Literatura norteamericana hasta finales del siglo XIX

1
LITERATURA NORTEAMERICANA
HASTA FINALES DEL S. XIX
2º Curso Filología Inglesa
CURSO 2011-2012
2
Periods of American literature
1607-1776
1776-1790
1790-1820
1820-1865
1865-1914
The Colonial Period
The Revolutionary Period
The Early National Period
The Romantic Period, or the American Renaissance
The Realistic and Naturalistic Period
3
I
THE COLONIAL PERIOD
(1607-1776)
4
I.1. The literature of travel and exploration
Early writings about Virginia: JOHN SMITH (1580-1631)
There were two important groups who went to the New World from Europe at first. The
first group of Europeans to go to America were business people. They were hoping that they
could establish companies in the New World. The first successful effort to plant an English
colony in America was undertaken by the Virginia Company of London, a corporation with rights
to colonize and trade with Virginia. The most famous of several contemporary accounts of the
founding of the first permanent colony, Jamestown, in 1607, is Captain John Smith´s A True
Relation of Virginia (1608). The most interesting passages of the book are those relating his
dealings with the Indians. The story of his rescue from danger by the virtuous Indian princess
Pocahontas gave Virginia and North America its first great “romantic” tale in English, creating a
version of the “Noble Savage” that was very popular in Europe.
He was sent by the Virginia Company to explore the coast farther north. He gave the
name “New England” to that region, attached British names to many of its unsettled areas, and
encouraged more Englishmen to colonize the New World with the comment, “Here every man
may be master and owner of his own labor and land. If he have nothing but his hands, he
may set up his trade, and by industry quickly grow rich". His message attracted millions of
people in the next four centuries. His books provide information about practical problems and
hardships of traveling and settlement. They contained detailed information about the landscape
and the climate, of the natives and the natural resources. He also drew relatively accurate maps
that were very important at this time. Although we cannot read them as historical documents, his
narratives are nevertheless of great value.
JOHN SMITH (1580-1631)
From A Description of New England (1616)
…Worthy is that person to starve that here cannot live, if he have sense, strength, and health, for there is so
much penury of these blessings in any place but that a hundred men may, in one hour or two, make their provisions for
a day: and he that hath experience to manage well these affairs, with forty or thirty honest industrious men, might well
undertake […] to subject the savages, and feed daily two or three hundred men, with as good corn, fish and flesh, as
the earth hath of those kinds, and yet make that labor but their pleasure: provided that they have engines, that be
proper for their purposes.
Who can desire more content that hath small means, or but only his merit to advance his fortune, than to tread
and plant that ground he hath purchased by the hazard of his life? If he have but the taste of virtue, and magnanimity,
what to such a mind can be more pleasant than planting and building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude
earth by God´s blessing and his own industry, without prejudice to any? […] What so truly suits with honor and
honesty as the discovering things unknown, erecting towns, peopling countries, informing the ignorant, reforming
5
things unjust, teaching virtue and gain to our native mother country a kingdom to attend her, find employment for
those that are idle, because they know not what to do: so far from wronging any as to cause posterity to remember thee,
and remembering thee, ever honor that remembrance with praise? […..]
… I am not so simple to think that ever any other motive than wealth will ever erect there a Commonwealth
[…] our pleasure here is still gains; in England charges and loss. Here nature and liberty afford us that freely, which in
England we want or it costs us dearly. What pleasure can be more than … in planting vines, fruits, or herbs, in
contriving their own grounds, […..] to recreate themselves before their own doors, in their own boats upon the sea,
where man, woman and child, with small hook and line, by angling, may take diverse sorts of excellent fish, at their
pleasures? […] He is a very bad fisher [who] cannot kill in one day with his hook and line, one, two, or three hundred
cods […] If a man work but three days in seven he may get more than he can spend…
I.2.
Early writings about New England: The Puritan doctrine and literature
Several years later, another group of settlers also arrived in the New World. This group
was looking for the Jamestown settlement. However, because of bad navigation, they landed in
Massachusetts. They were also coming to the New World with dreams of success, but their goal
was different from the Jamestown settlement. They wanted to start a new world governed by the
Bible. They were called Puritans because they wanted to live a better life by making themselves
pure.
Puritanism came as a result of the Protestant Reformation. Many Protestants in England
believed that King Henry VIII had not changed the church enough when he broke from the
Roman Catholic church. They believed that the church needed to be further “purified” and
brought closer to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Essentially, they demanded that the rituals and
structures associated with Roman Catholicism be replaced by simpler Protestant forms of faith
and worship. They wanted to purify it because they felt it had been corrupted. They wished to
restore simplicity to church services and the authority of the Holy Bible to theology. To explain
the Puritanism that dominated New England and its literature during the seventeenth century it is
necessary to distinguish between the founders of Plymouth Colony and the founders of
Massachusetts Bay:
The Plymouth Colony in Cape Cod. The settlers—known as Pilgrim Fathers— were
Separatists; they believed that the Church of England was corrupt and that true Christians must
separate themselves from it. They were poor and uneducated. They arrived in New England on
board of the Mayflower in 1620. William Bradford was the leader of the settlement and church
they founded in Massachusetts. They were escaping from persecution in Europe, and their main
reason to the new land was to find religious freedom. The Mayflower Compact, signed during the
voyage, is the first notable document of American political history.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony. These were true Puritans and got to America on
board of the Arbella in 1630. They wanted to purify the Church of England of its popish customs.
In contrast to the Pilgrims, they were wealthy and well educated, many of them being substantial
6
property owners or professional men, university-trained as was their governor, John Winthrop,
who believed in reform but not separation. Most Massachusetts colonists were Non-separatist
Puritans.
Both Pilgrims and Puritans were Calvinists, followers of the Swiss theologian John Calvin.
Calvinism emphasizes original sin, man's fall, and sees man as an utterly corrupt being who can
only be reborn through God's grace. They accepted the main doctrines of Calvinism:
1.
Natural depravity. All men are born in original sin and can do nothing to save
themselves. Man is naturally unable to exercise free will.
2.
Unconditional election. God, in his absolute sovereignty, saves some and damns
others as he pleases.
3.
Predestination. God knows from the beginning who has been elected.
4.
Irresistible grace. God´s grace is freely given, it cannot be earned or
denied.
Both groups also held that:
1.
The Bible was the guide for all aspects of life. Thus the Puritan theocracy was modeled
on the covenant between God and man in the Old Testament, and persecution of
nonbelievers was justified by scriptural example. They also believed that they had a Godgiven responsibility to establish an ideal way of life. In Errand Into the Wilderness (1959)
the historian Perry Miller described the Puritans who went to America to form the
Massachusetts Bay Colony as having embarked upon an "errand into the wilderness."
Here, the metaphor of the "errand" captures the immigrants' belief that they were on a
sacred mission, ordained by God, to create a model community and thereby fulfill a divine
covenant. They believed God had made a covenant with their people and had chosen them
to lead the other nations of the earth. One Puritan leader, John Winthrop, expressed this
idea with the metaphor of a "City upon a Hill", a utopian society based on Puritanism that
would have no class distinction and would stress the importance of community and church.
