Fachbereich Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Sommersemester 2010
History of American Literature
Prof. Dr. Ralph J. Poole
Common Vision – Local Experience
Realism, Naturalism, Regionalism
Short Story and Novel:
• Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain). "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County", "A True Story" (1874), "How to Tell a Story" (1897), "The Man
Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" (1900), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
• Henry James, Washington Square (1880), "Daisy Miller" (1878)
• William Dean Howells. The Rise of Silas Lapham (1884)
• Sarah Orne Jewett. "A White Heron" (1886)
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman. "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892)
• Stephen Crane. The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
• Kate Chopin. The Awakening (1899); "Désirée's Baby“
• Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie (1900)
• Jack London. The Sea Wolf (1904)
• Gertrude Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa) (Sioux).The School Days of an Indian Girl (1900) (chs.
1,2,3,6,7), "Why I am a Pagan" (1902)
• Susan Glaspell."A Jury of Her Peers" (1917)
• Edith Wharton. “Roman Fever" (1936)
Continental Nation
1865-1900
post-Civil War:
– distinct regions transformed into one nation
– dominated by Northern business and finance
– growth of cities (New York 3 mio., second largest
city in world)
– cities dominated American life
– rapid growth of railroads
– realist and naturalist literary modes reflect
materialist society
Regions and Localities
post-Civil War:
– intensified awareness of regional differences (e.g.
Reconstruction in South until 1877: federal troops
implemented abolishment of slavery)
– reflected by regional writers and local colorists
– regionalism and local color instances of literary
realism
• set in contemporary time
• speech (often dialect) of common people
• action plausibly motivated
Regionalism and Local Color
major writers:
– New England: Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins
Freeman
– South: Charles W. Chesnutt, Kate Chopin
– Midwest: Hamlin Garland
– far West: Bret Harte
– crossover: Mark Twain (realist, humorist, South,
West); Stephen Crane (naturalist, West, Southwest)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens a.k.a.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Fictionalized
autobiography:
• before Civil War: pilot
of Mississippi
steamboat  Life on
the Mississippi (1883)
• 1860s: went west
finding literary gold on
the mining frontiers of
Nevada and California
 Roughing It (1872)
“the most American writer”
• spirit of time
• human condition: humor
and pathos
• pleasures of rural childhood
• growing up as loss of
morality
• respectful attitude towards
women (chivalry)
• belief in democracy and
moral integrity
• critique of hypocrisy
• impotence of religion
• injustice of slavery
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simple narrative structure
chronological order
no multiple story lines
fictionalized reminiscences
interruptions: anecdotes
colloquial style: oral
tradition
• regional dialect: American
vernacular
Tall Tale
• oral (folk) tradition of
frontier (Old West)
• narrative of exaggerated
and impossible feats
• with unbelievable
elements, related as if it
were true and factual
• exaggeration primary for
comic purposes
• origins in the bragging
contests of frontier
• “The Notorious Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County” (1865)
– story of stranger
– California mining camp
– story (boring) within story
(funny)
– story about seemingly
innocent stranger who cheats
a famous frog racer and beats
him
– Western humor: hoax
(ordinary or weak people
trick experts or strong)
– tenderfoot/greenhorn
(inexperienced foreigner
being butt of joke)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1885)
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sequel of Tom Sawyer (1876): from pastoral
to satire
classic of regionalism
Huck (escaping abusive father) and Jim
(escaping slavery) on Mississippi southwards
picaresque pair (quest, moral development)
attachment between boy and slave
overcomes Southern mentality
‘mythic’ Huck: embodiment of American
hero (innocent, ingenious, individuality,
desire for freedom, moral integrity)
‘mythic’ river: the American river, South,
quest for freedom/morality
vernacular for serious (not comic) purposes
critical readings:
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unsuitable for children (language, violence,
immorality)
perpetuation of racial stereotypes and racist
language
misogyny (narrow representation of women
as domesticating and oppressive)
New England Local Color
Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909)
• one of the leaders of local color
school of realism
• showing specialties of particular
region
• ordinary people living in ordinary
little New England towns
• speech and details provide strong
feeling for New England as place
• The Country of Pointed Firs (1896)
– set in town on coast of Maine
– realism deepened with symbolism
– Mrs. Todd as interpreter of
nature’s secrets (herbal medicine)
“A White Heron” (1896): heron as symbol of freedom and beauty
"Do you cage 'em up?" asked Mrs. Tilley doubtfully, in
response to this enthusiastic announcement.
