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1865-1914 The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era (The Age of Realism)

Social and historical developments, proliferation of literature. This chapter is longer than previous

ones, because many excellent (and very different) authors started to write at the same time; the sheer

size of American literature increased, concurrently with its diversity. At the same time, the mainstream

and popular literature began to separate towards the end of the 19 th century, and many authors in this

chapter belong to both (e.g. Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, or Jack London). On the other hand, Henry

James was probably the first professional American author whose readership was limited to the well

educated elite (and who could still make a living by writing). In other words, as the American

literature grew in its size and diversity, it also became increasingly stratified.

In literature, rapid social developments (urbanization, immigration, industrialization) brought a great

interest in collective life (economy, politics, social conflicts). This interest found its expression in the

novel, which was the dominant genre at that time: there were more novelists and better novelists (most

importantly Mark Twain and Henry James) than poets or dramatists. Only the final decade of this

period saw a revival of poetry. The 1890s also saw first modernist experiments in poetry and prose.

Prose. Fictional prose writers between 1865 and 1914 are traditionally divided into three groups: 1.)

local colorists and humorists, 2.) social and psychological realists, and 3.) naturalists . In all three

groups, the dominant genres were the novel and short story. The American novel at that time became

very similar to European realistic novel, i.e. to the works of Honor Balzac, George Eliot, or Leo

Tolstoy. (Before the War the most important genres were symbolic romance, adventure romance, andsentimental domestic novel.) American novelists tried to emulate and surpass the achievements of

European authors, embarking on a quest for the great American novel (this phrase was the title of an

essay by John William De Forest, a pioneering realist, but it was also used by Henry James and Ernest

Hemingway). On the other hand, the abundance of great short stories, usually published in magazines,

was a characteristically American phenomenon. Another important phenomenon after the Civil War

was the emergence and development of fiction written by Blacks, Native Americans, and ethnic

groups such as Hispanics and Jews. (This, for obvious reasons, was linked to popularity of local color

fiction. Some local colorists were Blacks or Hispanics, and some concealed the fact.) To a largeextent, the literature of Native Americans was recorded in print (or on gramophone records) for the

first time.

Local color or regionalism. This type of fiction concentrated on characters, customs, language, and

landscape of a particular region of the United States. Although many local color authors wrote novels,

they are best remembered for their numerous excellent short stories. The importance of local color was

recognized very early: in an important contemporary critical article, American Literary Centers

(1902), William Dean Howells observed that in the second half of the 19 th century there was no

cultural centre of American literature (it used to be New England and New York), because so many

excellent authors write in every cultural section (South, mid-West, West etc.) of the United States.

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Most conveniently, local color writers can be divided according to their regions: the West, the South,

and New England. These three regions were popular with readers, because they were quaint, exotic,

and had unusual, easily identifiable dialects; the regions and their characters were easily turned into

recognizable and popular stereotypes.

Local color writers in the West included Br e t H a r t e (1836-1902), E d w a r d E g g l e s t o n(1837-1902), Jo h n M i l t o n H a y (1838-1905), He l e n H u n t J a c k s o n (1830-1885), and

M a r y H u n t e r A u s t i n (1868-1934). Because the West was too large to be culturally

homogenous, these authors actually used different themes, characters and dialects from different

subsections of the frontier. Eggleston and Hay wrote about the rural mid-Western region (Ohio,

Michigan, Illinois, Indiana), whereas Harte, Jackson and Austin are associated with the distant frontier

in the newly settled states such as California, Montana or Nevada.

Bret Harte is considered to be a pioneering local-color author, and a pioneer of realism. Being a

journalist in various Californian newspapers (between 1853 and 1871), he was able to create fictionwithout the idealized images of the frontier, known from earlier adventure romances (e.g. by James

Fenimore Cooper). He is best remembered for short stories and poetry written in a (supposedly)

Western dialect of gold miners, most importantly his fame rests on The Luck of the Roaring Camp

(1868), a short story first published in Overland Monthly, one of the first Californian literary

magazines. Hartes piece is a prototypical local-color story: it features a group of regional characters

(Californian miners) who are characterized by a peculiar dialect, a set of customs and small vices, and

who are described in a detached third-person narration from the point of view of an educated outsider

(the author and the presumed reader). The plot is a touching and simple anecdote: the first child isborn in the mining camp (a boy named Luck), which makes the miners happy and proud, and then it

dies in a flood, together with a heroic miner who tried to save it. This combination (exotic characters,

detached narrator, anecdotic plot) became the standard formula of local-color writing because of its

great narrative potential, the potential of realistic fiction: possibilities ranged from outrageously funny

stories by Twain, through sentimental anecdotes by Harte, through social observations of George

Washington Cable, to serious psychological studies by Kate Chopin. Harte wrote numerous, equally

successful short stories, e.g. The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1896) and Tennessees Partner (1870).

His work also includes poetry (first collection 1871), with numerous poems written in Western dialect;the most famous poem of this sort was The Heathen Chinee (1870), a satire on racist attitudes in

California. Minor prose works by Harte include Condensed Novels (1867), which are parodies of well

known contemporary novelist (including James Fenimore Cooper), and a collection of Spanish and

American Legends (1872).

Edward Eggleston is less known today than Bret Harte, but he was equally popular with

contemporary readers. He describes rural life of Indiana and Illinois; at the time when he wrote, these

were not frontier states, but were (and still are) described as mid-West. Eggleston describes simple

rural life, and harsh, strong frontier characters, in several novels, most importantly The Hoosier

Schoolmaster(1870) and its several continuations. The novel features memorable characters, such as

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Jack and Bud Means, and the most important means of characterization, like in Hartes stories, was the

use of the dialect. Many of the characters are children, and their dialogues show the world through a

childs eyes, which anticipates Mark Twains novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Apart

from the Hoosier series, Eggleston wrote several popular history books, e.g. A History of the United

States and Its People (1888), orThe Transit of Civilization from England to America (1901). Anotherrepresentative of the mid-West was John Milton Hay, a minor author who was better known for his

political work in Republican party politics, especially in Abraham Lincolns administration. Hay as a

local-color writer is actually best remembered for his poetry, most importantly forPike County

Ballads and Other Poems (1871), many of which were written in several dialects, including Black

dialect and the eponymous dialect which was later used in Mark Twains The Adventures of

Huckleberry Finn. Hays volume is an important, early example of local color poetry. Apart from the

Ballads he wrote a political novel The Bread-winners (1883), and a history of Abraham Lincolns

administration (1890).After Harte, the far West is represented by Helen Hunt Jackson and Mary Hunter Austin. Jackson,

born in New England, traveled much and her novels recount the experience of her residence in

California and Colorado. Her best known novel, Ramona (1884) created a sentimentalized image of

California locality, of the states Hispanic and Indian inhabitants, and of the greed and injustice of

white settlers. Jackson capitalized on the fact that California was part of Mexico until 1847, and the

states culture was shaped by mixed Spanish, Mexican, and Indian population; this mixture was

perceived as exotic and was very popular with readers local color fiction. The novel was very

important for the perception of California in other parts of the United States. Jackson was also one ofthe few American authors in her time who expressed sympathy for American Indians, and who

condemned the destruction of native cultures by whites. Her major work of non-fiction, A Century of

Dishonor(1881) is a history of white injustice against Native Americans. Although it did not share the

popularity of Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin, the book had an influence on white attitudes to Native

Americans.

Mary Hunter Austin wrote in the first half of the 20 th century, which means she was not simply a

representative of Californian local color, but also a naturalist or even modernist writer. Austin was part

of a circle of Californian naturalist writers which included Ambrose Bierce and Jack London. Herfirst, and most famous book, Land of Little Rain (1903) concentrates on landscape, rather than

characters, anecdotic stories, or local legends. In this, Land of Little Rain is a series of impressionist,

descriptive sketches, with elements of short fiction. The book also combines text with Austins

sketches on margins. This mixture of poetic descriptive passages with fiction and art has an innovative

air, which distinguishes it from earlier local color writing. Later in her career, Austin wrote numerous

local color books, e.g. The Flock(1906) orLost Borders: the People of the Desert(1909). The author

often describes the dark side of American expansion in the West: unsuccessful settlements,

unfavorable or dangerous climate, exploitation and destruction of Native Americans.

Of all the regions, local color in the South probably produced the most important works of fiction.