This Puritan society of New England should serve as a model community for the rest of the
world.
2.
God´s Providence—that is, the belief that God manifests himself in nature and bestows
physical favors, such as a relief from disease or a good harvest. God continuously directs the
affairs of men. They believed that God continuously directs the affairs of men. A successful
business, for example, might very well indicate divine favor and approval. Puritans worked
very hard and saw themselves as administrators of God´s bounty, and the so called
Protestant work ethic originated with the Puritans, who believed above all that if one worked
7
hard and pleased God, one would be successful in this life, so prosperity was seen as a good
thing—a measure of God´s favor.
WILLIAM BRADFORD (1590-1657)
From Of Plymouth Plantation
Book I, Chapter 9. Of Their Voyage and How They Passed the Sea; and of Their Safe
Arrival at Cape Cod
September 6. These troubles being blown over1, and now all being compact together in one ship2, they put to sea again
with a prosperous wind, which continued divers days together, which was some encouragement unto them; yet,
according to the usual manner, many were afflicted with seasickness. And I may not omit here a special work of God's
providence. There was a proud and very profane young man, one of the seamen, of a lusty3, able body, which made
him the more haughty4; he would always be contemning the poor people in their sickness and cursing them daily with
grievous execrations; and did not let5 to tell them that he hoped to help to cast half of them overboard before they
came to their journey's end, and to make merry with what they had; and if he were by any gently reproved, he would
curse and swear most bitterly. But it pleased God before they came half seas over, to smite6 this young man with a
grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner, and so was himself the first that was thrown overboard. Thus
his curses light on his own head, and it was an astonishment to all his fellows for they noted it to be the just hand of
God upon him.
After they had enjoyed fair winds and weather for a season, they were encountered many times with cross winds and
met with many fierce storms with which the ship was shroudly shaken, and her upper works made very leaky; and one
of the main beams in the midships was bowed and cracked, which put them is some fear that the ship could not be able
to perform the voyage. […..]
In sundry of these storms the winds were so fierce and the seas so high, as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were
forced to hull7 for divers days together. And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull in a mighty storm, a lusty young
man […..] coming upon some occasion above the gratings […..] was […..] thrown into sea; but it pleased God that he
caught hold of the topsail halyards which hung overboard and ran out at length. Yet he held his hold […..] till he was
hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hook and other means got into the ship again
and his life saved. And though he was something ill with it, yet he lived many years after and became a profitable
member both in church and commonwealth. […..]
But to omit other things, (that I may be brief,) after long beating at sea they fell with that land which is called Cape
Cod8; the which being made and certainly known to be it, they were not a little joyful. After some deliberation had
amongst themselves and with the master of the ship, they tacked about and resolved to stand for the southward (the
wind and weather being fair) to find some place about Hudson's River for their habitation. But after they had sailed
that course about half a day, they fell amongst dangerous shoals9 and roaring breakers, and they were so far entangled
therewith as they conceived themselves in great danger; and the wind shrinking upon them withal10, they resolved to
bear up again for the Cape, and thought themselves happy to get out of those dangers before night overtook them, as
by God's providence they did. And the next day they got into the Cape-harbor where they rid in safety. [….]
Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven
who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof,
again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. […..]
1
Ended without consequences.
The Mayflower.
3
Healthy and strong.
4
Arrogant.
5
Hesitate.
6
Strike.
7
Drift with the wind under short sail.
8
They arrived at Cape Cod in southeastern Massachusetts on November 9, 1620, after a 66-day voyage.
9
Shallow places in the sea.
10
In addition.
2
8
But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people's present condition; and so I
think will the reader, too, when he well consider the same. Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles
before in their preparation, they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. It is recorded in Scripture as mercy to the
Apostle and his shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed them no small kindness in refreshing them; but
these savage barbarians, when they met with them were readier to fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise. And for
the season, it was winter; and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and
subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast.
Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men? And what
multitudes there might be of them, they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah11, to view
from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes; for which way soever12 they turned their eyes they
could have little solace or content in respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stand upon
them with a weather-beaten face; and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage
hue13. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar and
gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. […..]
What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers
rightly say: `Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean and were ready to perish in this
wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord and He heard their voice and looked on their adversity,´ etc. `Let them
therefore praise the Lord because He is good: and His mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been
redeemed of the Lord, show how He hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the
desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed
in them. Let them confess before the Lord His loving kindness, and His wonderful works before the sons of men.´
11
Mountain from which Moses saw the Promised Land.
In any way.
13
Aspect.
12
9
Puritan Poetry: Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612-1672)
America´s first poet of talent, Anne Bradstreet, arrived with her husband at
Massachusetts on the Arbella in 1630. Her poems, the first volume of collected verse by an
American poet, were published in London in 1650 as The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in
America, a title chosen without her knowledge by her brother in law. Most of her poems are long
and show a tendency to imitate minor English writers. Her reputation today is founded on a few
shorter pieces included in the posthumous collection, Several Poems (1678).
BRADTREET’S ARCHAIC LANGUAGE
art= are
dost=does
didst= did
hast=have
hath= has
shalt= shall
thou= you (used when talking to one person)
thee= you (used as the object when talking to one person)
thine= yours
thy= your (used when talking to one person)
ye= you (used when talking to two or more people)
She also contracted some words with apostrophes:
‘mongst= amongst
lov’d= loved
‘twas= it was
‘ere= here
e’er= ever
‘gin=begin
10
To My Dear and Loving Husband
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize14 thy love more than whole mines of gold
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought15 but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay.
The heavens reward thee manifold16, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persevere
That when we live no more, we may live ever17.
The Author to her Book
A mi querido y amado esposo
Si existen dos personas que, siempre, fueron una, eso somos nosotros.
Si hubo un hombre amado por su esposa, ese hombre eres tú.
Si alguna vez una mujer fue feliz junto a un hombre,
compárense conmigo, mujeres, si pueden.
Aprecio tu amor más que las minas de oro
o todas las riquezas que el Oriente posee.
Tal es mi amor que ni los ríos lo puede enfriar.
Sólo el amor y no el deber, me recompensa.
Tu amor es tal que no puedo, de ningún modo, retribuir;
ruego que los cielos premien tu multiplicidad
para que, mientras vivamos, el amor persevere de tal forma
que aún cuando no estemos más, sigamos viviendo para siempre.
La autora a su libro
Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Fruto deforme de mi mente débil
Who after birth didst by my side remain,
que quedaste al nacer aquí a mi lado
Till snatched18 from thence by friends, less wise than true,
y amigos inconscientes te raptaron
Who thee abroad, exposed to public view,
y a un público extranjero te expusieron;
Made thee in rags19, halting to th' press to trudge,
corriste a trompicones a la imprenta
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
y a fe que allí aumentaron tus errores.
At thy return my blushing was not small,
No fue escaso, a tu vuelta, mi sonrojo
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call,
cuando en letras de molde, descarriado,
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
oí que madre tuya me llamabas;
Thy visage was so irksome20 in my sight;
indigno de la luz te deseché,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
tan molesto veía tu semblante
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could:
mas siendo mío, acaso con cariño
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
pudiera corregir tus deficiencias
And rubbing off a spot still made a flaw.
te lavé el rostro y vi nuevos defectos
I stretched thy joints to make thee even feet,
y frotando un lunar hice una mancha.