"Oh, no, they're stuffed and preserved, dozens and dozens of
them," said the ornithologist, "and I have shot or snared
every one myself. I caught a glimpse of a white heron three
miles from here on Saturday, and I have followed it in this
direction. They have never been found in this district at all.
The little white heron, it is," and he turned again to look at
Sylvia with the hope of discovering that the rare bird was one
of her acquaintances.
"You would know the heron if you saw it," the stranger
continued eagerly. "A queer tall white bird with soft feathers
and long thin legs. And it would have a nest perhaps in the
top of a high tree, made of sticks, something like a hawk's
nest."
Sylvia's heart gave a wild beat; she knew that strange white
bird, and had once stolen softly near where it stood in some
bright green swamp grass, away over at the other side of the
woods. There was an open place where the sunshine always
seemed strangely yellow and hot, where tall, nodding rushes
grew, and her grandmother had warned her that she might
sink in the soft black mud underneath and never be heard of
more. Not far beyond were the salt marshes and beyond
those was the sea, the sea which Sylvia wondered and
dreamed about, but never had looked upon, though its great
voice could often be heard above the noise of the woods on
stormy nights.
Jewett, “A White Heron” (excerpt)
But Sylvia does not speak after all, though the old grandmother fretfully rebukes her, and the
young man's kind appealing eyes are looking straight in her own. He can make them rich with
money; he has promised it, and they are poor now. He is so well worth making happy, and he
waits to hear the story she can tell.
No, she must keep silence! What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has
she been nine years growing, and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a
hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird's sake? The murmur of the pine's green
branches is in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden
air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she
cannot tell the heron's secret and give its life away.
Dear loyalty, that suffered a sharp pang as the guest went away disappointed later in the
day, that could have served and followed him and loved him as a dog loves! Many a night
Sylvia heard the echo of his whistle haunting the pasture path as she came home with the
loitering cow. She forgot even her sorrow at the sharp report of his gun and the piteous sight
of thrushes and sparrows dropping silent to the ground, their songs hushed and their pretty
feathers stained and wet with blood. Were the birds better friends than their hunter might
have been,-- who can tell? Whatever treasures were lost to her, woodlands and summertime, remember! Bring your gifts and graces and tell your secrets to this lonely country child!
Realism
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dominated American prose fiction from 1865
to 1920
indebted to Balzac and Flaubert (France),
and George Eliot (England)
departs from sentimentality and idealization
of life (Romantic novel)
desire to represent life in fiction with
sincerity and honesty
surface appearance presented in
unembellished way
story set in here-and-now
characters of average social position
speech and manners accurately reproduced
rather optimistic outlook on ethical
problems
pragmatic solutions of problems without
improbable interventions
• major authors
– William Dean Howells
(first theorist)
– Henry James (“father of
psychological novel”)
– Edith Wharton (novel of
manners)
– [Mark Twain]
William Dean Howells (1837-1920)
• created first theory for
American realism
• realism became mainstream
• editor of Harper’s Monthly in
New York: journal as weapon
against romanticism
A Modern Instance (1882):
– shocked public
– divorce subject not talked and
written about
– complex, but unromantic
characters
– society takes blame for
characters’ troubles
Howells’s Realism
• writing about essential
goodness of provincial or
urban America
• novels’ concern with “the
more smiling aspects of life,
which are the more American”
• consequences of innocence
unknowingly violating social
taboos
• commercial integrity in
conflict with fraud and greed
• decay of morals in modern life
• struggle between classes
• need for a democratically
mandates social revolution
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his novels built as succession of
dramatic episodes
characters shaped by what they say and
do rather than by revelation of their
consciousness
well-shaped novels avoid lurid and
violent
actions well motivated and reactions to
ethical problem
speech and manner reflect middle class
life
fiction should find material in the
commonplace, average, everyday
events of American middle-class life
characters should act psychologically
motivated
plot without accidents or coincidences
avoidance of societal extremes and
indecendies
The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885)
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an ordinary, uneducated man
becomes rich in paint business
overcommitment and competition
tempt him take unethical though
legal advantage in a business deal
unsuccessful attempt to join Boston’s
high society
in the end, his business is ruined
because he refuses to chat other
people
but fall of fortunes comes with rise in
morality
retirement through honest
transactions and with modest
comfort to his native Vermont farm
Howells’s theory exemplified:
Romantic novels “make one forget life
and all its cares and duties.”
