Romanticism to Realism: The Literary Shift from Antebellum to Postbellum America by Will Griffin The American Civil War is touted as one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world. While much of the focus is directed towards the moral implications and political outcomes, the Civil War impacted all facets of American life, including literature. Prior to the Civil War, American Romanticism had been rampant throughout the 1850’s, with authors like Henry Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne forever canonizing this optimistic style. However, postbellum America saw a stark shift in literary styles, towards a more realist, somewhat cynical tone, which can be found in the works of Mark Twain. This shift can be largely attributed to the atrocities of the Civil War, and the impact it had on the entirety of American society. To further examine this polarizing shift, this essay will explore the works of Hawthorne and Twain, specifically The Scarlet Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, respectively. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the United States had finally begun to find its niche in literature, beginning in the early 1800’s with the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Walt Whitman as the faces of the American transcendentalist movement. This style of literature reflected the prosperity of America at the time, with progressive ideals beginning to gather support and expansionism as a national pillar. This transcendentalist style eventually gave way to what Professor Ann Woodlief calls “the first maturing of American letters”, or American Romanticism. After garnering popularity in Britain, Romantic literature was adopted by a group of authors in the United States and took on a form of its own. It was an incredibly optimistic, individualistic movement, and peaked in the US in the 1850’s. Although there is not an official document that sets the parameters for what qualifies literature as Romantic, Professor Donna Campbell of Washington State University established the following eleven tenets that all-American Romantic authors more or less abided by: 1. Belief in natural goodness of man, that man in a state of nature would behave well but is hindered by civilization. The figure of the “Noble Savage” is an outgrowth of this idea. 2. Sincerity, spontaneity, and faith in emotion as markers of truth. (Doctrine of sensibility) 3. Belief that what is special in a man is to be valued over what is representative; delight in selfanalysis. 4. Nature as a source of instruction, delight, and nourishment for the soul; return to nature as a source of inspiration and wisdom; celebration of man’s connection with nature; life in nature often contrasted with the unnatural constraints of society. 5. Affirmation of the values of democracy and the freedom of the individual. 6. High value placed on finding connection with fresh, spontaneous in nature and self. 7. Aspiration after the sublime and the wonderful, that which transcends mundane limits. 8. In art, the sublime, the grotesque, the picturesque, and the beautiful with a touch of strangeness all were valued above the Neoclassical principles of order, proportion, and decorum. 9. Interest in the “antique”: medieval tales and forms, ballads, Norse and Celtic mythology; the Gothic. 10. Belief in perfectibility of man; spiritual force immanent not only in nature but in mind of man. 11. Belief in organicism rather than Neoclassical rules; development of a unique form in each work. Although these tenets were published posthumously in regard to the death of the movement, the adherence to some, if not all, of these rules can be found in just about every single poem or novel written in the name of Romanticism. One text that exemplifies these tenets particularly well is The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the marquee figures of American Romanticism, and The Scarlet Letter is widely considered as his masterwork. It is a fusion of romance, revenge, and secrecy that few authors have even come close to rivaling, and is one of the two texts being studied in this paper. Hawthorne’s exaltation of nature throughout The Scarlet Letter show its connection with the human soul, and how nature is often a source of inspiration. It is only takes a couple of pages into the first chapter to see how highly nature was regarded during the Romantic movement, with the quote: “On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.” (Hawthorne 3). This quote occurs as the story’s protagonist, Hester Prynne, walks out of prison with her freshly acquired Scarlet letter “A” signifying her crime of adultery. However, despite Hester’s harrowing circumstances, Hawthorne’s incorporation of nature provides the reader with a sense of hope and optimism that is typical of the Romantic movement. The reverent diction used to describe the rose-bush casts in a beautiful light, with words like “delicate gems”, “…their fragrance and fragile beauty” juxtaposing the beauty of the rosebush with the gloom of the prison. The use of nature is prevalent throughout the novel, and Hawthorne uses it in different ways, sometimes more subtly than the aforementioned quote. For example, when Hester and her daughter Pearl meet in secrecy with Arthur Dimmesdale in the forest, Hawthorne describes the setting as: “The day was chill and somber. Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen a its solitary play along the path.” (Hawthorne 159) In this instance, there is an intra-juxtaposition of nature, with the first two sentences describing a rather depressing setting, perhaps indicating the somber nature of the meeting, and then with the insertion of a semicolon Hawthorne mentions a breeze and a ray of sunshine in the last line. This subtle shift is accomplished through tentative diction, with the breeze and the sunshine being described as “slightly stirred” and “flickering…might now and then be seen…”, respectively. The singular ray of sunshine piercing the otherwise dark setting establishes a sense of hope for Hester and Pearl, once again showing Hawthorne’s reverence of nature. This reoccurring exaltation of nature throughout The Scarlet Letter shows not only Hawthorne’s partiality for the natural world but also the entire Romantic movement’s feelings towards it. Relating to The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne’s use of nature shows how it provides hope even in the darkest of times. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written in postbellum America, takes a much different approach to both the Romantic and Realist movements. Twain, in all of his brilliance, satirizes Romanticism through the character of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn’s companion throughout the novel (Christ). This satirical approach shows the mood in postbellum America towards the Romantic movement, which died alongside the 620,000 men in the Civil War (Civil). In Huck Finn, Tom’s appreciation of romantic novels like The Count of Monte Cristo, and his decisions that are influenced by these novels, are Twain’s way of showing the irrationality of Romanticism, hence the failure of most of these plans. The failure of the Romantic style of thought in Tom’s world is indicative of the failure of the Romantic style of thought in postbellum America. No longer did people appreciate the idealistic parts of life, like nature and self-fulfillment. The war hardened America, and people were much less optimistic, seeing things for how they actually were in a rational, impartial manner.