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling21 than is meet;
Por ver de igualar tus pies, te estiré,
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
pero aún cojeas más de lo oportuno;
But nought save22homespun cloth i' th' house I find.
di en arreglarte con mejores galas
In this array23, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
mas no hallé en casa sino basta estopa.
In critic's hands beware24 thou dost not come,
Así, andrajoso, corre donde el vulgo
And take thy way where yet though art not known;
y no caigas en manos de los críticos;
If for thy father asked, say thou hadst none;
huye adonde no seas conocido
And for thy mother, she alas25 is poor,
Di que no tienes padre si preguntan,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.
y que tu madre, ay, es pobre, y que por eso
te tuvo que dejar solo en la calle.
14
Prize: value.
Ought means “nothing” and “duty”.
16
Manifold: in many different ways.
17
Ever: forever, always.
18
Snatched: taken away. Thence: a particular place
19
Rags: old torn clothes. Halying: slowly and with hesitation or uncertainty. Trudge. Walk wearily, slowly and with
heavy steps.
20
Irksome: irritating
21
Hobbling: limping.
22
Nought save: nothing except. Home-spun: made at home; simple.
23
Array: dress.
24
Beware: be careful.
25
Alas: interjection used to express sorrow.
15
11
In Class Group Activities
1.- Read the class notes and answer the following questions:
• How were the New England Puritans different from the settlers at Jamestown?
• What were the core religious ideas of the Puritans
• What did the Puritans hope to accomplish in New England?
Pilgrims vs. Puritans: Read all the information about the Pilgrims and the Puritans and
compare / contrast them
Pilgrims
Puritans
2. Compare John Smith and William Bradford
3.-Search for Extended metaphor ; Anaphora; Protestant work ethic
12
II
THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
(1776-1790)
13
II. 1. The Enlightenment
In 1763, things had changed in the American colonies from the Puritan days. The colonial
settlements were growing and developing. Although disunited by geography and religion, the
colonies were united by the hopes and promises of a new land. These colonists were rebels in
many aspects; and, in the next two decades they would throw off the English yoke and unite into
a prosperous, thriving nation. The new philosophy developed by the founders of the United
States was RATIONALISM. This philosophy was evident at the start of the revolution and in the
documents setting up the new government. The hard-fought American Revolution against Britain
(1775-1783) was the first modern war of liberation against a colonial power. The triumph of
American independence seemed to many at the time a divine sign that America and her people
were destined for greatness. Military victory fanned nationalistic hopes for a great new literature.
Yet with the exception of outstanding political writing, few works of note appeared during or soon
after the Revolution.
The 18th-century American Enlightenment was a movement marked by an emphasis on
rationality rather than tradition, scientific inquiry instead of unquestioning religious dogma, and
representative government in place of monarchy. Enlightenment thinkers and writers were
devoted to the ideals of justice, liberty, and equality as the natural rights of man. The
Enlightenment was a philosophy of freedom that was most strongly developed in Great Britain
and France in the 18th century. Enlightenment philosophers considered freedom as a natural right
of human beings, but the definition of freedom received various emphases: political (a people´s
freedom to choose its own government), religious (freedom from the authority of the church),
scientific (the freedom of the mind naturally endowed with reason), economic (freedom to hold
property and engage in trade).
The Enlightenment believed that Reason, not mere authority or tradition, is the weapon
man has to understand his world and organize his life and the life of the society he lives in.
Enlightened women and men were quite optimistic. They truly believed that HUMAN BEINGS
COULD REACH PERFECTION AND HAPPINESS in a world in which everything worked as a
perfect machine that could be studied and controlled using intelligence. The Enlightenment or the
Age of Reason produced great and sometimes violent changes as, for example, the American and
French revolutions. It also produced great names: Voltaire and Rousseau in France, and Franklin
and Jefferson in the United States.The Enlightenment rested on five general beliefs:
(1)
the inevitability of progress
(2)
the perfectibility of man and his institutions
(3)
the efficacy of reason
(4)
the beneficence of God
14
(5)
the plenitude and perfection of nature
Unlike Puritans, the enlightened men had little interest in the hereafter, believing in the
POWER OF REASON AND SCIENCE to further human progress. They believed that people are
by nature good, not evil. Essentially the Enlightenment represented a shift from the characteristic
Calvinistic position to rationalism in attitudes toward nature, man and God. Scientific advances
often served to undermine the literal interpretation of Genesis and other parts of the Bible. The
enlightened men became less concerned with natural wonders and remarkable providences the
extraordinary aspects of nature that had dominated the 17th century, and more concerned with its
ordinary aspects, which revealed a universe operating by scientific laws rather than supernatural
intervention.
DEISM, as the religion of nature, developed out of this change in attitude. The deists
believed in God, but an impersonal God. To them, God was the PRIME MOVER, the divine
clockwinder who set the universe in motion and let it run without interference. He was no longer
directly concerned with the affairs of men. Only through natural laws did he manifest himself, and
only through reason could man understand him. In general, the deists distrusted the Bible and
the clergy, denied the divinity of Christ and the concept of grace, and deplored all forms of
organized religion. Instead they put their faith in reason and science, believe in an innate moral
sense, and advocated a life of virtue. Many of the leading figures in the American Revolution
were Deists, principal among them Benjamin Franklin who, like Thomas Jefferson, didn´t like to
publicize their deistic opinions.
The shift to rationalism also appeared in the new attitude toward man. During the
Enlightenment, man´s reason was dominant. With it he could learn the laws of nature and place
himself in harmony with the universe, thus fulfilling his purpose. He was no longer considered a
victim of original sin, and his reason could operate without help from the Bible or the clergy. Man
was also the source and object of government. It was believed that man is born with such natural
rights as those of life, liberty and property. He forms governments and chooses rulers, not to
surrender his rights, but to delegate to his rulers the power to protect them. Thus the source of
government is the people rather than God. American patriots adopted these ideas to justify the
Revolutionary War, believing that if man could form governments he could also dissolve them.
Thomas Jefferson composed The Declaration of Independence (adopted July 4, 1776), and the
claims made on behalf of human rights have influenced the aspirations of many men and women
around the world for two centuries:
15
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706-1790) embodied the Enlightenment ideal of humane
rationality. Practical yet idealistic, hard-working and enormously successful, Franklin recorded his
early life in his famous Autobiography. Writer, printer, publisher, scientist, philanthropist, and
diplomat, he was the most famous and respected private figure of his time. He was the first great
self-made man in America, a poor democrat born in an aristocratic age that his fine example
helped to liberalize.
Born in 1706 into a poor candle-maker's family "poor and obscure" as he says of himself
in his Autobiography, he had very little formal education. As he was a voracious reader, however,
he managed to make up for the deficiency by his own effort. Self-educated but well-read in
Enlightenment writers, Franklin learned from them to apply reason to his own life and to break
with tradition—in particular the old-fashioned Puritan tradition—when it threatened to smother his
ideals. While a youth, Franklin taught himself languages, read widely, and practiced writing for
the public. When he moved from Boston to Philadelphia, Franklin already had the kind of
education associated with the upper classes. He also had the Puritan capacity for hard, careful
work, constant self-scrutiny, and the desire to better himself. These qualities steadily propelled
him to wealth, respectability, and honor.
