Gothic Elements in Canadian Literature: Settlers and Indigenous Voices

Introduction: The Gothic Genre and Colonial Canada

Common elements of gothic literature include mystery, fear, omens, curses, preternatural settings, gloomy atmospheres with a hint of being haunted, some dimension of the supernatural, romance, an arch-villain, nightmare situations, anti-heroes, and ladies in distress (Mulvey-Roberts; Smith). Popular examples on both sides of the Atlantic include works by the Brontë sisters, works by Poe, and Shelley's Frankenstein. The gothic was a popular genre form in the 19th century. It was romantic, vibrant, dark, brooding, frightening, exciting, and visceral. It resonated with readers because, after a century of Enlightenment — with its hyper-emphasis on reason and naturalism — the Romantic era had ushered in something desperately needed: feeling.

Thus, authors of the 19th century, like Duncan Campbell Scott and Pauline Johnson, found elements of the gothic genre to be a useful way to explore and express their sentiments on the topic of cultural interaction between the Indigenous nations and the settlers of Canada. This paper shows how Scott, with his "The Onondaga Madonna" (1898), and Johnson, with her "Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral," use the same gothic elements to shape two completely different perspectives and to create a unique, otherworldly effect on the reader.

The Onondaga Madonna: Scott's Gothic Portrait

The term "Madonna" was one used and reserved for the Mother of God. The great sculptors and artists of the Christian era created numerous depictions of the Madonna, most famous among them perhaps Michelangelo's Pietà, which shows the Virgin holding her dead Son in her lap following His removal from the cross. As missionaries from Europe spread throughout the world, other ethnicities produced their own Madonnas — there is, for example, the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose image is distinctly Spanish. Thus, at first glance, "The Onondaga Madonna" appears to be a poem about a Madonna rendered in the likeness of the Onondaga people of Canada. Indeed, it may even be so — but the depiction is far from flattering. Most Madonna depictions emphasize beauty and grace; Scott's Madonna is depicted as the mother of a doomed race, violent and stubborn. The integration of clashing images and contexts gives the poem a bizarre quality that is perfectly gothic in tone.

The gothic genre is about creating an air of mystery, suspense, dread, and fear. It is about tapping into the primal, dark, and fallen undercurrent of nature and laying it bare for the reader in a slow-burn kind of way. This is what Scott does in his poem about the Onondaga woman holding her infant child. It is not quite a parody of the Christian Madonna, but it does compare the Onondaga woman and child with the Virgin and Child image associated with Christian iconography. In doing so, Scott creates a kind of monster-Madonna, just as Victor Frankenstein created a monster-man. The difference is that Frankenstein's monster was an accident that his creator went on to reject — he was aiming for something beautiful and the output disgusted him. Scott's creation is deliberate. He uses irony to contrast the savage appearance of the Onondaga woman with the graceful image of the Virgin Mary that most readers will automatically recall when they hear the word "Madonna."

Scott uses mystery and fear to set up the poem from its very first lines: "She stands full-throated and with careless pose, / This woman of a weird and waning race" (Scott 1–2). The first question to ask is whether Scott is describing an actual statue of a Madonna made for the Onondaga, or whether he is describing an Onondaga woman and child. The actual subject is unclear, and context offers no decisive hints. All that can be discerned is that the woman is not "European," and therefore she is "weird" and of a "waning race" — a phrase that implicitly suggests the European settlers will drive the Onondaga to extinction. Underlying these words is a dark, menacing threat of violence and death. Yet that threat does not emanate from the woman herself but from the author, who has already consigned her race to oblivion.

Scott continues: "The tragic savage lurking in her face, / Where all her pagan passion burns and glows" (3–4). From these lines one can surmise that the author is describing an Onondaga woman, because he labels her passion "pagan" — that is, not Christian. She is thus a pagan Madonna, a representation of her people and her race, seen as "tragic" and "savage." These words carry gothic weight alongside "passion" and the emphasis on visceral feeling. Her passion "burns and glows," and she is like an ember dying on the fire but not yet extinguished. She is a tragic creature and therefore in the mold of Frankenstein's monster — another weird, passionate creation scorned, marginalized, and pushed toward violence. Scott's diction is strange and unusual for writing about a Madonna, but he seems to consider it appropriate because he is describing a pagan, an indigenous member of the Onondaga. She is something altogether different from, say, the Sistine Madonna — who has nothing hideous in her. The Onondaga Madonna, by contrast, could seemingly pass for the bride of Frankenstein's monster, if one reads between Scott's lines.

She is described as having no decent breeding, no class, no culture, and no refinement: "Her blood is mingled with her ancient foes, / And thrills with war and wildness in her veins" (5–6). Scott indicates that there is no purity of race in her, since her ancestors were likely taken or mixed with captives from other tribes seized in combat. He sees her as a kind of mongrel; moreover, there is nothing genteel or gentle in her. She is drawn to war in a way that, in Scott's worldview, only a male warrior should be. She is wild, untamed, and uncivilized. These are her defects, as Scott presents them — qualities viewed with horror, which is the essence of the gothic genre. The gothic brings horror forward to shock, and the reader is surely shocked by this Onondaga Madonna, whose title and characteristics seem to mock the title and characteristics of the Christian Madonna.

