Shannon Costello

While James Fenimore Cooper wrote for a living, he is counted among literary greats at least partially because his texts go beyond story-telling to the development of larger themes. CJ accurately points out a danger of reading introductions. I am reading Cooper from an edition that was apparently written before introductions existed, and so I had no idea of the book’s themes before I began, which I regret.

Cooper spent a relatively long vacation in Switzerland, where this book is set. I can picture him writing descriptions of the scenery and seeking out buried details of local history to tie into what he already knows about the history of that part of the world. His story is set in the early 18th century in Berne, a canton of Switzerland.

The law of the land at that time allowed the state to confer the dubious honor of official executioner on a man and his descendants. Of course the American, democracy-loving Cooper had a great deal to say about such a law, and so his novel deals with the struggles of a headsman whose family line is trapped permanently in a job he abhors.

In a lot of ways this is also a novel about prejudice. Ordinary men cannot stand to be around the executioner. When his identity is discovered by his fellow passengers on a boat, an attempt is made to drown him. The marriage hopes of his relatively wealthy and beautiful daughter are dashed once her father’s work becomes widely known. The ex-bridegroom had not been in love with the bride, but even his mild preference was sweet to a woman who was continually shunned. Catholic-Protestant tensions are prominent in the character’s conversations with each other, though they do not impact the plot. (Cooper blithely allows a Catholic-Protestant marriage.)

I sometimes wish Cooper had, like Dickens, published his novels serially. Instead of always wanting more I often found myself wanting less description. There were some minor issues with plausibility both in plot and in dialogue. Why did the headsman appear publicly as Christine’s father when he had promised never to reveal the truth of her parentage and was aware that some in the audience would know his identity? What rational human being, knowing that death by hypothermia was imminent if he and his companions do not reach their destination before the mountain snowstorm worsens, calls out, “quicken the beasts…if you value your lives! This is no moment to gaze at the mountains, which are well enough in their way, and no doubt both the finest and largest known.”