Novels “should make you think … and
shame you into wishing to be a more
helpful creature than you are.”
The good realist should be interested in
“the common feelings of
commonplace people.”
Realism: “the truthful treatment of
materials […] true to the motive, the
impulses, the principles that shape
the lives of actual men and women.”
(excerpt)
At one time the talk ran off upon a subject that Lapham had never heard talked of before […]
Miss Kingsbury leaned forward and asked Charles Bellingham if he had read Tears, Idle Tears, the novel
that was making such a sensation; and when he said no, she said she wondered at him. "It's perfectly
heart-breaking, as you'll imagine from the name; but there's such a dear old-fashioned hero and heroine
in it, who keep dying for each other all the way through, and making the most wildly satisfactory and
unnecessary sacrifices for each other. You feel as if you'd done them yourself.
"Ah, that's the secret of its success," said Bromfield Corey. "It flatters the reader by painting the
characters colossal, but with his limp and stoop, so that he feels himself of their supernatural proportions.
You've read it, Nanny.
"Yes," said his daughter. "It ought to have been called Slop, Silly Slop.
"Oh, not quite SLOP, Nanny," pleaded Miss Kingsbury.
"It's astonishing," said Charles Bellingham, "how we do like the books that go for our heart-strings. And I
really suppose that you can't put a more popular thing than self-sacrifice into a novel. We do like to see
people suffering sublimely.
"There was talk some years ago," said James Bellingham, "about novels going out." "They're just coming
in!" cried Miss Kingsbury.
"Yes," said Mr. Sewell, the minister. "And I don't think there ever was a time when they formed the whole
intellectual experience of more people. They do greater mischief than ever.
"Don't be envious, parson," said the host.
"No," answered Sewell. "I should be glad of their help. But those novels with old-fashioned heroes and
heroines in them--excuse me, Miss Kingsbury--are ruinous!" "Don't you feel like a moral wreck, Miss
Kingsbury?" asked the host.
But Sewell went on: "The novelists might be the greatest possible help to us if they painted life as it is,
and human feelings in their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are
altogether noxious.
This seemed sense to Lapham […]
Henry James (1843-1916)
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novel reaches new level of maturity
and refinement
native New Yorker, wealthy family
father and brother William
philosophers, sister Alice diarist
interest/influence French realist
fiction
acquainted with Turgenev, Flaubert,
Zola, Maupassant, Conrad, Crane,
Wells, Wharton
from 1876-1916 in England, became
British subject in 1915
majority of novels set in Europe
strong influence on Joseph Conrad,
Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway,
William Faulkner
James: Periods of Writing
stylistic periods:
1. early
Roderick Hudson (1876) (failed artist in Italy)
The American (1877) (failed love of American
Christopher Newman with European)
The Europeans (1878, Europeans in America)
Daisy Miller (1879, American in Europe)
2. middle
Washington Square (1880, American setting)
The Portrait of a Lady (1879)
The Bostonians (1886, American setting)
What Maisie Knew (1897)
The Awkward Age (1898)
3. mature
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
 masterpieces of psychological realism
“Daisy Miller” (1879)
• young American beauty from
rich but ignorant family
• traveling Europe with vulgar,
stupid, but well-intentioned
mother
• innocent of misconduct
• American independence and
self-reliance clash with social
conventions of an American
enclave in Rome
• her love unrequited by
Europeanized American
Winterbourne
• pathetic death from malaria
“Daisy Miller”
The young lady inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons
again; and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the
beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had
begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed
herself. There had not been the slightest alteration in her charming
complexion; she was evidently neither offended nor flattered. If
she looked another way when he spoke to her, and seemed not
particularly to hear him, this was simply her habit, her manner. Yet,
as he talked a little more and pointed out some of the objects of
interest in the view, with which she appeared quite unacquainted,
she gradually gave him more of the benefit of her glance; and then
he saw that this glance was perfectly direct and unshrinking. It was
not, however, what would have been called an immodest glance,
for the young girl's eyes were singularly honest and fresh.