Why does Scott do this? As Salem-Wiseman points out, Scott was of the opinion that "the white man's ways were the best" (121). He saw the Indigenous people as something shocking and terrifying: primitive and without grace, like the monsters of gothic literature — only real. That is what Scott seems to suggest as he paints the Onondaga Madonna as a mad, primitive, wild woman. He looks at her this way because, in his mind, the civilized, European, Christian order makes sense, and everything that fails to conform to that standard is shocking and pitiable.

Yet here is a woman who has not integrated with civilized society: "Her rebel lips are dabbled with the stains / Of feuds and forays and her father's woes" (7–8). She remains the rebel — like the monster rejected by his creator in Shelley's gothic novel. Here it appears that Scott is the creator openly rejecting his creation, casting her as a rebel in the manner of Milton's Satan. Her mouth and face are blood-stained, like a vicious creature not to be trusted.

The Other Perspective: Johnson's 'Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral'

E. Pauline Johnson provides the other perspective. As the daughter of a Mohawk chief and an English woman, Johnson grew up between two cultures and two worlds (Gray, Thomas). She identified with the Mohawk and saw herself as a pagan in a world that wanted her to conform to its Christian worldview. Thus, in her essay "Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral," the reader is given the perspective that one might have heard from the Onondaga Madonna had she been given a voice to speak.

The essay begins by identifying the strangeness of the setting, just as Scott emphasizes the weirdness of his subject. The gothic element is present from the start, only it is used differently — because Johnson is not describing an Indigenous setting in Canada but rather a cathedral in London. To Johnson, the daughter of a Mohawk, this setting is alien. She states of the cathedral: "So this is the place where dwells the Great White Father, ruler of many lands, lodges, and tribes, in the hollow of whose hands is the peace that rests between the once hostile red man and white" (Johnson). This identification of the supernatural is another gothic element Johnson uses to heighten the significance of her subject. She wants the reader to see the cathedral as an Indigenous person might see it — not as a white settler would. Johnson is challenging the reader to step into the shoes of the Indigenous person and think outside the familiar frame. There is no condemnation in her voice, just a touch of otherworldliness that gives the essay its supernatural character.

She describes the King of England as the Great White Father, which is how he was known among the Iroquois of Canada. There is, however, no scorn comparable to that felt in Scott's poem. There is irony and mirth, reminiscent of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey — a light, rather than devilish, gothic quality. Johnson can thus make statements like: "For once he came to us in our far-off Canadian reserves, and with his own hand fastened decorations and medals on the buckskin coats of our oldest chiefs, just because they and their fathers used their tomahawks in battle in the cause of England." It is a humorous anecdote that illuminates the relationship between the Great White Father and her people.

Standing in London, she sees through the eyes of her people and looks beyond the city's great buildings to her own people back home, living in their communities and riding horses. Her heart is there, not in London. Nonetheless, she is drawn to the church — to St. Paul's Cathedral — "where the paleface worships the Great Spirit, and through whose portals he hopes to reach the happy hunting grounds" (Johnson). The essay emphasizes the supernatural because the essayist is a fish out of water: outside her element in a distant land. In such a situation it is difficult to cast villains or anti-heroes. She is not quite a damsel in distress, but she is a damsel — and the distress she feels is supernatural in character. She is facing a church unfamiliar to her, where the Great Spirit is worshipped by people whose ways are not her own.

Conclusion: Two Gothic Visions of Cultural Contact

The gothic nature of Johnson's essay exists in the emotional distress she navigates and in the nightmarish world she must escape in order to return, in imagination, to her own. It is a world that Scott, conversely, describes as a nightmare — full of violence and rebellion, blood and wildness. For Johnson it is no such thing: it is alive, romantic, spirited, human, soulful, and honorable. For Johnson, the English way that Scott admired was the dead way. Yet both authors use gothic elements to achieve an effect on their readers. Both appeal to mystery, to mood and atmosphere, to the supernatural. Scott appeals also to omens and curses; Johnson avoids them. She is too deeply in the romantic, worshipful vein to descend into the territory of cursing the other. She uses the elements of mystery and fear as a launching pad from which she darts homeward to be with her own people in worship, but she never descends into leveling curses at the paleface for being different. Scott does — and perhaps that is, as Johnson's essay hints, another signal of his own spiritual impoverishment.

Works Cited

Gray, Charlotte, and Clara Thomas. "Flint and Feather: The Life and Times of E. Pauline Johnson, Tekahionwake." Canadian Woman Studies 23.1 (2003): 183.

Johnson, E. Pauline. "Pagan in St. Paul's Cathedral."

Mulvey-Roberts, Marie, ed. The Handbook to Gothic Literature. NYU Press, 1998.

Salem-Wiseman, Lisa. "'Verily, the White Man's Ways Were the Best': Duncan Campbell Scott, Native Culture, and Assimilation." Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne (1996): 121–144.

Scott, D. C. "The Onondaga Madonna."

Smith, Andrew. Gothic Literature. Edinburgh University Press, 2007.