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James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) |
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First major American novelist, whose best-known tales of frontier adventure include The Last of the Monicans (1826), an adventure story set in the Lake Champlain. It has been filmed several times, among others in 1936 and 1992. Through his Leatherstocking series Cooper created the archetype of the 18th-century frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. His free life, close to nature, is opposite to that of the settlers who bring "civilization" that threatens the wilderness. Cooper wrote over thirty novels – he considered The Pathfinder (1841) and The Deerslayer (1840) his best works. "Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of character, than the native warrior of North America. In war, he is daring, boastful, cunning, ruthless, self-denying, and self-devoted ; in peace, just, generous, hospitable, revengeful, superstitious, modest, and commonly chaste. These are qualities, it is true, which do not distinguish all alike ; but they are so far the predominating traits of these remarkable people, as to be characteristic." ('Introduction', in The Last of the Mohicans by J. Fenimore Cooper, New York: John W. Lowell, 18--?, p. 3) James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, the
son of
Quakers, William Cooper and Elisabeth (Fenimore) Cooper. His father
was a representative of the 4th and 6th Congress, and had attained
wealth by developing virgin land. The family settled in Cooperstown, New
York, where William, founder of the city, was known as Judge Cooper. James Fenimore spent his youth partly on the family estate on the shores of Otsego Lake, where he developed a deep love of nature. Cooper was educated in the village school, and at a private school in Burlington. In 1801 he was sent to a barding school in Albany, where he was taught Latin. From early on, he was a voracious reader. Because of a series of pranks, which included training a donkey to sit in a professor's chair, Cooper was expelled from Yale in his junior year. Encouraged by his father, Cooper joined the Navy and served on the Sterling, 1806-07. On his return to the United States, he received a warrant as a midshipman. In 1808 he served on the Vesuvius and on the Wasp in the Atlantic in 1809. These experiences later inspired his sea stories. Upon his father's death in 1809, Cooper became financially independent. He resigned his commission in 1811 and married Susan Augusta De Lancey, who was a descendent of the early governors of New York colony. In
the early 1810s Cooper took up the comfortable life of a
gentleman farmer. He lived in Mamaroneck, New York from 1811 to 1814,
then in Cooperstown, and from 1817 to 1821 in Scarsdale, New York. In 1819 Cooper found himself heavily in debt; it marked the
end of the family's carefree life. Moreover, Cooper became obsessed
with the condition of his liver. He settled in Westchester, living on
his wife's
land. According to a story, one day when he had finished an
English
novel he exlaimed: "I could write a better story than that myself!"
When
his wife challenged him to write the book Cooper set to work. (Studies in American and British Literature by Inez N. McFee, Chicago: A. Flanaga, 1905, pp. 208-209) Precaution
(1820), Cooper's first novel, had an English setting and revolved around marriage and
domestic life. Many readers believed that this imitation of Jane
Austen had been written by an English lady. Published anonymously, the work did
not meet with great success. Cooper begins the story with a
conversation: ""I wonder if we are to have a neighbor in the Deanery
soon," inquired Clara Moselev, addressing herself to a small party,
assembled in her father's drawing-room, while standing at a window
which commanded a distant view of the mansion in question." (New York: John W. Lowell, 18--?, p. 5) In
comparison, Jane Austen
wrote on the first page of Pride and Prejudice:
""My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard
that Netherfield Park is let at last?"" Another model for Precaution was Austen's Persuasion.