Never selfish, Franklin tried to help other ordinary people become successful by sharing
his insights and initiating a characteristically American genre—the SELF-HELP BOOK. Franklin's
Poor Richard's Almanack, begun in 1732 and published for many years, made him prosperous
and well-known throughout the colonies. This book contained factual information and advice for
being socially successful and achieving wealth in a series of proverbs, maxims and popular
aphorisms dealing with all kinds of matters collected from various sources or invented by himself.
Some of the aphorisms were to reappear in The Way to Wealth (1757), a key document to the
understanding of the new American ideal. Thus, aphorisms like "Lost time is never found again,"
"A penny saved is a penny earned," "God help them that help themselves," "Fish and visitors
stink in three days" and "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and
wise", filled the almanac, and taught as much as amused.
He also wrote hundreds of newspaper articles on social and political subjects. Only in his
Autobiography (1771, 1784, 1788-1790) did Franklin write about himself. It is the simple yet
immensely fascinating record of a man rising to wealth and fame from a state of poverty and
obscurity into which he was born, the faithful account of the colorful career of America's first selfmade man. The book consists of four parts, written at different times:
•
The first part, written in 1771 when Franklin was Pennsylvania´s colonial agent in
London, covers the years from his birth to his marriage (1706-1730)
•
Part two, the shorter section, was written in 1784-1785 when Franklin was living in
France as a representative for the United States.
16
•
The final parts were written in Philadelphia in 1788 and during the winter of 1789.
Because his primary motive for writing the story of his life was to provide a model for
public conduct, he translated his personal experiences into general propositions which could be
usefully applied to other people. Creating as it does the image of a boy's rise from rags to riches,
the book demonstrates Franklin's confident belief that the new world of America was a land of
opportunities which might be met through hard work and wise management. He, through his own
example as a poor young boy who was able to rise on the social ladder of the American society,
became the living example of what later became identified as the AMERICAN DREAM. Franklin
saw his individual success as part of living in a democratic society, which offered people a number
of opportunities, through which committed, hard-working individuals could achieve upward mobility.
He represented the American self-made man, whose strong character, pragmatic rationalism, selfreliance and self-discipline brought about success in various walks of life. His morally oriented
pragmatism impelled him to consider the usefulness of everything both for the individual and for
society in attaining worldly success. A look at the style of The Autobiography will readily reveal that
it is the pattern of Puritan simplicity, directness, and concision. The plainness of its style, the
homeliness of imagery, the simplicity of diction, syntax, and expression are some of its most
important features.
From The Autobiography
At the time I establish’d myself in Pensylvania, there was not a good bookseller’s shop in any of the colonies to
the southward of Boston. In New-York and Philadelphia the printers were indeed stationers, they sold only paper, etc.,
almanacs, ballads, and a few common school books. Those who lov’d reading were oblig’d to send for their books
from England. The members of the Junto26 had each a few. We had left the alehouse where we first met, and hired a
room to hold our club in. I propos’d that we should all of us bring our books to that room, where they would not only
be ready to consult in our conferences, but become a common benefit, each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he
wish’d to read at home. This was accordingly done, and for some time contented us. Finding the advantage of this little
collection, I propos’d to render the benefit from books more common by commencing a public subscription library. I
drew a sketch of the plan and rules that would be necessary, and got a skilful conveyancer27…to put the whole in form
of articles of agreement to be subscribed; by which each subscriber engag’d to pay a certain sum down for the first
purchase of books and an annual contribution for increasing them. So few were the readers at that time in Philadelphia,
and the majority of us so poor, that I was not able with great industry to find more than fifty persons, mostly young
tradesmen, willing to pay down for this purpose forty shillings each, and ten shillings per annum. On this little fund we
began. The books were imported. The library was open one day in the week for lending them to the subscribers, on
their promisory notes to pay double the value if not duly returned. The institution soon manifested its utility, was
imitated by other towns and in other provinces, the libraries were augmented by donations, reading became
fashionable, and our people having no public amusements to divert their attention from study became better acquainted
with books, and in a few years were observ’d by strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than people of
the same rank generally are in other countries […]
I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho’ some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as the
eternal decrees of God, election, reprobation, etc., appear’d to me unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented
myself from the public assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying-day, I never was without some religious
principles; I never doubted, for instance, the existence of the deity, that he made the world, and govern’d it by his
Providence; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our souls are immortal; and that
all crime will be punished and virtue rewarded either here or hereafter; these I esteem’d the essentials of every
26
27
A small select group.
Attorney.
17
religion, and being to be found in all the religions we had in our country I respected them all, tho’ with different
degrees of respect as I found them more or less mix’d with other articles which without any tendency to inspire,
promote or confirm morality, serv’d principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another [...]
It was about this time I conceiv'd the bold and arduous project of arriving at Moral Perfection. I wish'd to live
without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might
lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one
and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While my care
was employ'd in guarding against one fault, I was often surprised by another. Habit took the advantage of inattention.
Inclination was sometimes too strong for reason. I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was
our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping28; and that the contrary habits must be
broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of
conduct. For this purpose I therefore contrived29 the following method.
In the various enumerations of the moral virtues I had met with in my Reading, I found the catalog more or
less numerous, as different writers included more or fewer Ideas under the same name. Temperance, for example, was
by some confined to eating and drinking, while by others it was extended to mean the moderating every other pleasure,
appetite, inclination, or passion, bodily or mental, even to our avarice and ambition. I propos'd to myself, for the sake
of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer Ideas annex'd to each, than a few names with more Ideas; and I
included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr'd to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to
each a short precept, which fully express'd the extent I gave to its meaning.
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoiding trifling30 conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no Time. Be always employ´d in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid extremes. Forbear31 resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.
11. TRANQUILITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery32 but for health or offspring; Never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your
own or another´s peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
My intention being to acquire the habitude33 of all these virtues, I judg’d it would be well not to distract my
attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that,
then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro’ the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of
some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arrang’d them with that view, as they stand above.
‫٭٭٭٭٭‬
28
Failing.
Invented.
30
Trivial.
31
Avoid.
32
Sexual intercourse.
33
i.e. making these virtues an integral part of his nature.
29
18
ST.JOHN DE CRÈVECOEUR (1735-1813). His concept of America
Another Enlightenment figure is Hector St.John de Crèvecoeur, whose Letters from an
American Farmer (1782) gave Europeans a glowing idea of opportunities for peace, wealth, and
pride in America. Neither an American nor a farmer, but a French aristocrat who owned a
plantation outside New York City before the Revolution, Crèvecoeur enthusiastically praised the
colonies for their industry, tolerance, and growing prosperity in 12 letters that depict America as
an agrarian paradise — a vision that would inspire Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
and many other writers up to the present. Crèvecoeur was the earliest European to develop a
considered view of America and the new American character. The first to exploit the “melting
pot” image of America, in a famous passage
he asks:
ST. JOHN DE CRÈVECOEUR (1735-1813)
Letters from an American Farmer (1782)
From Letter III What Is an American?