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The South was of particular importance because of the Civil War; it was the only part of the United

States which tried to separate from the Union. The best known Southern local colorists were G e o r g e

W a s h i n g t o n C a b l e (1844-1925), and J o e l C h a n d l e r H a r r i s (1848-1908), but the group

included three authors who were so original and so important for American literature in general, that

they will be discussed separately: Mark Twain as a pioneer of American realism, Kate Chopin as apsychological realist, and Charles W. Chesnutt as an important Black writer.

George Washington Cable was a chronicler of the Old South, i.e. of the regions tradition and history

before the Civil War. He was best known for novels about Louisiana (New Orleans) and its Creole

culture, i.e. the culture of descendants of French settlers in that part of North America. His fiction

works include Old Creole Days (1879), a collection of short stories, and The Grandissimes: A Story of

Creole Life (1880), his best known novel. Although miscegenation and interracial marriages

were forbidden in Louisiana, the Creole culture was really an ethnic mixture of Black, French,

and Indian people. This is the theme of many stories in Old Creole Days, where Cable often

satirizes the hypocrisy of New Orleans high society. The Grandissimes is a historical

romance, set at the beginning of the 19 th century, immediately after the Louisiana Purchase in

1803, when the United States bought (from France) todays Louisiana, the entire Mississippi

valley and large territories in the West. Apart from numerous novels and short stories set in

New Orleans, such as Dr. Sevier (1884) orLoves of Louisiana (1918), Cable also wrote a

number of non-fictional works about the region, including a major history of New Orleans

(1887).Joel Chandler Harris was best known for his stories told by Uncle Remus, where he created the

eponymous Black character, the narrator of African American folktales compiled by Harris. (Harris

himself was white; he collected stories he heard from Blacks.) The stories are mostly animal tales,

although several ones are simply local color stories about life in the Old South, with Uncle Remus as

character. Animal folktales can be found universally in folklore traditions around the world. Harris

published his tales in a number of successful volumes, e.g. Uncle Remus: His Songs and Saying

(1881), orNights with Uncle Remus: Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation (1883). The stories are

told in a Southern Black dialect (or Harriss rendition of it), and count as some of the first works of

printed fiction in this variety of American English. The most famous stories include The Wonderful

Tar-Baby Story and How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox (both published in the 1881

collection). The animal characters of Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Fox, or Mr. Lion represent (like in other folktale

traditions) different human vices, weaknesses, virtues and strengths, whereas the Tar Baby is a

mysterious and complex character whose origin can be traced back to myths of West African cultures.

Harriss collections did much to popularize Black culture and dialect, and apart from being works of

literature they have a documentary value, but he was also accused of capitalizing on interest in Black

culture (or simply stealing Black stories), and of distorting his sources in a patronizing and sentimental

way. Apart from several more similar collections, Harriss works include Tales of the Home Folks in

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Peace and War(1894), which are local color stories set in the Old South, and A Little Union Scout

(1904), a historical adventure novel about the Civil War.

The third exotic region which provided local color themes was New England, once a prosperous

region which was becoming a rural backwater after the Civil War. Many major authors, described in

earlier sections here, were from New England, and their fiction may be described as local color. Forinstance, Harriet Beecher Stowes last novels are about New England life. However, the authors

usually associated with New England local color were S a r a h O r n e J e w e t t (1849-1909) and

M a r y E . W i l k i n s F r e e m a n (1852-1930). Apart from being local colorists, both authors are

credited as proto-feminist writers, because their work includes many woman characters and feminine

narrative voices.

Jewetts most famous and characteristic work is The Country of Pointed Firs (1896), a loosely

structured novel, or series of sketches, about the life of a small seashore village in Maine. Most of

Jewett's fiction is set in Maine, which recalls her childhood memories and frequent visits to the region(most of her life she lived in Boston). Like most local color fiction, the novel has an external narrator

(i.e. a visitor in the village), but features local dialect and many local characters, most notably Captain

Littlepage (retired) and Mrs. Almiry Todd, who themselves become secondary narrators. The novel

also includes numerous poetic, descriptive passages about landscape and culture of the region. The

novel is permeated by an aura of contemplation and delight, but also of isolation and quiet desperation.

It is a mature work, one of the last Jewett wrote, and it is one of the finest achievements of local color

writing. Apart from The Country of Pointed Firs, she wrote numerous novels and collections of short

stories, many of which were previously published in magazines (which, as already mentioned, was thestandard practice; novels in magazines were usually published in installments). These include Play

Days (1879) for children, andA White Heron and Other Stories (1886) with the famous and frequently

anthologized eponymous story.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman was a prolific author of (twelve) novels and more than two hundred of short

stories, published in magazines and subsequently in thirty nine collections; she was one of the most

popular and important local color authors, and for a time one of the most famous American authors in

general. Her most successful and best remembered collections include A Humble Romance and Other

Stories (1887) and A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891). Like in Jewett, the characters inFreeman's fiction are often resigned and quietly desperate, which was part of the New England local

color (the culture of the region is associated with Puritan morality, self-denial, moderation and self-

discipline), but also a part of Freeman's representation of women, who are her most important

characters. Women, such as Nanny Penn in The Revolt of 'Mother' or Louisa Ellis in A New

England Nun are often forced (by circumstance and unfeeling attitudes of the family and community)

to give up their most important dreams (like having a house, or marrying someone they love). This

decision condemns them to an incomplete and sad life, but it is also a compromise which makes it

possible to live with other people. This theme, of moral and existential trade off between personal

aspiration and communal pressure, gives Freeman's fiction a universal importance. This fact blurs the

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difference between local color and ordinary psychological realism in Freeman's fiction; the same is

true about many other local colorists, most importantly Jewett, Cable, and Austin. Conversely, some

important realists can be described as local color authors, e.g. Mark Twain, Kate Chopin, or Edith

Wharton.

Local color fiction developed concurrently with American realism, and it may be considered simply

as its part. American realist authors are conveniently divided into three groups: social realists,

psychological realists, and naturalists. This division does not suggest a temporal sequence, but social

realism (low realism) includes some of the earliest examples of American realism, most importantly

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckelberry Finn (1884). The most important representative of

psychologicalrealism (or high realism) was Henry James (his most important works were written

between 1881 and the beginning of the 20 th century). Finally, naturalism developed only in the final

decade of the 19th century, and its most important representative was probably Stephen Crane (whobegan to write in the 1890s). Thus, generally, American realism develops in the period between 1880

and 1900.

The importance of William Dean Howells. Howells today is not very much remembered for his

fiction (novels and stories will be discussed below), but he was one of the most important literary

critics in his day. In a way, he created the American realism as a literary school, i.e. he explained to

the American audience what realism was, and thus defined it as a recognizable American cultural

phenomenon. He also popularized foreign (French and Russian) realist novelists, e.g. Ivan Turgenev,

Leo Tolstoy, and Emile Zola. Howells's reviews and influence helped the careers of the mostimportant authors of American realism, e.g. Mark Twain, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Stephen

Crane. He was an organizer and critic, who created and promoted a great part of American literature

between 1865 and 1900.

Social realism, as well as local color and American realism in general, had two very different sources:

native tradition of popular humorist literature, and foreign realist novels. Popular humor was part of

American folklore, and it included two important genres: the tall tale, and satirical sketch. Both

initially belonged to oral literature, but between the 1840s and the 1860s more and more of tall tales

and satirical stories were printed in magazines or as pamphlets. The tall tale was usually about alegendary folk hero, such as Sut Lovingood or Johny Appleseed: such heroes were endowed with

superhuman powers, but they were also very funny because of their foolishness and imperfect

characters. Importantly, tall tales were usually told and written in local dialects, like the local color

literature in subsequent decades; the use of local dialect was a realist feature of this genre. The other

element of the tall tale was the use of drastic detail, and gruesome or mundane themes (hunger,

poverty, theft, malice, stupidity), which were to become important themes of realist literature. In

printed literature, the most important author of tall tales was probably George Washington Harris,

whose collections of stories about Sut Lovingood influenced Mark Twain. The tall tale, in general,

was an influence on American humorists, such as Twain, or George Horatio Darby (John Phoenix)

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and Petroleum V. Nasby. (There were numerous humorists, who usually wrote light short fiction, and

are almost forgotten today.) The other source of American realism was foreign influence of authors

such as Charles Dickens, James Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Honore Balzac, Gustave

Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The French and Russian authors were

popularized in America only after the Civil War, largely due to William Dean Howellss influence.The pioneers and most important representatives of social realism were J o h n W i l l i a m D e

F o r e s t (1826-1906), M a r k T w a i n (1835-1910), W i l l i a m D e a n H o w e l l s (1837-

1920), and H a m l i n G a r l a n d (1860-1940). De Forest is best remembered for a pioneering realist

novel about the Civil War, Miss Ravenels Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1865), which

contains drastic descriptions of battles, field hospitals, life in the barracks, and other aspects of the

war, which De Forest knew from his experience as Union officer. The novel has several satirically

constructed characters, whose actions are not didactically evaluated, but shown in an impartial,

ambiguous way, e.g. one of the protagonists is a Union officer who embezzles his governmentsmoney and does business with the enemy, but decides to die a glorious death in battle to avoid scandal.