They were wonderfully pretty eyes; and, indeed, Winterbourne had not
seen for a long time anything prettier than his fair countrywoman's
various features--her complexion, her nose, her ears, her teeth. He had a
great relish for feminine beauty; he was addicted to observing and
analyzing it; and as regards this young lady's face he made several
observations. It was not at all insipid, but it was not exactly expressive;
and though it was eminently delicate, Winterbourne mentally accused it-very forgivingly--of a want of finish. He thought it very possible that
Master Randolph's sister was a coquette; he was sure she had a spirit of
her own; but in her bright, sweet, superficial little visage there was no
mockery, no irony. Before long it became obvious that she was much
disposed toward conversation. She told him that they were going to Rome
for the winter--she and her mother and Randolph. She asked him if he was
a "real American"; she shouldn't have taken him for one; he seemed more
like a German--this was said after a little hesitation-- especially when he
spoke. Winterbourne, laughing, answered that he had met Germans who
spoke like Americans, but that he had not, so far as he remembered, met
an American who spoke like a German.
[…]
Winterbourne, to do him justice, as it were, mentioned to no one that he had
encountered Miss Miller, at midnight, in the Colosseum with a gentleman; but
nevertheless, a couple of days later, the fact of her having been there under these
circumstances was known to every member of the little American circle, and
commented accordingly. […] These people, a day or two later, had serious
information to give: the little American flirt was alarmingly ill.
[…] A week after this, the poor girl died; it had been a terrible case of the fever.
Daisy's grave was in the little Protestant cemetery, in an angle of the wall of
imperial Rome, beneath the cypresses and the thick spring flowers. Winterbourne
stood there beside it, with a number of other mourners, a number larger than the
scandal excited by the young lady's career would have led you to expect. Near him
stood Giovanelli, who came nearer still before Winterbourne turned away.
Giovanelli was very pale: on this occasion he had no flower in his buttonhole; he
seemed to wish to say something. At last he said, "She was the most beautiful
young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable"; and then he added in a moment,
"and she was the most innocent."
Winterbourne looked at him and presently repeated his words, "And the
most innocent?"
"The most innocent!"
Winterbourne felt sore and angry. "Why the devil," he asked, "did you take
her to that fatal place?"
Mr. Giovanelli's urbanity was apparently imperturbable. He looked on the
ground a moment, and then he said, "For myself I had no fear; and she
wanted to go."
"That was no reason!" Winterbourne declared.
The subtle Roman again dropped his eyes. "If she had lived, I should have got
nothing. She would never have married me, I am sure."
"She would never have married you?"
"For a moment I hoped so. But no. I am sure."
Winterbourne listened to him: he stood staring at the raw protuberance
among the April daisies. When he turned away again, Mr. Giovanelli, with
his light, slow step, had retired.
“It is a complex fate, being an
American” (Henry James)
• three major themes:
1.
2.
3.
international theme
(American innocence,
inexperience, cultural
ignorance confronted by
European moral relativism,
social sophistication, sense
of tradition, knowledge of
rich culture
nature of art (creative
process, artist’s conflict
with social convention, false
values, limited imagination)
individual in search of richer
life (especially of women,
social and emotional
constraints)
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few characters in domestic context
comedy of manners in early novels, but
tragic intensity in some (fractured, frustrated
lives)
ghost stories (“The Turn of the Screw”
(1898))
narratives packed with information,
distinctions, shades of meaning
labyrinthine sentences and paragraphs, long
blocks of narration
strongly architectured narratives
(proportions, balance)
esp. characters of last novels don’t act: they
watch life, things happen to them (story of
how their mind works)
“stream-of-consciousness” literature (term
coined by William James)
realist narration: telling through the
consciousness of single character, not
entering the story directly
Narrator of “Daisy Miller”
I hardly know whether it was the analogies or the differences that were uppermost in the
mind of a young American, who, two or three years ago, sat in the garden of the "Trois
Couronnes," looking about him, rather idly, at some of the graceful objects I have
mentioned. It was a beautiful summer morning, and in whatever fashion the young
American looked at things, they must have seemed to him charming. He had come from
Geneva the day before by the little steamer, to see his aunt, who was staying at the hotel-Geneva having been for a long time his place of residence. But his aunt had a headache-- his
aunt had almost always a headache--and now she was shut up in her room, smelling
camphor, so that he was at liberty to wander about. He was some seven-and-twenty years of
age; when his friends spoke of him, they usually said that he was at Geneva "studying."