Signe O. Wegener has argued that even in his Leatherstocking
series, "Cooper repeatedly places women at the
center of his plots and focuses on female concerns, such as the search
for a suitable spouse." (James Fenimore Cooper versus the Cult of Domesticity: Progressive Themes of Feminity and Family in the Novels by Signe O. Wegener, 2005, p. 33) In The Pathfinder, Cooper titillates
the reader with the possibility of a marriage for Natty Bumppo,
"although the only suitable wife for a man with his lifestyle would
have been an Indian one." (Ibid., p. 28) Cooper's second attempt as a novelist, The Spy (1821), was set in Westchester
Country. Based on Sir Walter Scott's Waverly
series,
it told an adventure tale about the American Revolution. The
protagonist is Harvey Birch, a supposed loyalist who actually is a spy
for George Washington, disguised as "Mr Harper". The book brought
Cooper fame and wealth and he gave up farming. Scott inspired Cooper to
draw stereotypes of light and dark, good and evil; female characters
are dichotomized into the fair and pure and the dark and tainted. The Pioneers (1823) sold 3500 copies on the first day of its publication. This work started Cooper's preoccupation with a series of frontier adventures and pioneer life. The novels, in which he spent about twenty years, depicted the adventures of Natty Bumppo, also called Leatherstocking or Hawkeye, and his Indian companion Chingachgook. The books were not written in chronological order. Cooper had the idea of transporting Leatherstocking to the Far West while he was writing The Last of the Mohicans. He had read with care Major Stephen H. Long's account of his expedition up the Platte River. During the spring of 1826 or earlier he met a young Pawnee chief who became the model for Hard-Heart in The Prairie (1827) From the narrative of the Lewis and Clark expedition he took such names as Mahtoree and Weucha for Sioux chiefs. The character of Natty, who stood about six feet in his moccasins, drew upon folk traditions of historical pioneers such as Daniel Boone. Natty's friendship with the Delaware chief Chingachgook established him as a mediating figure between the white, advancing settlers, and the threatened culture of the Native Americans. Natty himself was educated by the Delaware Indians, who gave him the name "Hawkeye". The Last of the Mohicans
was originally published by
H.C. Carey & I. Lea of Philadelphia in two volumes. A revised, corrected
edition came out in 1831; this became the standard text. Cooper's great
Rousseaun tale
of a bon sauvage
and the clash between cultures has inspired several films, and many
television programs have utilized its plot elements. The feature-length
silent version of 1920 focused on the love triangle between Uncas
(Albert Rosco), Cora (Barbara Redford), and Magua (Wallace Berry). In Michael Mann's version (1992) Cora is no longer of mixed race, and the interracial relationship between Uncas and Alice is left undeveloped. Uncas and Chingachgook are played for the first time by native American actors, Eric Schweig and Russell Means. "Overall, the confrontation of racial adversaries is still resolved through violence instead of romantic coupling (i.e., Uncas and Cora; or Uncas and Alice; or Hawkeye and a mixed-race Cora), which keeps the centuries-old doctrine of racial purity intact. The next version of The Last of the Mohican will undoubtedly rewrite the racial politics of the story in a way consistent with future needs and sensibilities." (The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film by John C. Tibbets and James M. Welsh, Checkmark Books, Second Edition, 2005, p. 236) In the beginning of the 1820s Cooper lived in New York City
and
participated in its intellectual life and politics. He wrote a series
of sea adventures, starting from The
Pilot (1824), a genuine American sea tale about the exploits of
John Paul Jones. It was followed by The
Red Rover (1827), The
Wing-and-Wing (1842), The
Two Admirals (1842), Afloat
and Ashore (1844), and
The Sea Lions (1849). The Monikins
(1835), a social satire in the tradition of Gulliver's Travels, featured quadrupeds or caudaejactans ("tail-wavers"), who wear no clothing
except on official occasions. The Monikins believe that their tail is
the most infallible sign of the triumph of mind over matter – they are
in the top of the evolution; human being are in a middle state between
a sponge and a monkey. This lost race lives in an archipelago, named
the Leap Islands, near Antarctica. At the end the narrator concludes
that "men have more of the habits, propensities, dispositions,
cravings, antics, gratitude, flapjacks, and honesty of monikins, than
is generally known." (The Monikins, New York: D. Appleton, 1873, p. 449) From 1826 to 1833 Cooper lived in Europe, where he published romances and unsuccessful books about democracy, politics, and society. He served as the US consul at Lyons and travelled a great deal. During this period he became friends with Sir Walter Scott and Marquis de Lafayette, who partly inspired his essay Notions of America (1828). While in Italy he lived in Tasso's villa at Sorrento. Literary meetings in London annoyed him and the Thames river did not impress him at all, it was "a stream of trivial expanse." (The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Literature by Laurie E. Rozakis, 1999, p. 49) Later the British writer D.H. Lawrence called Cooper "a GENTLEMAN, in the worst sense. In the Nineteenth Century sense of the word. A correct, clock-work man." (Studies In Classic American Literature by D.H. Lawrence, London: Martin Secker, 1920, p. 50) During the last decades of his life Cooper was earning less from his books. He was forced to go on writing for income. In 1833 he returned to the United States, but he refused to attend a dinner planned in his honor. Cooper first lived in New York City and then in Cooperstown, where he restored the ruinous old Cooper mansion. Feeling ill-treated by journalists, he fought the press with libel suits, winning most of his cases. However, with his biting opinions he also lost friends. Cooper was especially vulnerable to such criticism as presented by Mark Twain in his essay 'Fenimore Cooper's
Literary Offences' (1895). Twain said that Deerslayer
is not a work of art:
"It
has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has
no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its
characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove
that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are;
its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are—oh!
indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against
the language." (How to Tell a Story: And Other Essays by Mark Twain, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1897, pp. 115-116) Satanstoe (1845), a historical novel of manners (the central character is Cornelius Littlepage), The Chainbearer (1845), in which the story goes on with Mordaunt Littlepage, Corny's son, and The Redkins (1846), narrated by Hugh Littlepage, form the trilogy called The Littlepage Manuscripts. These well-researched novels deal with the anti-rent controversy and its historical background. Cooper defended in the work the landlords' rights – the tenants of the New York had refused to pay rent. "Were there no other objection to this anti-rent movement than its corrupting infliuence, that alone should set every wise man in the community firmly against it." ('Preface', in The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin by J. Fenimore Cooper, New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1857, p. xii) Herman Melville showed sympathy toward the tenant farmers in Pierre; or, the Ambiguities (1852). James Fenimore Cooper died at Otsego Hall, on September 14, 1851. He was buried in the cemetery of Cooperstown. His wife followed him four months later. The Leatherstocking Tales are a series of novels set in
the early frontier period of American history. The Deerslayer
depicts Natty Bumppo's experiences as a young man. The events take
place in the 1740s in the upstate New York, where Deerslayer is joined
by his Mohican friend, Chingachgook, to rescue two frontiersmen. The
Last of the Mohicans in set in the 1757 during the Seven Years' War
between the French and the British. Hawkeye / Bumppo and his friends
Chingachgook and Uncas with a group of English civilians are betrayed
by their Indian guide Magua. Hawkeye revenges the death of his friend
Uncas and an English lady, Cora, and kills Magua. The Pathfinder tells a story of betrayal and love. Jasper
Western, a sailor is suspected of being disloyal to the English, is
arrested to the despair of Mabel, who is in love with him. The real
traitor is Muir, the lieutenant who had accused Jasper. He is killed by
Arrowhead, a Tuscarora Indian. The Pioneers takes place in 1793 in
Otsego County, in the recently settled region of New York state. Natty
Bumppo, now known as Leatherstocking, and his friend Oliver Edwards
befriend Judge Temple and his daughter Elisabeth. Chingachgook dies in
a forest fire in spite of Bumppo's efforts to save him. Oliver Edward's
lost grandfather is found and Oliver and Elisabeth are betrothed at the
end. In The Prairie, set in 1804, Natty Bumppo meets a wagon
train and helps it to evade an Indian raiding party. The travellers
endure a prairie fire, a buffalo stampede, and capture by the Sioux. In
the end of the tale Bumppo peacefully dies on the prairie, surrounded
by his friends. "A valiant, a just, and a wise warrior, has gone on the
path which will lead him to the blessed grounds of his people!" he
said. "When the voice of the Wahcondah called him, he was ready to
answer. Go, my children; remember the just chief of the pale-faces, and
clear your own tracks from briers!" (Ibid., Carey, Lea, & Carey, 1827, p. 460) For further reading: Studies in Classic American Literature (1923, includes D.H. Lawrence's two influential essays); Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth by Henry Nash Smith (1950); Frontier: American Literature and the American West by Edwin Fussell (1965); Cooper's Americans by Kay Seymour House (1965); Political Justice in a Republic: James Fenimoore Cooper's America by John P. McWilliams (1972); A World By Itself by H. Daniel Peck (1977); Plotting America's Past by William P. Kelly (1983); Early Cooper and His Audience by J.D. Wallace (1986); James Fenimoore Cooper by Donald A. Ringe (1988); Cooper's Leather-stocking Novels by Geoffrey Rans (1991); James Fenimore Cooper by Alan Frank Dyer (1991); New Essays on "The Last of the Mohicans", ed. by H. Daniel Peck (1992); The Lasting of the Mohicans by Martin Barker and Roger Sabin (1996) James Fenimore Cooper's Landscapes by Nalle Valtiala (1998); James Fenimore Cooper by William B. Clymer (2000); James Fenimore Cooper versus the Cult of Domesticity: Progressive Themes of Feminity and Family in the Novels by Signe O. Wegener (2005); James Fenimore Cooper: the Early Years by Wayne Franklin (2007); The Representation of the Savage in James Fenimore Cooper and Herman Melville by Anna Krauthammer (2008); The Cooper Connection: the Influence of Jane Austen on James Fenimore Cooper by Barbara Alice Mann (2014); James Fenimore Cooper: a Life by Nick Louras (2016); James Fenimore Cooper: the Later Years by Wayne Franklin (2017); James Fenimore Cooper: A Companion by Signe O. Wegener (2023); Writing the Wild Frontier: 200 Years of the Best Western Writers and Their Novels by Stephen J. May (2023). See also: Owen Wister, Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Karl May Selected works:
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