Apart from Miss Ravenels Conversion, De Forest wrote less distinguished novels such as Witching

Times (1857), and Seacliff(1859), both of which might be described as regionalist fiction, historical

and sensational novels, and several volumes of short stories.

Mark Twain, next to Henry James, is probably the most important American realist. His real name

was Samuel Langhorne Clemens (but he was best known for fiction written under the pseudonym).

Twain grew up in Missouri and worked in a variety of professions there and other parts of the States

(river pilot, printer, journalist). His biography, i.e. his knowledge of American local characters,folklore tales, dialects, and walks of life, was an important influence on his writings.

Twains work can be divided into humorist sketches, travel books, and novels. As already

mentioned, the tall tale and folklore humor were an important influence on realist fiction in America,

and Twains early pieces may be actually described as tall tales, e.g. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of

Calaveras County (1865) is based on a well known folklore tale (a tall tale), and so are numerous

anecdotes inRoughing It(1872), a semi-autobiographical account of Twains travels in the American

West. In these early works, Twain is still an excellent American humorist, but not a realist writer.

Many of Twains humorist sketches are satirical, e.g. The Innocents Abroad: or, The New PilgrimsProgress (1869) is a satire on European and American attitudes, presented again in the form of a semi-

autobiographical travelogue.Life on the Mississippi (1883) is probably the most important of Twains

travel books, because it is a nostalgic memory of Twains early experiences (childhood and youth),

with anecdotes and characters which belonged to a world (a regional culture of the Mississippi valley)

which was already disappearing.

However, Twain is best remembered for his novels (more than fifty of them), which are some of the

best known works of American realism. Twains novelistic debut, written in collaboration with C.D.

Warner1

, The Gilded Age (1873), a novel which gave the name to the historical and literary period1 Warner was a humorist and novelist from New England, author of numerous travel books, collections of

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between 1865 and 1914, is a loosely plotted novel about the economic and territorial expansion in the

West after the Civil War, money-making, fortunes rapidly gained and lost, corruption, swindling and

fraud. The novel includes numerous, sometimes unrelated, characters and subplots, e.g. it begins with

a regional piece about Mississippi navigation, and drastic description of a riverboat disaster, and then

moves to different settings. Twains second novel is still famous and recognizable today: The

Adventures of Tom Sawyer(1876) is a nostalgic novel about boyhood in Missouri, which avoided the

didacticism of many contemporary books about and for children, and which included many local color

elements (dialect, characters). In a series of episodes, Twain shows (or builds) an entire Southern

community of St Petersburg in Missouri, and describes it through the eyes of children (the humorous

conflict between childlike simplicity and adult hypocrisy is one of the themes of the novel, but the

theme may also be described as a conflict between fantasy and reality, or between spontainety and

convention). The novels immediately became very popular with readers, and Twain wrote several

sequels to capitalize on the success, including Tom Sawyer Abroad(1894), and Tom Sawyer, Detective(1896). However, the most famou sequel, and basically the most famous of all Twains books, was

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is also a novel about childhood (its protagonist and several other

characters are featured in both novels), but it is more serious and coherent. Unlike Tom Sawyer,

Huckleberry Finn is a poor boy brutalized by his drinking father, and forced to make serious

decissions early in his life, e.g. at the opening of the novel he feigns his own death and escapes from

the father (who wants to extort the money Huck Finn found in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Finns

escape down the Mississippi river is composed of numerous episodes, which are alternately drasticand humorous: racial violence, a family feud, adventures of swindlers and con artists, lynching mobs

directed against whites and Blacks, floodings, shipping disasters. This mixture is morally and

emotionally ambiguous, which made the novel popular, but also controversial (in the 19th century there

were doubts whether it was suitable for children, and nowadays there are doubts whether it promotes

or criticizes racial attitudes). This ambiguity of emotions and moralities is a paramount quality of

realist fiction; it shows the world full of (moral) uncertainty and (practical) unpredictability. The

novel, at the same time, is not an entirely episodic (i.e. loosely structured) set of unpredictable

adventures, because it has a symbolic framework: Huckleberry Finn and Jim (an adult, Black slave,who escapes with Huck and looks after him) escape down the Mississippi, which symbolizes life in

general (they are carried by the river to an uncertain, but the only thing they can trust is their

friendship). Several episodes can be analysed symbolically, e.g. Finns symbolic (fake) death in the

opening, the episode in Cairo, when they are temporarily separated by the river and Finn tries to make

a fool of Jim (for the last time), or the moment when Huck finds that Jim has been sold, and is

overcome by desperation and feels like he is dead. Another important quality of this novel is the first-

person narration by Huckleberry Finn, who observes the world like a child, simultaneously naively

and shrewdly. This type of narration was later frequently used in American fiction, e.g. in Kurt

humorist sketches, and six novels. Today, he is best remembered for his collaboration with Mark Twain, buthe was very popular in his time as writer and lecturer (which amounted to being a sort of stand-up comedian).

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Vonneguts Slaughterhouse Five (1969) about World War Two, and in a variety of similar novels

written earlier and later in the 20th century. Finally, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel

narrated entirely in a dialect (with several other dialects used in dialogues), which was unusual in local

color fiction, where the narrator was usually an outsider speaking standard American English. In

abandoning the distance between a local culture and the narrator, Twain transcends the convention oflocal color writing, and shows that universal (cultural) themes can be found in the most mundane

setting, and among very low-class characters (who are no longer treated as exotic curiosities, like they

sometimes were in local color writing). Also, the confrontation of mundane scenes and characters with

serious and universal themes is similar to the symbolic imagery used in Puritan texts and in works of

Hawthorne, Melville, and Emily Dickinson. In this way, it is possible to place Twains novel in a

continuous tradition of symbolic writing in America.

Apart from realistic novels, Twain wrote several historical romances which are actually satires on

American attitudes, and on human vices in general. These works include The Prince and the Pauper(1882), about depravity inflicted on children by class conventions, A Connecticut Yankee in King

Arthurs Court(1889), about the lost fight between technological progress and human stupidity (guess

which wins), and The Mysterious Stranger (1916; 1969), which is a philosophical parable about

solipsism and the destructive force of evil. The last text, published posthumously in a shortened and

censored form, was republished from original manuscript only in 1969, as No. 42: The Mysterious

Stranger. The new text is a terrible, bitter novel about absurdity of existence, the power of evil, and

weakness of love; it also contains numeorus satirical episodes directed against religion (Catholic

religion and religion in general). In the new edition, it is probably Twains most interesting andambiguous novel. Apart from humorist sketches and novels, Twain also wrote very many successful

short stories. The most famous include The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg (1879), and The

1,000,000 Bank-Note (1893), both of which are satirical anecdotes about greed. The themes of

Twains short fiction, however, is very varied, ranging from ghost stories, through love stories, to

local-color and historical ones.

William Dean Howells, already mentioned as an important literary critic, was also the author of

numerous short stories and novels (and plays, and poetry) that epitomize American social realism of

the Gilded Age (economic prosperity immediately after the Civil War). Most of those texts areforgotten today. His best known novels were A Modern Instance (1875), The Rise of Silas Lapham

(1885), A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), and A Traveler from Altruria (1894). These novels

epitomize the mature phase of American social realism: their themes are econonomic and social

mechanisms which are represented by flat, typical characters. The way they are written, i.e. the

method of representation, is usually a plain third-person narration (no authorial comments, no stylistic

embelishments, as if the narrator was absent from the story), with numerous dialogues which imitate

different kinds of ordinary American English, and with frequent imitation of real-life texts and

documents: press interviews (e.g. the beginning of The Rise of Silas Lapham) and articles, colloquial

conversations, reports. Howells did not invent this type of writing, but he was a very important user of

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it in America. Apart from use of these writing techniques, realist fiction was notable (and

controversial) for frank, unsentimental treatment of such themes as religion, marriage, family or sex.