When his enemies spoke of him, they said--but, after all, he had no enemies; he was an
extremely amiable fellow, and universally liked. What I should say is, simply, that when
certain persons spoke of him they affirmed that the reason of his spending so much time at
Geneva was that he was extremely devoted to a lady who lived there--a foreign lady--a
person older than himself. Very few Americans--indeed, I think none--had ever seen this
lady, about whom there were some singular stories. But Winterbourne had an old
attachment for the little metropolis of Calvinism; he had been put to school there as a boy,
and he had afterward gone to college there--circumstances which had led to his forming a
great many youthful friendships. Many of these he had kept, and they were a source of great
satisfaction to him.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
• privileged New York background
• writing as an insider about New
York’s elite
• the “female Henry James”
• struggles of the individual within
moral rigid society (hypocrisy)
• sexual passion define
interpersonal relations
• The House of Mirth (1905)
• The Age of Innocence (1920)
• Ethan Frome (1911) (set in rural
New England)
• “Roman Fever” (1936)
“Roman Fever” (excerpt)
Mrs. Ansley had not moved for a long time. But
now she turned slowly toward her
companion. "But I didn't wait. He'd arranged
everything. He was there. We were let in at
once," she said.
Mrs. Slade sprang up from her leaning position.
"Delphin there! They let you in! Ah, now
you're lying!" she burst out with violence.
Mrs. Ansley's voice grew clearer, and full of
surprise. "But of course he was there.
Naturally he came—"
"Came? How did he know he'd find you there?
You must be raving!"
Mrs. Ansley hesitated, as though reflecting. "But I
answered the letter. I told him I'd be there.
So he came."
Mrs. Slade flung her hands up to her face. "Oh,
God—you answered! I never thought of your
answering.... "
"It's odd you never thought of it, if you wrote the
letter."
"Yes. I was blind with rage."
Mrs. Ansley rose, and drew her fur scarf about
her. "It is cold here. We'd better go.... I'm
sorry for you," she said, as she clasped the
fur about her throat.
The unexpected words sent a pang through Mrs.
Slade. "Yes; we'd better go." She gathered up
her bag and cloak. "I don't know why you
should be sorry for me," she muttered.
Mrs. Ansley stood looking away from her toward
the dusky mass of the Colosseum. "Well—
because I didn't have to wait that night."
Mrs. Slade gave an unquiet laugh. "Yes, I was
beaten there. But I oughtn't to begrudge it to
you, I suppose. At the end of all these years.
After all, I had everything; I had him for
twenty-five years. And you had nothing but
that one letter that he didn't write."
Mrs. Ansley was again silent. At length she took a
step toward the door of the terrace, and
turned back, facing her companion.
"I had Barbara," she said, and began to move
ahead of Mrs. Slade toward the stairway.
Naturalism
developed from / intensified realism:
• narratives of the present time,
representations of surface reality
• aims at accurate reproduction of
speech, manners, landscapes
• psychologically valid motivations
• 1890s-1920s
– Stephen Crane
– Frank Norris
– Theodore Dreiser
– Jack London
– [Kate Chopin]
departing from realism:
• drawing upon science, esp. Darwin (Marx)
• drawing on French novels of Emile Zola
• writer diagnoses societal ills: human person
regarded as highly developed animal
• responsive to forces of environment (animal
hungers), aims above all at survival: survival
of the fittest ideology
• human existence is deterministic
• limited by genetic heritage (biology), place of
society born into (sociology), economic
forces (economy)
• no freedom of will anymore, disappearance
of ethics (illusion of ethical choice)
•  ethical problem at the heart of realist
novel eliminated in favor of determined
behavior beyond good/evil judgments
• characters from underclasses of cities, rural
poor, raw nature, primitive and aboriginal
• violence replaces decorum
• sex emerges, pessimism predominates
Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
• short career, also reporter
• definite break of American
fiction from British tradition
• fiction depicts violent living
conditions observed with
pessimistic detachment
(Godless world)
• instinctual understanding of
psychoanalysis and social
psychology before actual
theories
Crane’s Fiction
• effect of fear on behavior as
constant theme
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treatment of war
man’s irrational responses to life
poverty and associated vices
unprovoked cruelty
insignificance of meaningless lives
• objectivity of narration
• accuracy of observation
• swift impressions of violent and
chaotic world (journalistic
writing, “impressionism”)
• linear, sequential narration
• frequent departure from normal
syntax
• irony as trademark
Maggie, A Girl of the Streets (1893)
– argues against Social Darwinism
that moral superiority enhances
survival
– anti-sentimental depiction of
urban slum life and immorality
– strongly anti-illusionist
– Maggie’s hunger for beauty, order,
and love (Pete) lead to ruin
(prostitution) and suicide
(inevitability  irony!)