I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present
themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. He must greatly rejoice
that he lived at a time to see this fair country discovered and settled; he must necessarily feel a share of national pride,
when he views the chain of settlements which embellishes these extended shores…He is arrived on a new continent; a
modern society offers itself to his contemplation, different from what he had hitherto seen. It is not composed, as in
Europe, of great lords who possess everything; and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical
families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible
one.….. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe.….We are a people of
cultivators, scattered over an immense territory, communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable
rivers, united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreading their power, because
they are equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because
each person works for himself.…. We have no princes, for whom we toil, starve, and bleed; we are the most perfect
society now existing in the world. Here man is free as he ought to be.…
The next wish of this traveler will be to know whence came all these people? They are a mixture of English,
Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans and Swedes. From this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans
have arisen. The eastern provinces must indeed be excepted, as being the unmixed descendants of Englishmen.…
In this great American asylum, the poor of Europe have by some means met together, and in consequence of
various causes; to what purpose should they ask one another what countrymen they are? Alas, two thirds of them had
no country. Can a wretch who wanders about, who works and starves, whose life is a continual scene of sore affliction
or pinching penury, can that man call England or any other kingdom his country? A country that had no bread for him,
whose fields procured him no harvest, who met with nothing but the frowns of the rich, the severity of the laws, with
jails and punishments; who owned not a single foot of the extensive surface of this planet? No! Urged by a variety of
motives, here they came. Everything has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social
system; here they are become men: in Europe they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegetative mold and
refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now by the power of
transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished! Formerly they were not numbered in any civil
lists of their country, except in those of the poor; here they rank as citizens. By what invisible power has this surprising
metamorphosis been performed? By that of the laws and that of their industry. The laws, the indulgent laws, protect
them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adoption; they receive ample rewards for their labors; these
accumulated rewards procure them lands; those lands confer on them the title of freemen, and to that title every benefit
is affixed which men can possibly require. This is the great operation daily performed by our laws.…
19
What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence
that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose
grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose present four
sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices
and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the
new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater34. Here
individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great
changes in the world….here [Americans] are incorporated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever
appeared, and which will hereafter become distinct by the power of the different climates they inhabit….Here the
rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor; his labor is founded on the basis of nature,
self-interest… The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and
form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of
a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence.— This is an American….
Men are like plants; the goodness and flavour of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in
which they grow. We are nothing but what we derive from the air we breathe, the climate we inhabit, the government
we obey, the system of religion we profess, and the nature of our employment. Here you will find but few crimes; these
have acquired as yet no root among us.
34
Dear mother.
20
In Class Group Activities: A comparison of Puritan and Enlightenment Thinking
PURITANISM (Calvinism)
Definition:
GOD
UNIVERSE
MAN
HUMAN
NATURE
ATTITUDE
toward LIFE
MAN´S
DUTY
SOCIETY
ENLIGHTENMENT
Definition:
21
III
THE EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD
(1790-1820)
22
III.1. The Beginnings of a National Literature
The content of American literature between 1790 and 1820 was largely determined by the
peculiar circumstances of American life and shows the dominant nationalistic patterns of thought
of the period. Although the United States in 1790 had the will to be a nation, it still lacked
economic and self-sufficiency and cultural distinctiveness. The main preoccupation of the period
is to create their own identity as a new country, that is, the desire for a declaration of literary
independence and a truly American literature. In a period of political debates, magazines and
newspapers arose in quantity to declare the need for a national art, a national literature and a
national language that would be entirely American. But the creation of an original American
literature, in a new nation that had been for many years a British colony was not going to be a
simple task. The writers of this period faced many problems:
(1) It was a new nation and the history they had was mainly European.
(2) There was no literary capital in the United States like London or Paris.
(3) Lack of market for their writings.
(4) Lack of an International Copyright Law until 1891.
(5) They did not have an independently American way of writing.
At the end of the 18th century literature did not yet exist in the United States as a
profession that allowed a writer to earn a living by it. To British observers, the idea of a distinct
American literature seemed absurd: since it was written in English, made use of English forms
and relied on an English publishing market, literary production in America could at best be
regarded as a sub-category of English literature. Because it was a young country, with a short
history and hardly any monuments, many people believed that America did not offer adequate
subjects for literature. And because it was a democratic society, it was assumed that America
could not give birth to the outstanding talent or even genius that would distinguish a great writer.
This is the situation for the writers of the period and it is usual for them to complain about their
fate. National pride made them demand more support and write defenses of America against
criticism of British editors.
An Emerging American Fiction
The colonists got along for nearly two centuries without creating their own novels and
plays. Then, just as their new nation came into being, they began to develop these forms and to
argue over their validity. Both forms were used to express the nationalistic spirit that dominated
the new republic. This DOMINANT NATIONALISM was evident in the search for American
setting and characters, but the American novel in its first stages was nevertheless indebted to
23
th
English models. In the late 18
th
and early 19
centuries because many descendants of the
Puritans regarded novels as a pack of lies and a source of vice, some authors wrote prose fiction
anonymously, and readers often read it in secrecy. To counteract such attitudes, novelists tried
to prove their work beneficial. They chose actual people and events for their subjects; if this was
impossible, they at least claimed to have so chosen. They explained that their tales were drawn
from “real life” or pointed out that they invariably portrayed the awful consequences of sin and the
fair rewards of virtue. That sin was made attractive was coincidental. Many novels of this period
have the subtitle “A Tale of Truth” or have the statements of their veracity in preface, text or
footnotes.
Three distinct trends may be discerned, in an order which is roughly chronological:
(1)
The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy (1789) by William Hill Brown, was
belongs to a genre called SENTIMENTAL NOVEL and shows the influence of the English
writer Samuel Richardson. In the sentimental novels we always find characters who are
extremely sensitive, even minor tragedies or emotions make them cry like children. Quite
often the plot shows how much virtue can suffer in the hands of evil. Young lovers or
innocent girls will be persecuted once and again by misfortune and the deeds of cruel
enemies.
(2)
The GOTHIC NOVEL of terror, suspense, and mystery, found a gifted practitioner in
Charles Brocken Brown, America´s most important early novelist. The Gothic novel was a
popular genre of the day featuring exotic and wild settings, disturbing psychological depth,
and much suspense. Trappings included ruined castles or abbeys, ghosts, mysterious
secrets, and threatening figures.
(3)
The third trend of American fiction, the HISTORICAL ROMANCE, emerged directly from
the work of the British writer Walter Scott, whose novels of history, legend, adventure,
love and patriotism were very popular in the United States. The work of James Fenimore
Cooper was a clear improvement over earlier attempts in the form.
III.2.
Early Romantic writers: Washington Irving, James F. Cooper, and
William Cullen Bryant
Three American writers, all born in the late 18th century, are usually considered early
Romantics: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant. They
represent the first generation of American literature; they successfully used American experience
24
to write works of literature not possible for a European to write, and they showed for the first time
that a person could be an American and a successful writer.
WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) was the first American to become a successful man
of letters and the first to gain international fame. His reputation abroad may have been due to his
eighteenth-century British style, his familiarity with European life, and the fact that much of his
work deals with Europe rather than with America. Although he fits the Romantic mold in his
evasion of contemporary questions and his love of the past, he lacks the emotional intensity of
most Romantics. He was a FIGURE OF LITERARY TRANSITION in a society where American
literature was still a hybrid. Irving's artistic opinions and his style changed dramatically over time
but we can detect certain opinions and thematic elements that dominate his early as well as his
later works.
Irving's career can be roughly divided into two important phases, the first of which span from
his first book up to 1832, the other stretching over the remaining years of his life. His History of
New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (1809) in its
exuberance, scope, and satiric art is the peak of neoclassical satire in American letters. It is
commonly known as the `Knickerbocker History´, from its fictitious author, “Diedrich
Knickerbocker”. The book is a comic masterpiece and shouldn´t be regarded as a historical
model. Entertainment was its primary goal; humor, its primary tone. His purpose is to write
serious history in the heroic strain, but as a historian Knickerbocker is confused and confusing,
and what he gives is not history but a parody of history and of the pomposities and pedantries of
historians: he tries to write seriously but doesn´t distinguish the good from the bad, the important
from the trivial; the military actions are described in a broad mock-epic style, and descriptions of
persons and places are full of exaggerations, incongruous juxtapositions, etc.
In 1815, Irving sailed to Liverpool and traveled extensively in Europe. His English travels
inspired The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819-1820), a collection of 34 essays and stories.
The Sketch Book has no continuity of subject matter, no central purpose, no unity. The only thing
that unifies the book together is the character of Geoffrey Crayon presented as a traveler, an
observer with a taste for the old fashioned. The narrator of his book is the sentimental G. Crayon
who expresses his attachment to British culture and its old monuments. The Sketch Book is
essentially homage to English scenes and English writers. It is conservative in its cultural views
and antiquarian in its aesthetic inspirations. Indeed, Crayon doesn't hesitate to express his
preference for tradition, aristocracy and rurality rather than for innovation, democracy and
urbanization. The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, showed that Irving had gradually become a
romantic writer as result of his residence in Europe for many years and his contact with Walter
Scott. The largest number deal with fairs, the English Christmas, the life of inns and
stagecoaches or English life and scenes with a nostalgic flavor.
25
Only a few of Geoffrey Crayon´s sketches deal with American materials, but they include
`The Legend of Sleepy Hollow´ and `Rip van Winkle´, the two tales with Hudson River Valley
settings that are the most famous and popular of Irving´s writings. Like the English sketches that
surround them, these two tales also reveal Irving´s antiquarian impulse and his fascination with
the picturesque. Both are attributed to his old narrator, Diedrich Knickerbocker, and described as
oral legends of American life. The sources of both were adaptations of German stories of the
supernatural to which Irving had been directed by Walter Scott. In spite of this, the most
important thing was Irving´s decision to shift these two stories into the American landscape,
rather than simply retelling them as his version of old German tales. If the United States thought
it lacked history and legend, Irving was redeeming the lack. He chose his settings carefully,
shifting the tales to the sleepy Dutch-American villages along the Hudson River valley which he,
as Diedrich Knickerbocker, had already used in his History of New York. He wants the American
reader to identify those two legends as American; the United States as a country can also create
legends and mystery, a sense of history.
In 1832, after 17 years in Europe, Irving returned to the USA that was in full expansion and
he realized that its New Frontier was a big source of literary inspiration. During that period, he
traveled extensively in the West. As a result he wrote A Tour of the Prairie (1835) and Astoria
(1836). But these "American" books are of only secondary importance in the Irving canon, and
constitute the "minor phase" of his career
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER (1789-1851) was the first American writer to fully exploit a
wide range of purely native settings and subjects, from the sea to the wilderness to the
farmlands. More than Irving, Cooper already belongs to the Romantic age and found his
th
inspiration not in the prose style of the 18 century English essayists but in the historical novels
of Walter Scott. He was romantic in his love of the past, his fondness for wild nature, and his
sympathy for the `noble savage´ as represented by the Indians at their best. His representation
of the Frontier certainly appears as his greatest contribution to an authentically American
literature. Cooper transformed the American Frontier into a symbol of a national myth. As a
novelist, Cooper is not very realistic. He used the essential features of the romance. His
characters and his settings are always functional. In following the romance tradition, he used
character types which lacked psychological complexity: they are either good or bad, and the bad
are always punished at the end.
The Leatherstocking Novels: Series of five novels that depict the life of the early American
frontier and derive its title from the nickname of the hero, Natty Bumppo: The Pioneers (1823),
The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer
(1841).
26
•
Themes:
By his imaginative treatment of the conquering of the wilderness, Cooper was serving as
mythmaker. He created a myth about the formative period of the American nation. If the history
of the United States is, in a sense, the process of the American settlers exploring and pushing
the American frontier forever westward, then Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales effectively
approximate the American national experience of adventure into the West. He turned the west
and frontier as a usable past and he helped to introduce western tradition to American literature.
Though Cooper didn´t plan the five novels as a series, they have a thematic unity: the opposition
of wilderness and settlement; nature and progress; anarchic freedom and law; nature and
civilization; the individual and society. The first volumes appeared at a time when the Americans
were concerned about the quality and goals of American life, and they talked about what made
them peculiar or distinguished them from Europeans.
•
Natty Bumppo´s Life period:
The Leatherstocking Novels form a five-volume biography of their protagonist Natty
Bumppo, from his young manhood among the Delaware Indians to his death, in his early
eighties, among the Pawnee tribes just west of the Mississippi River. They cover the period from
1740 to shortly after 1800. In The Deerslayer, Bumppo is in his early twenties; In The Pathfinder
and The Last of the Mohicans, he is in his mid-thirties, in the prime of life. In The Pioneers
Bumppo is an old frontiersman and an old hunter, he is in his seventies. In The Prairie he is in his
eighties, ready for and finally meeting death.
Natty Bumppo is known by other names such as Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder,
Leatherstocking or the trapper. His character remains strikingly consistent throughout the series,
which treats his life and adventures from youth to old age and death. The perfect woodsman,
who dislikes the restraints and destructiveness of settlements, Bumppo understands and loves
the forest, and his moral qualities are as great as his understanding. Generous both to friends
and to enemies, he possesses a simple, firm morality, and a cool nerve and neverfailing
resourcefulness.
•
Natty Bumppo as Epic Hero:
The English writer D. H. Lawrence said that The Leatherstocking Tales “form a sort of
American Odyssey, with Natty Bumppo for Odysseus”. Natty Bumppo is the American epic hero.
Like Odysseus´ ocean, his frontier is uncharted. Bumppo, like the traditional epic hero, has
extraordinary physical gifts, particularly his hawkeye. His virtues too are those of the epic hero,
who views women not as needed companions but as temptresses who divert him from his epic
mission; like the epic hero, Bumppo is strong, loyal, a perfect companion, and wise in old age. In
his personality we find also all the best qualities of a heroic figure: he´s a man of instinctive
honesty, courage and generosity; he´s essentially good and unsophisticated, fast, and noble.