For example, A Modern Instance is a description of a disintegrating marriage, The Rise of Silas

Lapham is about a successful businessman, who is morally ambiguous, but often manages to make the

right moral choice (and loses his money in this way), and the theme ofA Hazard of New Fortunes isthe conflict between labor and capital in the years after the Civil War. All these texts present situations

(selling a company to someone who wants to ruin it, an industrial strike and riot) which is complicated

and morally ambiguous; different characters represent different ways of responding to the ambiguous

situation. A Traveller from Altruria is an exception, because it is a utopian novel, mostly made of

dialogues about social reform and economics.

Apart from fiction, Howells wrote almost twenty plays, several volumes of literary criticism, and

numerous poems. The plays are mostly comedies and farces, which satirize contemporary American

manners. They include those collected in The Sleeping Car and Other Farces (1890), and in TheDaughter of the Storage (1916). Howellss poetry was collected in several volumes, including

collaborative ones, e.g.Poems of Two Friends (1860), and three editions ofPoems (1869, 1885, 1901).

Literary criticism, much of it first published in influential contemporary magazines such as Century

Magazine,Harpers Monthly, and Cosmopolitan (all of which Howells edited), were collected in eight

volumes, including Criticism and Fiction (1891), Literature and Life (1902), and My Mark Twain

(1910).

Hamlin Garland is a minor representative of the late phase in the development of American realism,

and his fiction also anticipates the modernist style of the 20th

century (most of Garlands works werewritten in the 1890s and the 1900s). Consequently, it is difficult to classify Garland: he is sometimes

listed with Henry James as a psychological realist, or as a naturalist writer (with Stephen Crane), and

some histories link him to early modernist fiction writers such as Sherwood Anderson. His best

remembered works includeMain-Travelled Roads (1891), a series of realist sketches about rural life in

the Mississippi valley (like Twains, Wilkins Freemans or Jewetts fiction, this is a realist

development of local-color writing). Garlands other fiction includes adventure romances, such as The

Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop (1902) about the fight between white settlers and Sioux Indians in

the West, and autobiographical writings, such as A Son of the Middle Border(1917). Apart from hisfiction, Garland is well known for his friendship and literary cooperation (or rather support for)

Stephen Crane, one of the most famous American naturalist writers.

Lesser realist authors: social utopias, roman a clef, polemic novels, pop

Continuators. The tradition of social realism did not end in the 20 th century, and it is still important

even today. Numerous examples of realist authors include Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, John

Steinbeck, Saul Below, or John Updike. Several of of those authors were awarded Nobel prize in

literature, and were regarded as the most important representatives of American literature in general.

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Psychological realism. Many authors, rather than being interested in communities and social issues

(or in satires on human vice), wrote in detail about motivations and emotions, limiting the range of

characters to an individual or a small group (a family or social circle). Obviously, description of an

individual person, and relations between two or three people, can be as difficult and important aswriting about any big social issue. Psychological realists asked universal questions about individual

life: how do I make my life meaningful?, how do I respond to evil in myself and in others?, how do I

avoid misery?, what do I do when my life is already miserable?, how do I cope with the prospects of

death? In psychological realism, the key to these questions seems always to be between individuals

and in their heads. The most important representatives of psychological realism were H e n r y

J a m e s (1843-1916) and Ed i t h W h a r t o n (1862-1937). Minor authors include K a t e C h o p i n

(1851-1904) and C h a r l o t t e P e r k i n s G i l m a n (1860-1935), who both wrote relatively less

than James and Wharton. The list is short, which clearly shows the contemporary popularity of socialrealists, but James (especially) and Wharton exerted a great influence on modernist fiction, and are

considered to be among the most important American novelists in general.

Henry James wrote more than twenty novels whose theme is usually a psychological conflict

(emotional, moral, cultural, social), often between individual freedom and some external pressure (e.g.

social conventions or demands of beloved persons). James seems to ask the question about the source

of his characters: are they shaped by other people, or do they make themselves what they are. The

answer is, obviously, that both sources are important, but how does (and should) a person mix them?

To describe the sources of subjective life of his characters, James used a variety of narrativetechniques: his narrators are usually unreliable (because nobody can provide a reliable narration of

emotions and thoughts, especially someone elses emotions and thoughts), characters are often

presented from different points of view, and the third person narrative imitates the mood and style of a

character (semi-indirect speech). With these techniques, James is able to achieve ambiguity and

subtlety in descriptions of the characters inner life. The techniques are similar to those used later by

modernist fiction writers in the 20th century, e.g. by Virginia Woolf (in Britain) or by William

Faulkner (in the States).

His best known novels (out of more than seventeen, depending on how long tales are classified)include Roderick Hudson (1876, Jamess first published novel), The Portrait of a Lady (1881),

Washington Square (1881), The Bostonians (1886), What Maisie Knew (1897), The Wings of the

Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl(1904). The Portrait of a Lady

is probably the most important novel in Jamess early phase, and it introduces themes which

were going to be characteristic of his writing later: psychological motivation of characters,

clash between innocence and corrupted world, an idealistic pursuit of happiness (for oneself

and for the others), and futile strife of an individual against destiny and influences of society.

Another important topic is the so called international theme, i.e. a confrontation of European

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and American culture; America, compared to Europe, is a culture which tries to ignore the

past, but cannot really do it. Europe, by adhering to the past, stands for sophistication and

beauty, but also for world-weariness and corruption. Thus, the novel is about a young

American woman, Isabel Archer, who inherits a large fortune and tries to live happily in

Europe, but her well-meant attempt is thwarted by greed and unfeeling attitudes of other

(older) people. The chief villain (or corrupted and disillusioned cosmopolitan) is Isabel

Archers husband, Gilbert Osmond. In the setting, the confrontation between Europe and

America is represented by placing Americans in beautiful and culturally marked locations,

usually in Italy and England (a procedure which was characteristic for many other novels by

James, but is also known from Hawthornes earlier novel, The Marble Faun). Another well

known novel in Jamess early phase is Washington Square, a study of family relations

between a domineering father and his daughter who cannot start her own life. The second,middle phase of Jamess novelistic work, is represented by The Bostonians and What Maisie

Knew. The Bostonians is one of Jamess rare attempts at a political (or social) novel; it is

about a proto-feminist society that campaigns for the rights of women, and also about cultural

differences between the American South and New England, whereas What Maisie Knew is a

psychological study of childhood in a disintegrating family; the novel marks Jamess

increasing interest in developing the psychological motivation of his characters, as the author

tried to describe the development of childs mind from the first moments of consciousness.

Capturing a characters consciousness (and the way a character defines oneself and ones life)

is the central theme of the novels written in Jamess final phase, e.g. The Ambasadors (which

James considered his best novel), and The Golden Bowl. Especially in The Ambassadors

James builds a bitter image of the protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether who realizes (in his

middle age) that he wasted his life, or never lived it fully. The theme, again, is developed

through confrontation of the American character with Europe (i.e. with Paris), where Strether

is searching for the son of a rich widow (an American business woman), whom the

protagonist is going to marry. The story is told in third person, but the semi-direct speechrepresents Strethers thoughts and developing consciousness of his life (or of his failure), in a

long series of episodes and conversations, whose significance he often does not understand

initially.

Jamess work also includes numerous excellent short stories (some may be described as short

novels, ornovelettes). In accordance with the standard practice described before, many of the

stories were first published in magazines (e.g. Century, New York Sun, Atlantic Monthly or

Harpers Weekly), and subsequently in collections; there were fourteen collections, such as A

Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales (1875, Jamess first volume of fiction), Terminations

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(1895), orThe Better Sort (1903). The best known tales include (dates of publications in a

collection) Daisy Miller (1879), The Altar of the Dead (1895), The Pupil (1892), The

Turn of the Screw (1898), The Real Thing (1900), and The Beast in the Jungle (1903).

Daisy Miller, which is perhaps the most famous work of fiction by James, is a study of the

international theme: a young American lady, traveling to Europe for the first time, meets the

refined Americans who have been corrupted by European past and by social conventions.