– Pete’s search for reassurance that
he is “a good feller” destroys him
– critical and popular failure
Maggie
Chapter XVI
Pete did not consider that he had ruined Maggie. If he had
thought that her soul could never smile again, he would have
believed the mother and brother, who were pyrotechnic over the
affair, to be responsible for it.
Besides, in his world, souls did not insist upon being able to smile.
"What deh hell?“ […]
The morning after Maggie had departed from home, Pete stood
behind the bar. He was immaculate in white jacket and apron and
his hair was plastered over his brow with infinite correctness.
No customers were in the place. Pete was twisting his napkined
fist slowly in a beer glass, softly whistling to himself and
occasionally holding the object of his attention between his eyes
and a few weak beams of sunlight that had found their way over
the thick screens and into the shaded room.
With lingering thoughts of the woman of brilliance and
audacity, the bartender raised his head and stared through the
varying cracks between the swaying bamboo doors. Suddenly
the whistling pucker faded from his lips. He saw Maggie walking
slowly past. He gave a great start, fearing for the previouslymentioned eminent respectability of the place.
He threw a swift, nervous glance about him, all at once
feeling guilty. No one was in the room.
He went hastily over to the side door. Opening it and looking
out, he perceived Maggie standing, as if undecided, on the corner.
She was searching the place with her eyes.
As she turned her face toward him Pete beckoned to her
hurriedly, intent upon returning with speed to a position behind
the bar and to the atmosphere of respectability upon which the
proprietor insisted.
Maggie came to him, the anxious look disappearing from her
face and a smile wreathing her lips.
"Oh, Pete--," she began brightly.
The bartender made a violent gesture of impatience.
"Oh, my Gawd," cried he, vehemently. "What deh hell do yeh
wanna hang aroun' here fer? Do yeh wanna git me inteh trouble?"
he demanded with an air of injury.
Astonishment swept over the girl's features. "Why, Pete! yehs tol' me--"
Pete glanced profound irritation. His countenance reddened
with the anger of a man whose respectability is being threatened.
"Say, yehs makes me tired. See? What deh hell deh yeh wanna
tag aroun' atter me fer? Yeh'll git me inteh trouble wid deh ol'
man an' dey'll be hell teh pay! If he sees a woman roun' here
he'll go crazy an' I'll lose me job! See? Yer brudder come in
here an' raised hell an' deh ol' man hada put up fer it! An' now
I'm done! See? I'm done."
The girl's eyes stared into his face. "Pete, don't yeh remem--"
"Oh, hell," interrupted Pete, anticipating.
The girl seemed to have a struggle with herself. She was apparently
bewildered and could not find speech. Finally she asked in a low voice:
"But where kin I go?"
The question exasperated Pete beyond the powers of endurance.
It was a direct attempt to give him some responsibility in a matter
that did not concern him. In his indignation he volunteered information.
"Oh, go teh hell," cried he. He slammed the door furiously
and returned, with an air of relief, to his respectability.
Maggie went away.
She wandered aimlessly for several blocks. She stopped once
and asked aloud a question of herself: "Who?"
A man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously took the
questioning word as intended for him.
"Eh? What? Who? Nobody! I didn't say anything,"
he laughingly said, and continued his way.
Soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such
apparent aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes.
She quickened her step, frightened. As a protection, she adopted
a demeanor of intentness as if going somewhere.
After a time she left rattling avenues and passed between rows
of houses with sternness and stolidity stamped upon their features.
She hung her head for she felt their eyes grimly upon her.
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)
• a young recruit in the
American Civil War is
faced by the cruelty of
war
• Henry Fleming’s fear
accounts both for his
“cowardly” flight and his
“heroic” attack
• neither action has any
effect on the outcome
• ending not in selfunderstanding, but selfdeception
Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance.
And at last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways. He
found that he could look back upon the brass and bombast of
his earlier gospels and see them truly. He was gleeful when
he discovered that he now despised them. With this
conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet
manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He
knew that he would no more quail before his guides
wherever they should point. He had been to touch the great
death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He
was a man. So it came to pass that as he trudged from the
place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot
plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly, and it was as if
hot plowshares were not. Scars faded as flowers. It rained.
The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train,
despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in
a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet
the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for
him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and
walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle.
The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal
blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned
now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh
meadows, cool brooks--an existence of soft and eternal
peace. Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the
hosts of leaden rain clouds. THE END.
