Fachbereich Anglistik und AmerikanistikSommersemester 2010

History of American Literature

Prof. Dr. Ralph J. Poole

Common Vision – Local ExperienceRealism, 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 Nation1865-1900

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

• 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)

• 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:

– 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 ColorSarah 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 summer-time, remember! Bring your gifts and graces and tell your secrets to this lonely country child!

Realism• 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

• 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)• 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)• 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 Writingstylistic 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. middleWashington Square (1880, American setting)The Portrait of a Lady (1879)The Bostonians (1886, American setting)What Maisie Knew (1897)The Awkward Age (1898)

3. matureThe 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. international theme

(American innocence, inexperience, cultural ignorance confronted by European moral relativism, social sophistication, sense of tradition, knowledge of rich culture

2. nature of art (creative process, artist’s conflict with social convention, false values, limited imagination)

3. individual in search of richer life (especially of women, social and emotional constraints)

• 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.

Naturalismdeveloped 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– 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

MaggieChapter 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 previously- mentioned 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 self-understanding, but self-deception

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 quasi-

religious 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 never-failing feather of black smoke. On near approach one heard the prolonged thunder of the stamp-mill, 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.