Importantly, Daisy Miller is shown from multiple points of view (through semi-indirect

speech of other characters or through conversation), but the story is never told from her own

point of view. The Pupil is about a friendship between a teacher (an educated Englishman)

and a child from a corrupted American family. The Real Thing is a self-conscious statement

made by the author about his art: real aristocrats turn out to be worse models for paintings

than professional (lower class) models. The Turn of the Screw is a well known ghost story,where James uses the technique of unreliable narrator. Finally, The Altar of the Dead and

The Beast in the Jungle are bitter novels about irreversibility in life, which the characters

realize when it is too late.

Subsequently, Jamess fiction (novels and short stories) was published in a variety of editions,

including the so called New York Edition (1907-1909), where James included his very

informative prefaces to each novel and story. The edition is also well known for the fact that

James excluded several works (e.g. Washington Square), and radically revised many texts

(e.g. many expanded passages in The Portrait of a Lady). Apart from fiction, James wrote

several unsuccessful plays, several very important critical essays, and numerous letters. His

literary criticism includes The Art of Fiction (1888, a book of essays concluded with the

eponymous one), where James endorses realist writers such as George Eliot, Guy de

Maupassant, and Ivan Turgenev. James also wrote an important and early study (1879) of

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Edith Wharton was linked to James both biographically (through friendship and lifelong

correspondence) and artistically (through similarities in themes and writing techniques). Shewas sometimes described as a regionalist writer who described the social change in New

Yorks upper class at the turn of the 19 th century, but she is also (and more commonly)

recognized as a psychological realist who dealt with universal themes such as individual

freedom versus society and destiny, sources and formation of inner life, human attempts to

define and understand oneself and ones life. Whartons work is a continuation and

development of Jamess novelistic art.

The author wrote twenty two novels, and the best remembered ones include The House of

Mirth (1905),Ethan Fromme (1911), and The Age of Innocence (1920). Although The House

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of Mirth was not Whartons first novel, it is considered as her first major work. The story of a

slow financial, social, and psychological decline of a young upper-class woman, Lily Bart,

begins in a satirical tone, but as the situation of the protagonist becomes more and more

hopeless, the novel becomes a brutal and tragic study of an irreversible path towards death (by

suicide). The novel includes numerous excellent background characters, and is one of the

finest example of the realist novel of manners in America: in other words, this early work

belongs to social, rather than psychological, realism.Ethan Fromme is ostensibly a local color

short novel set in Maine, but it turns out to be a universal parable about impossibility of

asserting ones will (and love) against time and irrevocable consequences of decisions taken

in the past (the tragic mode). Universality ofEthan Fromme is confirmed by the fact that

Wharton actually did not have an extensive first-hand knowledge of rural New England, and

the plot is very similar to legendary stories known in various cultures. The Age of Innocence,probably Whartons best novel, is (like Ethan Fromme)a story of an impossible love. The

love is that between Newland Archer, a New York lawyer, and Countess Ellen Olenska, an

American who has been living in Europe, and who has divorced a Polish count. The central

theme of the novel is that of adherence to social conventions (which prohibit the relation), and

the question whether the adherence is an example of idealistic faith, or hypocritical weakness

(towards the end of his life, in the final scene, Archer decides for the former).

Wharton lesser works include The Touchstone (1900, her first novel), The Custom of the

Country (1913), and A Son at the Front (1923). She also wrote several collections of short

stories, non fiction works including travelogues and history of World War One, a volume of

criticism, The Writing of Fiction (1925), and an autobiography A Backward Glance (1934).

Her literary work also includes two volumes of verse, which will be briefly discussed below.

Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman belong to the best writers of American

psychological realist fiction, but their influence was very limited because their reputation rests

on a small number of texts: Chopin is cherished for one short novel, and Gilman for a single

story. Kate Chopin (pen name of Katherine OFlaherty) wrote two novels and severalcollections of short stories, and was generally regarded to be a local color writer of the Old

South, or more particularly of Louisiana (just like George Washington Cable). However,

many of her short stories are examples of psychological realism, e.g. Dsires Baby

(1893), a study of miscegenation and racism, The Story of an Hour (1894), an internal

monologue written in semi-indirect speech, and The Storm (1898, unpublished until 1969),

which is a frank and unbiased description of sexual passion. Chopins best known work,

however, is The Awakening(1899), a developmental novel (Bildungsroman) about a womans

quest for an independent life and an identity which would not be imposed by other people. In

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the course of the quest, the protagonist Edna Pontellier progresses through love, maternity,

artistic pursuits, work, as things that would give a meaning to her life, but she realizes that

those are only roles she does not want to play. The novel, because of its frank treatment of

sexual themes, was a scandal that virtually terminated Chopins literary career. Today, the

author is valued by feminist critics and readers, because she created numerous woman

characters (women are usually protagonists in her fiction) of great psychological depth, and

she proposed a very mature reflection on existence, including such defining oppositions as

emotions and rationality, the body and the mind, individual and collective life, quest for

recognition and independence, nature and humanity.

Inasmuch as Chopin was a psychological novelist of individual life, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

was a social campaigner, a first-wave feminist concerned with political and economic

advancement of women as a social group. She wrote numerous short stories and articles onthese topics, and her novels may be described as social realism and social utopias. They

include Benigna Machiavelli (1914), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916).

Gilmans literary reputation, however, is still firmly based on The Yellow Wallpaper

(1892), a semi-autobiographical story about a woman subjected to the so called rest cure,

which consists in solitary confinement and forced rest in bed. The protagonist obviously

becomes mad after several days of this treatment, and Gilmans story is one of the strangest

and most vivid descriptions of madness in American fiction. The story, narrated in first

person, is a terrible record of a disintegrating personality, similar to the internal monologues

in Poes fiction. It rarely happens that a writers reputation rests on a single short story, but

The Yellow Paper is certainly one of the finest works of short fiction.

Naturalism developed in the 1890s, essentially as a current in realist writing. Thematically,

naturalist fiction was interested in external determinism of human behavior (especially by

biological and economical factors). This interest was inspired by development of social and

biological sciences, and by philosophers who drew conclusions from it, e.g. by HerbertSpencers utilitarian philosophy, Charles Darwins evolutionism, and Ernst Haeckels

popularization of materialism. At its most radical, naturalism presented characters as

machines, or as powerless puppets guided by chance, destiny, society, or by natural

(biological) factors. This usually consisted in the use of drab themes, such as urban poverty,

crime, illicit sex, war. Stylistically, this consisted in avoiding psychological motivation

(thoughts and emotions are usually not referred to or described briefly), and in assuming an

external point of view in narration. In some works, especially by Stephen Crane, it also

consisted in symbolic representation (instead of free and thinking persons, characters are

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elements of a symbolic image). Many people would think that naturalism presented a

pessimistic and dehumanized vision of existence, but it is also possible to say that naturalism

explored the very sources of humanity and subjectivity.

Naturalism had its first and most notable representatives in Europe, e.g. Emile Zola and

Henrik Ibsen, but it exerted a particularly strong influence on American fiction. The most

prominent representatives of naturalism in the United States include F r a n k N o r r i s (1870-

1902), S t e p h e n C r a n e (1871-1900), T h e o d or e D r e i s e r (1871-1945), and J a c k

L o n d o n (1876-1916). American naturalists can be conveniently divided geographically

between New York, Chicago, and California. Crane wrote in New York, but otherwise there

was no naturalist group there, apart from W i l l a C a t h e r (1874-1947) who is often classified

as a realist or modernist, rather than naturalist. Dreiser was a Chicago writer, together with

H e n r y B l a k e F u l l e r (1857-1929), U p t o n S i n c l a i r (1878-1968), and Frank Norris. InCalifornia, a famous group was formed by A m b r os e B i e r c e (1842-1914), Jack London,

and Mary Hunter Austin.2

Frank Norris presented a vibrant, optimistic variety of naturalism: life boils and teems in his

novels, as eruptions of pain and violence eventually lead to an optimistic conclusion, where

life becomes even bigger and stronger. The determining factors in natural life in Norriss

novels are economy and biology (basic animal drives). He may be regarded as the most

typical example, an epitome, of naturalism in America (although this description is more

deserved and suitable for Jack London). His best known novels include McTeague (1899),

The Octopus (1901), and The Pit (1903). McTeague, in the framework of a sensational

melodramatic plot, constructs (three) characters out of basic emotions such as infatuation,

jealousy, and above all greed. The novel is not optimistic at all, unlike The Octopus, where an

outbreak of violence (in a conflict between farmers and railway companies in California) is

shown as a necessary evil that leads to a greater good (in other words, Frank Norris presents

utilitarian philosophy in this novel). The theme is further developed in The Pit, where human

actions are determined by the economics of wheat trade. Norris today is to an extent aforgotten writer, probably because of limited output and because of the schematic quality of

his naturalism.

