America in Ruins: Cooper, Child, and the Problem of the National House

This essay examines the ways in which American authors writing what were some of the first “American” novels included images of buildings being razed, pulled down, and otherwise demolished. Specifically, I argue that the houses at the heart of two early revolutionary romances--James Fenimore Cooper’s wildly popular The Spy, a Tale of the Neutral Ground (1821) and Lydia Maria Child’s highly anticipated second novel, The Rebels; or, Boston before the Revolution (1825)--function as examples of European architecture and architectural-imaginary practices. These authors are responding to a desire for a unique American architectural archive that would, as Thomas Jefferson hoped, relfect the new nation’s history and identity. Yet, the design of these houses and their material afterlives frustrate a neat narrative of architectural-national progression. Though these houses closely resemble their European cousins (English country houses and Enlightenment temples) their destruction does not signal a hopeful moment of (re)constructing American national Identity. Rather, the destruction of these homes registers a moment of deep pathos and trauma in both novels and in the wake of their destruction, no architectural alternative appears to record the nation’s history.