In War as in Love: The Significance of Analogous Plots in Cooper’s The Pathfinder

Abstract

IN W AR AS IN L O V E : T H E S I G N I F I C A N C E OF A N A L O G O U S P L O T S IN C O O P E R ’ S T H E P A T H F I N D E R WILLIAM OWEN Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (Critical interpretations of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pathfinder have been preoccupied with the unusual spectacle of Natty Bumppo in love, the solitary frontiersman incongruously the central male figure in a romantic plot.1 The usual reaction of critics, faced with Natty’s strange behaviour, has been to step back and consider the novel in enlarged contexts. Robert Zoellner, for instance, after pointing out that The Pathfinder marks Cooper’s return to the character after thirteen years, argues that Natty’s role reflects the struggle between Cooper’s new social values and the primi­ tivistic values Natty represented in the earlier Leatherstocking tales.2 Look­ ing at novels in Cooper’s canon closer to the publication date of The Path­ finder, Donald A. Ringe contends that the romantic plot involving Natty is a continuation of the discussion of social values expressed in Home As Found, the novel published immediately prior to The Pathfinder.3 In a psychoanalytical view, George Dekker theorizes that Natty’s experience and the moral derived from it, truth to vocation, are related to Cooper’s psycho­ logical turmoil at the time.4 These responses provide valuable perspectives, but because the views address only the issues of the romantic plot the critical focus on the novel is narrowed and fixed there. This is a common bias, how­ ever. The same focus is held by a critic who interprets Natty’s actions within the confines of the novel: Daniel Peck, stressing the Edenic pastoral setting, accepts Natty as an Arcadian lover.5 What is lacking in these interpretations is a consideration of the total narrative structure of the novel. Instead of being confined to Natty and the romantic plot, critical attention needs to be extended to another plot, the military one, and its central character, Lieutenant Muir. The intricate connections between the two plots provide a context in which Natty’s actions may be understood. More important, the contributions of the military plot and Lieutenant Muir to the meaning of the novel are significant and deserve critical recognition. The military plot concerns an expedition to relieve an outpost in the Thousand Islands during the Seven Years War or the French and Indian Wars as they are known in the United States. Initially regarded by the English Studies in C anada, x, 3, September 1984 characters as a pleasant excursion, the expedition erupts into a bloody battle between the British colonial forces and Indians led by a French officer. The enemy, it is disclosed, has been aided by a traitor, Lieutenant Muir, a quar­ termaster present on the trip. Though the plot has been overlooked, it is far from being a negligible part of the novel. It serves the narrative by moving the characters, contributing the climactic scenes and, not least, allowing Natty to regain respect by displaying his frontier skills. Moreover, the mili­ tary plot not only adds the action and adventure of colonial warfare, it advances a theme that obsessed Cooper in the last decade of his life. A close examination of Muir’s actions in the military plot reveals that The Path­ finder contains Cooper’s grave warning to his contemporaries about internal subversion, that enemies within may work dangerously and successfully. The reason for the critical neglect may lie in the difficulty in distinguish­ ing between the military and romantic plots, for they have an unusual and intricate relationship. The romantic plot dealing with Natty in love domi­ nates, or appears to dominate, the novel, allowing the beginning of the mili­ tary plot featuring Muir’s treachery to go unnoticed. This effect is aided by the use of the same major characters — Mabel, Muir, Pathfinder, Jasper, and Dunham — in both plots, so that there appears at first to be only one plot. As the narrative proceeds, however, the features of...