Abstract
Harriet Prescott Spofford’s 1860 tale, “Circumstance” demonstrates the uncanny power of regionalist fiction. Set before the U.S. Revolution, in the “eastern wilds of Maine” “Circumstance” has often been misread as a variation on the classic American-Gothic captivity narrative, in which a white, Christian heroine finds spiritual victory in her encounter with a monstrous, dark Other. But the Maine wilds of “Circumstance” are not mere synechdoche for the fledgling nation; indeed, the story complicates nationalizing interpretations when we focus attention on Spofford’s treatment of locally specific anxieties. The tale’s Loyalist-Methodist protagonist and its frontier setting are uncanny, seemingly representative of American character, yet also peculiar, different, and irreconcilable with the nation’s myth of origins.