper”, (The World Book Encyclopedia, 2007). http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/cooper.html. (accessed September 21, 2012).

Craig White, Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006), 84.

James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat (Cooperstown: H&E Phinney, 1838).

James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1870), 315.

James Grossman, James Fenimore Cooper (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1949), 112.

John P. McWilliams, Political Justice in a Republic: James Fenimore Cooper’s America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 3.

Justin Fernandez, Victimless Crimes (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2002), 38.

Morag Sniach, The Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 22.

Nadesan Permaul, “James Fenimore Cooper and the American National Myth” (James Fenimore Cooper Society, 2006). http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/ala/2006ala-permaul.html. (accessed September 21, 2012).

Robert E. Spiller, James Fenimore Cooper – American Writers 48: University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers (New York: North Central Publishing Company, 1965) p. 37

Sherry Sullivan, “A Redder Shade of Pale: The Indianization of Heroes and Heroines in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 20.1 (Spring 1987): 57-75. JSTOR, 57.

Thomas R. Lounsbury, James Fenimore Cooper (New York: Forgotten Books, 1886), 6.

Warren Motley, The American Abraham: James Fenimore Cooper and the Frontier Patriarch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 151.

[1] Alan Gribben, “James Fenimore Cooper”, (The World Book Encyclopedia, 2007). http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/cooper.html. (accessed September 21, 2012).

[2] Ibid.

[3] James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat (Cooperstown: H&E Phinney, 1838), 47.

[4] James Grossman, James Fenimore Cooper (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1949), 112.

[5] Ibid., 113

[6] Cooper, The American Democrat, 173.

[7] Gribben, “James Fenimore Cooper”

[8] Warren Motley, The American Abraham: James Fenimore Cooper and the Frontier Patriarch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 151.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Robert E. Spiller, James Fenimore Cooper – American Writers 48: University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers (New York: North Central Publishing Company, 1965) p. 37

[12] Cooper, The American Democrat, 64.

[13] Justin Fernandez, Victimless Crimes (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2002), 38.

[14] Cooper, The American Democrat, 49

[15] Morag Sniach, The Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 22.

[16] Craig White, Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006), 84.

[17] Thomas R. Lounsbury, James Fenimore Cooper (New York: Forgotten Books, 1886), 6.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid., 9.

[20] Ibid. 8

[21] Ibid. 9

[22] James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1870), 315.

[23] Cooper, The American Democrat, 82.

[24] Cooper, The American Democrat, 183

[25] Cooper, The American Democrat, 182

[26] Sherry Sullivan, “A Redder Shade of Pale: The Indianization of Heroes and Heroines in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction.” The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 20.1 (Spring 1987): 57-75. JSTOR, 57.

[27] Nadesan Permaul, “James Fenimore Cooper and the American National Myth” (James Fenimore Cooper Society, 2006). http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/ala/2006ala-permaul.html. (accessed September 21, 2012).

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] John P. McWilliams, Political Justice in a Republic: James Fenimore Cooper’s America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 3.

[31] Permaul, “James Fenimore Cooper and the American National Myth”

[32] Ibid.