On the other hand, Stephen Crane is still recognized as a major author, and praised for poetic

style and artistic innovation. Crane wrote in a characteristic style, which was an inspiration

for numerous fiction writers in the 20th century (most importantly for Ernest Hemingway):

2 This is a questionable division for two reasons. Firstly, many of those authors would work in more than onecity: Norris in Chicago and California, Dreiser in Chicago and New York etc. The other reason is that many

authors, e.g. Cather and Dreiser, wrote later, in the 20th century, and their placement in this chapter is anarbitrary procedure. The point is, however, that American literature developed in several vibrant culturalcenters in the 1890s. For the first time, none of those centers was regional or provincial.

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virtually no authorial comments, frequent use of dialogues instead of narration, many scenes

concluded with poetic similes, which add an ambiguous symbolic meaning. Cranes novels

are usually very short, and like his excellent short stories, they were initially published in

magazines, as Crane combined his writing with a successful career as press reporter. His best

known novels areMaggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893, his first book of fiction), and The Red

Badge of Courage (1895). Maggie is an impassionate, objective description of a brutalized

girlhood in a poor neighborhood in Manhattan. The characters are driven by irrational

impulses (aggressiveness, pride, shame) into destruction or happiness, depending on luck and

on circumstances. The novel includes tragic and drastic scenes, e.g. brutalizing and eventual

rejection of Maggie by her mother, but the narrative does not include any moralistic, authorial

comment. It was a successful debut, which was followed by an equally successful war novel,

The Red Badge of Courage. Crane shows war as an impersonal force which determinessoldiers actions as if they were automatons, and which is too chaotic and complicated to be

controlled by commanders. The impersonal, machine-like quality of his characters is attained

through limited use of names and absence of psychological descriptions (not to mention

internal monologues). Joseph Conrad famously (and mistakenly) observed that the characters

do not even have personal names mentioned in the text. (Crane, indeed, meditated the idea of

naturalistically representing the dehumanization of soldiers by omitting their names, which he

did in one of unpublished drafts.) The plot, which loosely follows a real historical battle of the

Civil War (at Chancellorsville), begins at a wintering camp, then the protagonist marches into

the battle, escapes from his regiment (becomes horse de combat) out of fear, witnesses the

death of a wounded comrade, and finally returns and manages to pluck up courage for another

fight. The determinant of human behavior in the battle is fear, but Crane also shows the power

of courage, hope, desperation and shame (which are perhaps as impersonal and automatic as

fear). In Cranes impersonal naturalistic representation, soldiers are like puppets and the war

becomes a terrible but meaningless spectacle. The war does not follow anybodys, human or

divine, conscious intention, and consequently it cannot be understood rationally, ethically,historically, or religiously, or in any other way; even Darwinist interpretation of war as a

selection mechanism is not suggested in the text. The corresponding philosophical orientation

is, thus, materialism and nihilism (which perhaps amounts to no philosophy at all). At the

same time, in several passages this inhuman spectacle acquires a philosophical meaning, e.g.

in chapter nine, when the protagonist witnesses a comrades agony, and then tries to say

something (to nobody); the chapter is concluded with a famous comparison of the sun with

the wafer (i.e. the holy host taken at communion service), which is one of the most famous

sentences in American fiction.

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Another famous sentence, None of them knew the color of the sky, opens what is probably

Cranes best short story, i.e. The Open Boat (1897), which is an account of a life-boat party

struggling for survival at sea (an account of Cranes real adventure). The story is thematically

similar to The Red Badge of Courage, as it presents four people as insignificant puppets at the

mercy of nature (rather than war). Their hope and despair are as natural and inhuman as the

waves and seagulls that surround them; they do not look up to the sky, there is nothing

spiritual or idealistic (or human) in them. Cranes other short stories include the so called

Bowery tales (i.e. naturalist studies of urban poverty in New York), e.g. The Men in the

Storm and An Experiment in Misery, several war tales (similar to The Red Badge of

Courage), e.g. A Mystery of Heroism, and An Episode of War, a few Western tales

which dispelled sentimental myths of the frontier, e.g. The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky and

The Blue Hotel, and the so called Whilomville stories based on Cranes rural childhood,e.g. The Knife and His New Mittens.

Apart from fiction, Crane wrote two important volumes of poetry, The Black Riders and

Other Lines (1895) and War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899), which will be discussed in one

of the following sections of this chapter.

Theodore Dreiser as a naturalist writer is best remembered forSister Carrie (1900), a semi-

autobiographical novel loosely based on the life of the authors sister. The protagonist moves

from a small town to Chicago, initially lives with relations almost as poor as herself, works in

a shoe factory, but then quickly moves up on the social ladder, avoids several possible traps

(poverty, bad boyfriends), and becomes a successful actress. In one of the final chapters, in a

melancholy conversation between Carrie and an equally successful engineer, Dreiser presents

the basic questions of naturalist fiction: what is it that drives us to fight for success, what is it

that makes us curious of change and novelty, etc. There are obviously no answers to these

questions. Still, naturalism is based on the premise that some impersonal force drives

characters through their lives; it questions human (subjective) sovereignty in internal and

external life.Sister Carrie, although it remains Dreisers best known novel, is not the peak of his career; it

is his first work. The book was famous for its frank but impassionate treatment of sexual

relations (today we would just say that the protagonist had a boyfriend, broke up with him,

and then had another one), and for its tolerant representation of ethical choices made by

characters (some of them are miserable or die because of their mistakes, but nobody is really

bad). Dreiser continued to write throughout the first half of the 20th century, and notable

examples of his novelistic work (eight novels) includeJennie Gerhardt(1911), The Genius

(1915), and An American Tragedy (1925). He also published four volumes of short stories,

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and several work of non fiction where he presented his reformist and socialist political views,

e.g. Tragic America (1931), andAmerica Is Worth Saving(1941).

Jack London, together with Ambrose Bierce, Norris, and Austin, belongs to the Californian

group of naturalists, and is still the most famous of the group; together with Crane he is

probably the most famous American naturalist, and in his lifetime he enjoyed great popularity

and commercial success. He is best remembered for his more than fifty novels and short story

collections, whose thematic variety ranges from adventure to political fiction. London was (is)

famous for his novels about strength of will, ruthless and resourceful ambition, and struggle

for survival. In several novels, these themes were shown in lush settings, such as high seas or

wild Arctic nature, and many works were written from the point of view of fighting and

powerful animals (dogs, wolves), e.g. The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906).

Philosophical and moral consequences of struggle for survival (and supremacy of those whosurvive) is the theme of The Sea-Wolf (1904), a novel whose theme echoes the idea of the

superman by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The Iron Heel (1908) is a

prophetic political novel (sometimes regarded as science fiction) about future totalitarian state

in the America of the 1930s. Martin Eden (1909) is a semi-autobiographical novel about a

young mans ambitious rise in the world, and about constant frustration of his dreams, which

eventually leads him to suicide. Some of Londons late novels, e.g. The Scarlet Plague (1915)

and The Red One (1918) are early and seminal examples of science fiction. Apart from

novels, Londons fame rest on his short stories, collected in numerous volumes, most

importantly in The Son of the Wolf(1900, Londons first book publication), The God of His

Fathers (1901), and Children of the Frost(1902); these collections capitalized on Londons

first-hand experience of life in the Arctic North, and made him famous. London best known

and widely anthologized short story, To Build a Fire (1908) is an astute, compact study of

the tragic dimension of human existence: human pride, foolishness, and vulnerability when

confronted with nature.

Although Ambrose Bierce was older than most naturalist writers, he is included in thissection as a pioneer and early example of American naturalism. As a writer, he is associated

with California (and its naturalist group), but he spent his early life in the Mid-West, and he

did active service in the Civil War; this experience had a great thematic and philosophical

influence on his writing. Bierce is best remembered for his volume of Civil War stories, In

the Midst of Life (1892),3 which consists of twenty grim tales usually concluding with a

heroic, gallant, meaningless, terrible, or accidental death. Notable examples explore death in

drastically meticulous ways, e.g. a son kills a father in A Horseman in the Sky, a hanged3 The collection was published in 1891 as Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, and some editions give both titles.