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
• Sister Carrie (1900)
– suppressed until 1912
– rural Carrie moves to
Chicago in search of better
life (clothes, money, social
position)
– accidental success as
actress
– uncriticized representation
of heroine (incl. her serial
relations with men)
• An American Tragedy
(1925)
Sister Carrie (excerpt)
When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin
satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in
Van Buren Street, and four dollar in money. It was in August, 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions
of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterized her given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss,
mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review and the threads
which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.
To be sure there was always the next station, where one might descend and return. There was the great city, bound more closely by these
very trains which came up daily. Columbia City was not so very far away, even once she was in Chicago. What pray, is a few hours a few
hundred miles? She looked at the little slip bearing her sister's address and wondered. She gazed at the green landscape, now passing in
swift review until her swifter thoughts replaced its impression with vague conjectures of what Chicago might be.
When a girls leaves her home at eighteen, she does one of two things. Either she falls into saving hands and becomes better, or she rapidly
assumes the cosmopolitan standard of virtue and becomes worse. Of an intermediate balance, under the circumstances, there is no
possibility. The city has its cunning wiles, no less than the infinitely smaller and more human tempter. There are large forces which
allure with all the soul fullness of expression possible in the most cultured human. The gleam of a thousand lights is often as
effective as the persuasive light in a wooing and fascinating eye. Half the undoing of the unsophisticated and natural mind is
accomplished by forces wholly superhuman. A blare of to the astonished scenes in equivocal terms. Without a counselor at hand to
whisper cautious interpretation what falsehoods may not these things breathe into the unguarded ear! Unrecognized for what they are,
their beauty, like music, too often relaxes, then wakens, then perverts the simpler human perceptions.
Caroline, or Sister Carrie, as she had been half affectionately termed by the family, was possessed of a mind rudimentary in its power of
observation and analysis. Self-interest with her was high, but not strong. It was nevertheless, her guiding characteristic. Warm with
the fancies of youth, pretty with the insipid prettiness of the formative period, possessed of a figure promising eventual shapeliness
and an eye alight with certain native intelligence she was a fair example of the middle American class two generations removed
from the emigrant. Books were beyond her interest knowledge a sealed book. In the intuitive graces she was still crude. She could
scarcely toss her head gracefully. Her hands were almost ineffectual. The feet, though small were set flatly. And yet she was
interested in her charms, quick to understand the keener pleasures of life, ambitious to gain in material things. A half-equipped little
knight she was, venturing to reconnoiter the mysterious city and dreaming wild dreams of some vague, far-off supremacy, which
should make it prey and subject the proper penitent, groveling at a women's slipper.
Frank Norris (1870-1902)
•
•
•
•
•
characters unable to control their lives
moved around by passions or fate
whole world (natural and human) as
battlefield between uncontrollable forces
writing style closer to romantics (powerful
language, passionate emotions, unusual
experience, hyperbolic symbols)
McTeague (1899)
–
–
–
•
•
California: nature vs. machine
McTeague: animal-like hero, kills his wife,
atavism, greed, genetic and social deficiency
wife: wins in lottery, goes crazy, sleeps naked
on pile of gold coins, destructiveness of greed
The Octopus (1901): lost battle of greedy
wheat farmers with greedy railroad company
The Pit (1903): again: wheat as quasireligious symbol of life
McTeague (excerpt)
The day was very hot, and the silence of high noon lay close
and thick between the steep slopes of the canyons like an
invisible, muffling fluid. At intervals the drone of an insect
bored the air and trailed slowly to silence again. Everywhere
were pungent, aromatic smells. The vast, moveless heat
seemed to distil countless odors from the brush--odors of
warm sap, of pine needles, and of tar-weed, and above all the
medicinal odor of witch hazel. As far as one could look,
uncounted multitudes of trees and manzanita bushes were
quietly and motionlessly growing, growing, growing. A
tremendous, immeasurable Life pushed steadily
heavenward without a sound, without a motion. At turns of
the road, on the higher points, canyons disclosed themselves
far away, gigantic grooves in the landscape, deep blue in the
distance, opening one into another, ocean-deep, silent, huge,
and suggestive of colossal primeval forces held in reserve. At
their bottoms they were solid, massive; on their crests they
broke delicately into fine serrated edges where the pines and
redwoods outlined their million of tops against the high white
horizon. Here and there the mountains lifted themselves out
of the narrow river beds in groups like giant lions rearing their
heads after drinking. The entire region was untamed. In some
places east of the Mississippi nature is cosey, intimate, small,
and homelike, like a good-natured housewife. In Placer
County, California, she is a vast, unconquered brute of the
Pliocene epoch, savage, sullen, and magnificently indifferent
to man.