Like Homer´s epic, the Leatherstocking stories celebrate the great times of the past and lament
the present; they depict battles and games (like shooting matches and foot races); and they are
27
packed with adventure and danger. And always there is the sense of impending doom in the form
of hostile Indian tribes or renegade whites or the representatives of encroaching civilization.
•
Natty Bumppo as the American Adam:
Ever since Columbus got to the New World, America has been imagined as a New Eden,
and the American as the new Adam who could begin history anew. In Natty Bumppo, Cooper
created the mythic embodiment of the innocent American in his Eden of plenty. The forest of the
Leatherstocking Tales is a fruitful garden where the weather is never unkind and the landscape
always unspoiled. Natty is thus Adam before the creation of Eve, and so must refuse any alliance
with woman, for to accept would be to lose his mythic innocence. As the Leatherstocking stories
end in time with the youth Natty Bumppo, so do they sing the mythic innocence of America on
the frontier. In the words of D.H.Lawrence, “The Leatherstocking novels… go backwards from
old age to golden youth. That is the myth of America. She starts old, wrinkled and writhing in an
old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth
of America”.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878) is the first American to achieve an international
reputation as a poet. His most important contribution was a naturalizing of the European romantic
theme of Nature. Bryant is considered an early proponent of Romanticism in American literature,
and his work is often compared thematically and stylistically to that of English Romantic poet
William Wordsworth. Opposing eighteenth-century poetic conventions, his poetry usually
meditates on nature and the transience of earthly things. In “Thanatopsis” (1817), “The Yellow
Violet”, “To a Waterfowl”, “A Forest Hymn”, and “To the Fringed Gentian”, Bryant finds in Nature
the tangible presence of the divine, the good benevolence of supernal truth and beauty. Bryant,
along with the landscape painters of his time, helped his readers appreciate the spiritual value of
the American wilderness.
28
Thanatopsis
To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And gentle sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;—
Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around—
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,—
Comes a still voice—Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolv'd to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrend'ring up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to th' insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thy eternal resting place
Shalt thou retire alone—nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings
The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre.—The hills
Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the sun,—the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods—rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and pour'd round all,
Old ocean's grey and melancholy waste,—
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings
Of morning—and the Barcan desert35 pierce,
Or lost thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregan36, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings—yet—the dead are there,
And millions in those solitudes, since first
35
36
In Barca (northeast Libya).
An old spelling of Oregon
29
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.—
So shalt thou rest—and what if thou shalt fall
Unnoticed by the living—and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh,
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come,
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
The bow'd with age, the infant in the smiles
And beauty of its innocent age cut off,—
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustain'd and sooth'd
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
30
IV
THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
(1820-1865)
31
IV. 1. Romantic expression in literature
Definitions:
“Romanticism, term that is associated with imagination and boundlessness, as
contrasted with classicism, which is commonly associated with reason and restriction. A romantic
attitude may be detected in literature of any period, but as an historical movement it arose in the
18th and 19th centuries, in reaction to more rational literary, philosophic, artistic, religious, and
economic standards....“. (The Oxford Companion to American Literature)
In A Handbook to Literature, William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman describe
Romanticism as “…the reaction in literature, philosophy, art, religion, and politics from the
neoclassicism and formal orthodoxy of the preceding period…. An interesting schematic
explanation calls Romanticism the predominance of imagination over reason and formal rules
(Classicism) and over the sense of fact or the actual (Realism)…The term designates a literary
and philosophical theory which tends to see the individual at the very center of all life, and it
places the individual, therefore, at the center of art, making literature valuable as an expression
of unique feelings and particular attitudes. Romanticism often sees in nature a revelation of
Truth, the “living garment of God”, and a more suitable subject for art than those aspects sullied
by artifice. Romanticism seeks to find the Absolute, the Ideal, by transcending the actual,
whereas Realism finds its values in the actual and Naturalism in the scientific laws… “
Typical Romantic characteristics:
In The Oxford Companion to American Literature the following are mentioned:
“sentimentalism, primitivism and the cult of the noble savage; political liberalism; the celebration of
the natural beauty and the simple life; introspection; the idealization of the common man,
uncorrupted by civilization; interest in the picturesque past; interest in remote places;
antiquarianism; individualism; morbid melancholy; and historical romance”.
• Romantic Subject Matter
1. The quest for beauty: non-didactic, "pure beauty."
2. The use of the far-away and non-normal - antique and fanciful:
a. In historical perspective: antiquarianism; antiquing or artificially aging; interest in the
past.
b. Characterization and mood: grotesque, gothicism, sense of terror, fear; use of the
odd and queer.
3. Escapism from American problems. A desire to escape the realities of the present.
4. Interest in external nature - for itself, for beauty:
32
a. Nature as source for the knowledge of the primitive.
b. Nature as refuge.
c. Nature as revelation of God to the individual.
• Romantic Attitudes
1. Appeals to imagination; use of the "willing suspension of disbelief."
2. Stress on emotion rather than reason; optimism, geniality.
3. Subjectivity: in form and meaning.
• Romantic Techniques
1. Remoteness / strangeness of settings in time and space.
2. Improbable plots.
3. Inadequate or unlikely characterization.
4. Authorial subjectivity.
American Romanticism:
The Romantic movement, which originated in Germany but quickly spread to England,
France, and beyond, reached America around the year 1820, some 20 years after William
Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge had revolutionized English poetry by publishing Lyrical
Ballads. In America as in Europe, fresh new vision electrified artistic and intellectual circles. Yet
there was an important difference: Romanticism in America coincided with the period
of national expansion and the discovery of a distinctive American voice. The solidification of a
national identity and the surging idealism and passion of Romanticism nurtured the masterpieces
of the “AMERICAN RENAISSANCE”. The term American Renaissance refers to the literary and
cultural rebirth or maturation of America when an unusually high number of American
masterpieces were written and American culture becomes consciously defined: individualism,
self-reliance, democracy, equality, celebration of nature, etc… It was America's first great
creative period. New England (especially Boston and its nearby areas) held literary and
intellectual leadership and unprecedented literary renaissance took place from the 1840s until the
1860s. During a brief five-year period, 1850-1855, many of the most enduring of American books
appeared:
1850: Emerson´s Representative Men, and Hawthorne´s The Scarlet Letter.
1851: Melville´s Moby Dick, and Hawthorne´s The House of the Seven Gables.
1852: Hawthorne´s The Blithedale Romance, and Melville´s Pierre.
1854: Thoreau´s Walden.
1855: Walt Whitman´s Leaves of Grass.
33
Romantic ideas centered around art as inspiration, the spiritual and aesthetic dimension
of nature, and metaphors of organic growth. Art, rather than science, Romantics argued, could
best express universal truth. The Romantics underscored the importance of expressive art for the
individual and society.
The development of the self became a major theme; self-awareness, a primary method.
