MODERNISM I: EVOLUTION
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Italo Svevo and Ernest
Hemingway
OUTLINE OF THE LECTURE

What is modernism?

How modernist are our three stories?

Gilman and early modernism (1892)

Svevo and ‘high’ modernism (1923-28)

Hemingway – modernist or realist? (1925)
MODERNISM: LITERARY FEATURES
 New
forms of narration, like stream of
consciousness.
 Rejection of conventional word order,
sentence structure, subject matter and
narrative coherence.
 Fragmented narratives with different
narrators or points of view.
 Unreliable narrators rather than
omniscient third person narrators.
MODERNISM –
DEVELOPMENT
TIMELINE
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
1867
Karl Marx, Das Kapital (vol.1)
1882
Friedrich Nietzsche, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft
1886
Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse
1890
James Fraser, The Golden Bough
1899
Sigmund Freud, Die Traumdeutung
1904-1905
Russo-Japanese War
1914-1918
World War I
1936
Outbreak of Spanish Civil War
1939
Outbreak of WWII
Copyright R. SIbley, University of
Warwick 2013
1859
Aerial photographs of Passchendale, before and after bombardment (1917)
Australian gunners on a duckboard track in Château Wood near Hooge,
29 October 1917. Photo by Frank Hurley
Hannah Höch,
Cut with the Dada
Kitchen Knife
through the Last
Weimar Beer-Belly
Cultural Epoch in
Germany, 1919
Salvador Dali,
Soft
Construction
with Boiled
Beans
(Premonition of
Civil War)
(1936)
MODERNISM: THEMES AND
INTERESTS
 The
breakdown of social orders and
traditions
 The isolation of the individual
 The impossibility of genuine
communication
 Metropolitan life as an example of the
sterility and chaos of the modern world
 The questioning of religious or spiritual
beliefs - the absence of any higher
authority
 The privileging of the individual over
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
1912
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
1915
1916
D.H. Lawrence, The Rainbow
1922
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man
James Joyce, Ulysses
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
Ezra Pound The Cantos
1923
Italo Svevo, ‘Il mio ozio’
1925
Ernest Hemingway, ‘Cat in the Rain’
1927
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
1938
John Dos Passos, U.S.A
1939
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Copyright R. SIbley, University of
Warwick 2013
MODERNISM –
LITERATURE TIMELINE
1892
1899
Italo Svevo (18611938)
Charlotte Perkins
Gilman (1860-1935)
Ernest Hemingway
(1899-1961)
THREE MODERNIST AUTHORS?
How well do Gilman, Svevo and
Hemingway
fit into modernist criteria?
Can assess this through their handling of
three key themes:



The breakdown of social order
The isolation of the individual
Structural experimentation
‘THE YELLOW WALLPAPER’ (1892)
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight.
Just
this nervous weakness I suppose.
And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just
carried
me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and
read
to me till it tired my head.
[...]
I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept
me
here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby,
you
see.
Of course I never mention it to them any more – I am
SVEVO, ‘IL MIO OZIO’ (1923)
Restò ancora per qualche istante con me e
lo
impiegò per informarsi della mia salute. Gli
dissi ch’ero arrivato una volta a 240
millimetri
di pressione ciò che gli piacque molto perché
egli non aveva raggiunto che i 220. Con un
piede sullo scalino che conduce al Tergesteo
mi fece un saluto amichevole e mi disse:
«Acqua in bocca, mi raccomanado».
‘CAT IN THE RAIN’ (1925)
She laid the mirror down on the dresser and went over
to
the window and looked out. It was getting dark.
‘I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and
make a
big knot at the back that I can feel,’ she said. ‘I want to
have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke
her.’
‘Yeah?’ George said from the bed.
‘And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I
want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to
brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty
and
CONCLUSIONS



Modernism generates very variable literary
output but always trying to unsettle the reader.
Nothing feels sure or secure in these stories –
feels as though these characters and their
societies are shifting.
Modernist literature is far more experimental
than previous forms of writing – challenging the
reader’s expectations.