But there were men in these mountains, like lice on
mammoths' hides, fighting them stubbornly, now
with hydraulic "monitors," now with drill and
dynamite, boring into the vitals of them, or tearing
away great yellow gravelly scars in the flanks of
them, sucking their blood, extracting gold.
Here and there at long distances upon the canyon
sides rose the headgear of a mine, surrounded with
its few unpainted houses, and topped by its neverfailing feather of black smoke. On near approach
one heard the prolonged thunder of the stampmill, the crusher, the insatiable monster, gnashing
the rocks to powder with its long iron teeth,
vomiting them out again in a thin stream of wet
gray mud. Its enormous maw, fed night and day
with the car-boys' loads, gorged itself with gravel,
and spat out the gold, grinding the rocks between
its jaws, glutted, as it were, with the very entrails of
the earth, and growling over its endless meal, like
some savage animal, some legendary dragon, some
fabulous beast, symbol of inordinate and
monstrous gluttony.
Jack London (1876-1916)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
naturalism based on theories of
Darwin, Haeckel, Marx, Spencer,
Nietzsche
men and women seen as animals
(Darwinism), animalistic survival
instinct in extreme circumstances
woman can become equal despite
given genteel standards
simple, chronological writing style
common speech
fiction mostly based on personal
experience
The Sea Wolf (1904)
– Captain Wolf Larson as proto-superman
(Nietzsche), but killed in end
– effete Humphrey Van Weyden
undergoes vitalizing education
(masculinization), kills Larson
The Sea Wolf (excerpt)
I must say that I was fascinated by the perfect lines of Wolf Larsen’s figure, and by what I may term the terrible beauty of it. I had noted the men in the
forecastle. Powerfully muscled though some of them were, there had been something wrong with all of them, an insufficient development here, an
undue development there, a twist or a crook that destroyed symmetry, legs too short or too long, or too much sinew or bone exposed, or too
little. Oofty-Oofty had been the only one whose lines were at all pleasing, while, in so far as they pleased, that far had they been what I should call
feminine.
But Wolf Larsen was the man-type, the masculine, and almost a god in his perfectness. As he moved about or raised his arms the great muscles leapt and
moved under the satiny skin. I have forgotten to say that the bronze ended with his face. His body, thanks to his Scandinavian stock, was fair as the
fairest woman’s. I remember his putting his hand up to feel of the wound on his head, and my watching the biceps move like a living thing under its
white sheath. It was the biceps that had nearly crushed out my life once, that I had seen strike so many killing blows. I could not take my eyes from
him. I stood motionless, a roll of antiseptic cotton in my hand unwinding and spilling itself down to the floor.
He noticed me, and I became conscious that I was staring at him.
“God made you well,” I said.
“Did he?” he answered. “I have often thought so myself, and wondered why.”
“Purpose—” I began.
“Utility,” he interrupted. “This body was made for use. These muscles were made to grip, and tear, and destroy living things that get between me and
life. But have you thought of the other living things? They, too, have muscles, of one kind and another, made to grip, and tear, and destroy; and
when they come between me and life, I out-grip them, out-tear them, out-destroy them. Purpose does not explain that. Utility does.”
“It is not beautiful,” I protested.
“Life isn’t, you mean,” he smiled. “Yet you say I was made well. Do you see this?”
He braced his legs and feet, pressing the cabin floor with his toes in a clutching sort of way. Knots and ridges and mounds of muscles writhed and bunched
under the skin.
“Feel them,” he commanded.
They were hard as iron. And I observed, also, that his whole body had unconsciously drawn itself together, tense and alert; that muscles were softly
crawling and shaping about the hips, along the back, and across the shoulders; that the arms were slightly lifted, their muscles contracting, the
fingers crooking till the hands were like talons; and that even the eyes had changed expression and into them were coming watchfulness and
measurement and a light none other than of battle.
“Stability, equilibrium,” he said, relaxing on the instant and sinking his body back into repose. “Feet with which to clutch the ground, legs to stand on and to
help withstand, while with arms and hands, teeth and nails, I struggle to kill and to be not killed. Purpose? Utility is the better word.”
I did not argue. I had seen the mechanism of the primitive fighting beast, and I was as strongly impressed as if I had seen the engines of a great battleship
or Atlantic liner.