The 1892 collection omitted some, and added other stories.

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spy hallucinates, seconds before he dies, about escape and several hours of life in An

Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, and an incredibly meaningless accident leads to hours of

terrible agony in One of the Missing. Bierces fiction includes another collection, Can Such

Things Be? (1893), which includes excellent horror and science fiction stories, which had a

formative influence on the popular genre. The author is also known for The Cynics Word

Book(1906), later retitled as The Devils Dictionary (1911), which is one of the most famous

American books of apothegms, and a fine example of wit and intelligence.

Naturalism included many famous and important authors of American fiction, especially

Crane, London, and Dreiser. The lesser authors, apart from those described above, include

Henry Blake Fuller, Upton Sinclair, and Willa Cather. Fuller was a representative of the

Chicago school, a productive author of novels and romances, now chiefly remembered for

The Cliff Dwellers (1893), a realist description of middle-class life in Chicago. Upton Sinclairwas similarly productive, and is similarly remembered for a single novel, The Jungle (1915),

about ruthless exploitation of Middle-European immigrants (the novel had a great impact on

contemporary readers because of its gruesome descriptions of work in slaughter houses, with

workers dying of cold or sinking in boiling meat vats). Willa Cather wrote a series of

successful novels about immigrants settling in the American West (e.g. Nebraska), including

Alexanders Bridge (1912, first novel), O, Pioneers (1913), and My Antonia (1918). Her

work, however, has a great thematic variety ranging from historical fiction to novel of

manners, e.g. One of Ours (1922),A Lost Lady (1923), andDeath Comes for the Archbishop

(1927). Cather also published four volumes of short stories: The Troll Garden (1905), Youth

and the Bright Medusa (1920), Obscure Destinies (1932), and The Old Beauty and Others

(1945). Like many authors, including Wharton, Dreiser and Sinclair, she continued to write

(and be a recognized writer) long after the end of this chapter.

Ethnic, Indian and Black Literature

Although the previous chapters included Blacks and Native Americans, the period between1865 and 1914 saw an increasing number of authors from these two groups, as well as from a

variety of ethnic backgrounds (Asian, Jewish, Hispanic). The extension concurrent with

creation and publication of an increasing number of collections of literature which was

previously unwritten (oral), e.g. Thomas Wentworth Higginson published an early article

about Negro Spirituals in 1867, and W.F. Allen published a collection of Black songs in the

same year. Indian myths and chants were collected and published after a series of

ethnographic surveys, e.g. in James Mooneys The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux

Outbreak of 1890 (1896). The new authors and themes increased the variety of American

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literature, and were an important influence on later authors in the 20th century.

Probably the most important Black fiction author of the time was C h a r l e s W . C h e s n u t t

(1858-1932), the first Black author whose fiction was regularly and successfully published in

national magazines. His fiction was similar to that by Joel Chandler Harris, who adopted

Black folklore and used it in his local color fiction. Chesnutt did the same in such stories as

The Goophered Grapevine (1887), his first story (published in The Atlantic Monthly and an

immediate success). Like most local color fiction, the story is toldby an external narrator (like

a bemused tourist) who recounts another story told by a secondary narrator in a dialect.

Because Chesnutt and the editors of the magazine did not mention who the author was, most

readers assumed he was a white man, like Harris. When Chesnutt published several successful

book collections, e.g. The Conjure Woman (1899) and The Wife of His Youth and Other

Stories of the Color-Line (1899), William Dean Howells published a laudatory review whichrevealed the authors identity (i.e. the fact that Chesnutt was a Black). This was a sensation,

and Chesnutt effectively became the first nationally acclaimed Black author. With his position

as an important author, he could criticize racist attitudes, which he did in his novels, e.g. in

The House behind the Cedars (1900), Marrow of Tradition (1901), and The Colonels Dream

(1905). Apart from Chesnutt, Black writing was represented by two important authors,

W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, who will be discussed in the section on non-

fiction.

Many examples of Indian culture also became part of printed literature at that time. Examples

include the recordings (music, transliteration and translation) of the Ghost Dance poetry, and

the letter by the spiritual leader of the Ghost Dance Movement, Jack Wilson (or Wovoka).

Ghost Dance was a social movement in the 1880s, which combined dance, music, poetry,

religious revival, and armed resistance against white violence. Its literary component was

recorded in several anthropological surveys published in the 1890s, especially those by James

Mooney. The most important representative of more conventional American Indian fiction

was probably Z i t k a l a a (1876-1938), political activist, fiction writer, author of non-fiction,librettist and musician. Interestingly, she composed (in collaboration) and wrote the libretto of the first

American Indian grand opera, The Sun Dance (1938, first staging). Zitkala as less known, white

name is Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. She wrote several autobiographical sketches, e.g. Impressions of

an Indian Childhood (1900, one of her articles published in The Atlantic Monthly), which were

collected, together with articles and short stories, in American Indian Stories (1921). Her work also

included political and social essays, and a collection ofOld Indian Legends (1901).

Non-fiction

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Several examples of non-fictional prose written between 1865 and 1914 remain an important

part of American literature. These include an important autobiography by H e n r y A d a m s

(18381918), psychological and philosophical writings by W i l l i a m J a m e s (18421910,

Henry Jamess brother), theoretical studies of education and society by J o h n D e w e y

(18591952), and books on racial issues by Black authors B o o k e r T . W a s h i n g t o n

(1856?1915) and W.E.B. Du Bois (18681916).

Henry Adams was a historian and philosopher, whose most important book was an

autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (privately printed 1907, posthumously

published 1918). The Education, rather than a regular description of life, is a series of

philosophical essays about history and civilization. In two clearly distinguishable parts of the

book, Adams describes his short-lived diplomatic career in his youth (during the Civil War),

and then comments, with great philosophical depth, on the increasing scope and speed ofcollective life in the 1890s. In between the two parts there is a gap: a tragic episode in

Adamss personal life (death of his wife by suicide) is left unmentioned in the book, which

has a continuing influence on philosophy of history. Apart from The Education, Adams wrote

historical works, two novels, and another volume of historical philosophy. The novels are not

well known: The Democracy An American Novel(1880, anonymously) is a satirical roman

a clef, and Esther A Novel (1884, pseudonymously) is a psychological realist work.

Adamss other volume of philosophy, Mount-Saint-Michel and Chartres (priv. print. 1904,

publ. 1913) combines Medieval history with aesthetics and mysticism.

William James contributed to American psychology and philosophy of religion. His most

famous work, The Principles of Psychology (1890), inspired by German founders of

psychology (Wilhelm Wundt, Hermann von Helmholtz) called for positivistic study of inner

life, and introduced the notion of stream of thought, which later became the writing method

of stream of consciousness in modernist fiction (most notably in the works by Joyce and

Woolf in Britain and Faulkner in America). Another important book by William James,

Pragmatism: A New Way of Some Old Ways of Thinking(1907), is a seminal expression of thespecifically American philosophical doctrine, which was remotely inspired by Emersonian

essays. Pragmatism, a notion which James introduces already in The Principles of

Psychology, proposes that philosophical statements and frameworks should be treated simply

as words, and judged empirically (as true or false) depending on their usefulness in life. The

third important book, Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902) is

an objective, pragmatic study of belief (written by a religious person, but not asserting

religious ideas). James wrote ten major philosophical books, and his work also includes

several volumes of essays (collected 1920) and letters (1920). The pragmatic philosophy of

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William James was extended and developed by John Dewey, whose most important works

are related to education and political philosophy. These include The School and Society

(1899), How We Think (1909), and Democracy and Education (1916), which is a small

selection of Deweys prolific work (he published most of his works in the 1930s, when he was

a nationally renowned intellectual authority).

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois were important Black authors who addressed racism and

the position of Blacks in American society (and did it in two very different ways). Washington, an

important educator4 and social activist, proposed an agenda which effectively meant separation of

educational, cultural and economical life of Blacks and whites, an idea which he famously expressed

in his speech at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895 (the so-called Atlanta compromise). The goal of

separation was to prevent racial violence and to avoid (unfair) competition, but the idea has been

questioned and abandoned as unfeasible and implicitly racist. The authors most famous book was his

autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901). Unlike Booker T. Washington, a largely self-educated

Southerner, W.E.B. Du Bois was a Harvard graduate, one of the pioneers of sociology in the United

States. His first major work The Philadelphia Negro (1896) was one of his sociological studies of

Black life in America. His most famous book, The Souls of Black Folk(1903) is a more personal study

of Black consciousness, a series of essays on Black American culture, history, with introspective

passages about social rejection, the necessity to wear an emotional veil (or mask) and about double

consciousness (of being Black and being American), a notion related to Ralph Waldo Emersons

1843 essay The Transcendentalist. In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois famously criticized Booker

T. Washingtons doctrine of separate development of Blacks and whites, which was the reason for a

very unfavorable reception of the book when it was published. In his later life, Du Bois became

increasingly involved in diplomacy and politics, which became increasingly radical and left-wing. His

political and historical writings from this period include Black Reconstruction (1935), and Color and

Democracy (1945).

Poetry

As already mentioned, poetry was not as important as prose in American literature between 1865 and

1914. Several authors of fiction wrote poetry, e.g. Bret Harte, John Milton Hay, Edith Wharton, and

(perhaps most importantly) Stephen Crane. The most important actual poets were E d w a r d

R o wl an d S i l l (18411887), Sy dn e y La n i e r (18421881), Em ma La za ru s (1849

1887), Wi l l i a m Va ug hn M oo d y (18691910), and Pa u l La wr en ce Du nb ar (1872

1906). Most poets of the time used conventional verse forms, such as the sonnet, the blank verse, the

ballad, the quatrain, or heroic couplets, and there were few poetic experimenters. The short list does

not include numerous poets (more or less famous in their lifetime) who wrote occasional poetry,

4 Booker T. Washingtons most important educational institution was the Tuskegee Institute, a college forBlacks. The college is an important setting in Ralph Ellisons novel The Invisible Man (1949), one of themost famous Black novels.

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parodies, or religious and moralistic verse, e.g. Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), Lizette Woodsworth

Reese (18561935), Ben King (1857-1894), Horace Logo Traubel (1858-1919), or Richard Hovey

(1864-1900). Omission of these and numerous other poets (this chapter has more omissions than

previous ones) is a clear indication of the increasing bulk and diversity of American literature; the

texts must be stratified and some must be deemed uninteresting, conventional and popular, unworthyof attention etc. Importantly, poetry of the age was created, so to say, under the shadow of Dickinson

and Whitman (who died in 1886 and 1892, respectively). The two poets exerted little influence then,

but it must be remembered that they were there.

Conventional verse, moralizing tone, as well as philosophical and religious themes, were characteristic

of much of the poetry of the Gilded Age, whose artistic touchstone was the English poet laureate,

Alfred, Lord Tennyson. This poetry is, to an extent, epitomized by the work ofEdward Rowland Sill.

A relatively unproductive poet, he published two volumes, The Hermitage and Other Poets (1868),

and The Venus of Milo and Other Poets (1883). Sills Collected Poetical Works were published in1906, when the author was already falling into oblivion. His most famous poem, The Fools Prayer

(1879, 1883), is a moralizing fable about human imperfection, sinfulness and the power of humility.

Sills poems often voice his religious doubt, and his response to Darwinism and other developments

which questioned traditional beliefs, e.g. Five Lives is a satirical parable of transcendentalism,

positivism, poetry, and other approaches to general questions of life, universe, and everything.

A much more prolific poet, Sidney Lanier, exerted some influence on contemporary poetry, and is

still remembered as an important Southern poet, a forerunner of the Agrarian and Fugitive movements

in Southern literature. Lanier is also cherished for his prosody (the sound quality of verse), whose richtonality sometimes imitated musical melodies and instruments (the poet was also an amateur musician

and composer). In the theoretical work The Science of English Verse (1880), he expressed the

conviction that prosody is deeply related to the (moral) meaning of a poem; he consequently put

emphasis on free use of variable rhythmic and prosodic patterns (rhythmic feet, sentence stresses,

tonality of vowels). In this, Lanier was a master of prosody comparable to Poe, and an experimenter

comparable to Walt Whitman, and somewhat similar to 20 th century poets. His best known poems

include The Ship of Earth (1868), Corn (1874), and The Symphony (1874), all of which are

thematically related to the downfall of the South and its protracted reconstruction after the Civil War.The Symphony is particularly interesting, as it is an attempt to represent different issues and

institutions (trade, war, tradition, farming, nature) symbolically, through different sounds (i.e. through

prosody), rather like in a piece of symphonic program music. Another of Laniers important themes,

i.e. mystical contemplation of nature, was inspired by Emersons transcendental philosophy. For

instance, poems such as Tampa Robins (1877) and The Marshes of Glynn (1878) are descriptions

of lush natural beauty of Florida. Most of Laniers poems were written in the 1870s, and published in

magazines; apart from a small volume (1877), the first book publication was the posthumous volume,

Poems of Sidney Lanier (1884). Collected edition (1945) of Laniers prolific work consists of ten

volumes.

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Emma Lazarus was an influential Jewish intellectual and poet, whose The New Colossus (1883)

was selected for the pedestal plaque of the Statue of Liberty in New York (today this poem is probably

the only remnant of Lazaruss fame). The closing lines of the poem reflect the belief in America as a

promised land for the worlds poor and persecuted people; this is also the theme of How Long

(1880). Writing with eloquence and command of conventional verse (sonnets, sestinas, blank verse),Lazarus wrote moralizing poems about the Jewish question, e.g. In the Jewish Synagogue at

Newport (1867) and The Crowing of the Red Cock (1882), the identity and social position of

women, e.g. Echoes (1880) and Assurance (posth. 1980), or the poets vocation, e.g. The Cranes

of Ibycus (1888). Like most American poets, Lazarus published in magazines, and then in a book,

Songs of a Semite: The Dance to Death and Other Poems (1882), a volume dedicated to George Eliot.

There was also a posthumous collection of 1888, The Poems of Emma Lazarus.

Unlike the conventional verse of Emma Lazarus, the poetry of William Vaughn Moody is an

example of a transition between regular verse forms and the aesthetic experiments of the 20th century.Although the poet is still remembered for his famous protest poems about the Spanish-American War

(1898-1900), he also wrote less conventional poetry whose themes were usually related to religious

doubt and philosophical reflection on the emerging modern world. Moodys protest poems, Ode in

Time of Hesitation, On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines, and the The Menagerie (all published

in 1900), are related to the first major war that America fought overseas, against Spain. The war

resulted with American capture of the Philippines, and transformed the United States into a colonial

power. Moody, in the three poems, expressed moral doubts about American victory, and anxiety about

its eventual repercussions in the future. Apart from these occasional poems, Moody wrote a series ofphilosophical poems, e.g. Good Friday Night (1898) about religious doubt, The Daguerreotype

(1901) about passage of time and theodicy (again religious doubt). Moodys anxiety about demise of

religion and traditional world-views, and about uncertain future of humankind, is expressed in

Gloucester Moors (1912), where the world is compared to a ship lost at sea, and loaded with human

souls. The poems are often written in variable lines, similar to free verse, and use assonance and

approximate rhymes, rather than regular verse forms. Apart from poems, Moody wrote numerous

poetic dramas, many of which were intended to be read rather than staged. The dramas represent

symbolically such themes as moral divisions, relation of God to humankind, sources of evil and good,and the meaning of human history: The Masque of Judgment(1900), The Firebringer(1904), and The

Death of Eve (unfinished 1912) are about a protracted reconciliation between God and humanity,

whereas The Great Divide (1909) is an allegory of the conflict between Puritan and liberal morality.

Moody published regularly in magazines, and his first volume was Poems (1901). The poetry and

plays were collected posthumously in two-volume The Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody

(1912).

Paul Laurence Dunbar was the most important Black poet of the Gilded Age, and probably the first

Black poet to win national acclaim and fame in the United States. His first book of poetry, Oak and

Ivy (1892) was written when Dunbar worked as an elevator operator; the book won him some local

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acclaim (in Ohio), and some poems were published in national magazines. The poet became famous

with his second book, Majors and Minors (1896), which was favorably reviewed by William Dean

Howells, (again, like with several other authors, William Dean Howells made Dunbars literary

reputation with contemporary readers). Four more volumes followed, which included poems written

both in standard English and in Black dialect. The reception of Dunbars poetry was and is mixed,bec