If, according to Romantic theory, self and nature were one, self awareness was not a selfish
dead end but a mode of knowledge opening up the universe. If one’s self were one with all
humanity, then the individual had a moral duty to reform social inequalities and relieve human
suffering. The idea of “self” was redefined. New compound words with positive meanings
emerged: “self-realization,” “self-expression,” “self-reliance.”
As the unique, subjective self became important, so did the realm of psychology.
Exceptional artistic effects and techniques were developed to evoke heightened psychological
states. The “sublime” — an effect of beauty in grandeur (for example, a view from a mountaintop)
— produced feelings of awe, reverence, vastness, and a power beyond human comprehension.
Romanticism was affirmative and appropriate for most American poets and creative
essayists. America’s vast mountains, deserts, and tropics embodied the sublime. The Romantic
spirit seemed particularly suited to American democracy: It stressed individualism, affirmed the
value of the common person, and looked to the inspired imagination for its aesthetic and ethical
values.
American Romantics combined elements of Gothic literature, Romanticism and the British
novel to create a new form: the American romance. The purpose of the American romance was
to examine the intersection between fantasy and reality. Although the events it portrays are often
realistic, a romance is intended to be read primarily on a figurative level. Melville, Hawthorne and
Poe often elaborated their figurative representations through the use of allegory and symbolism.
American poets of the period were attempting to draw a connection between art and nature. Walt
Whitman broke from a literary tradition that had guided poetry for centuries and he “invented” free
verse, changing the character of poetry in American literature.
Other Romantic elements in American literature:
●
Intuition is more trustworthy than reason. Suggests that "Truth" is possible only through
imagination, intuition. Focus is often on these universal, abstract BIG ideas like Truth,
Beauty, Justice. Reaction against logic and reason; antiscientific in its bent. Inspiration.
●
Celebration of the individual; the individual is at the center of life and God is at the center
of the individual. Idealization of the common man, uncorrupted by civilization.
●
Places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination.
34
●
Nature is a collection of physical symbols from which knowledge of the supernatural can
be intuited. The American Romantic contemplates nature's beauty as a path to spiritual
and moral development.
●
Seeks to transcend the actual, the everyday.
●
Sees poetry as the highest expression of the imagination.
●
American romantics will use symbols, myths, or fantastic elements (for example, Walden
Pond, the White Whale, the House of Usher, etc.) as the focus and expression of the
protagonist´s mental processes or to express deeper psychological or archetypal themes.
●
One of the recurring literary motifs of the period is the idea of starting over; no history;
escaping the past. Idealism.
Two literary movements dominated the New England Renaissance: Transcendentalism
and Anti-Transcendentalism (Dark Romanticism):
The New England Transcendentalists — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
and their associates — were inspired to a new optimistic affirmation by the Romantic movement.
They believed that everyone was absolutely pure and that each individual is a part of God. They
also believed that people's thoughts and intuition were the voice of God. Whitman is profoundly
influenced by Emerson and in his major poems he secularizes the notions of Transcendentalism,
removing them from their theological frame. Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, regarded the
individual with optimism and confidence, and have been called the PARTY OF HOPE (optimists)
Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne, however, often (implicitly or explicitly) attack Emersonian
idealism and the spirit of optimism that characterized the Romantic movement in general.
Hawthorne and Melville, who reasserted the reality of evil and explored the individual´s isolation
from society by providing complex psychological portraits of their protagonists, have been called
PARTY OF DESPAIR (pessimists).
At the end of the civil war (1865) a new nation had been born and it was to demand a new
literature less idealistic and more practical, less exalted and more earthly, less consciously artistic
and more honest than that produced in the Romantic period.
35
IV.2. The Transcendentalist Movement: Ralph W. Emerson and Henry
D. Thoreau
Simultaneously a religion, philosophy, and a mode of life, Transcendentalism elaborated a
NEW WAY OF PERCEIVING GOD, MAN and the ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE. In practical
terms, the Transcendentalists were a group of intellectuals living in New England between the
late 1830s and late 1840s. Although they defied categorization, they did have an organization of
sorts. The Transcendentalist Club was a discussion group that began its irregular meetings in
1836. It brought together the most prominent intellectuals of New England: Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau. Often included in this list is
Walt Whitman, however, while Whitman was strongly influenced by Emerson and the
transcendentalists, he was really too much of a materialist to be considered a transcendentalist.
Origins:
Transcendentalism began as an outgrowth of Unitarian Church. Unitarianism challenged
the Calvinistic belief that man was inherently corrupt. Instead, it offered an optimistic view of
mankind: they rejected the Puritan notions of the depravity of man, original sin, eternal
punishment, and talked in favor of man´s innate goodness and his spiritual freedom. The
transcendentalists embraced Unitarianism´s faith in the individual, but were dissatisfied with this
religion´s emphasis on rationalism.
The major difference between the transcendentalists and the Unitarians was that while
the Unitarians believed that knowledge was found in the rational exploration of the universe, the
transcendentalists believed that knowledge of God was found through introspection and intuition.
While the Unitarians expressed confidence in `our rational faculties´, Emerson drew a sharp
distinction between the `UNDERSTANDING´, by which he meant the rational faculty, the
knowledge that comes from the senses, and the `REASON´ by which he meant the suprarational
or intuitive faculty, the knowledge independent of the senses; he regarded the `Reason´ as much
more authoritative in spiritual matters than the `Understanding´. Reason, the knowledge that
comes by intuition, was, in Emerson´s view, the highest form of knowledge. Therefore, according
to Transcendentalism, the most profound knowledge comes from the self, not from God or the
world.
The Transcendentalist movement was a reaction against 18th-century rationalism and a
manifestation of the general humanitarian trend of 19th-century thought. The movement was
based on a fundamental belief in the unity of the world and God. The soul of each individual was
thought to be identical with the world — a microcosm of the world itself. The doctrine of selfreliance and individualism developed through the belief in the identification of the
individual soul with God.
36
Definitions:
The term comes from the verb “to transcend”, to move beyond, not to be limited.
Transcendentalism supports the belief that humans can “transcend” the physical world, that
humans are not limited by the five senses, but through imagination or intuition can know more
than what they physically see. Transcendentalism holds that the the basic truths of the universe
lie beyond the knowledge we obtain from our senses, logic or laws of science. We learn these
truths through our intuition, our “Divine Intellect”.
Basic idea: to awaken/liberate slumbering spiritual selves within; to glorify the
consciousness and will, to recognize the infinitude of the individual.
Transcendentalism is, therefore, a belief that the transcendental (or spiritual) reality,
rather than the material world, is the ultimate reality. This transcendental reality can be known
not by the rational faculty or logic, but only by intuition. All people are open to this higher
knowledge, and thus, Transcendentalism is a philosophy of individualism and self-reliance.
“(Transcendentalism) is…the recognition in man of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of
attaining knowledge transcending the reach of the senses" Orestes Brownson.
"Transcendentalism...maintains that man has ideas, that come not through the five senses, or the
powers of reasoning, but are either the result of direct revelation from God, his immediate inspiration,
or his immanent presence in the spiritual world." Charles Mayo Ellis in An Essay on
Transcendentalism (1842)
Basic Principles of American Transcendentalism:
Because the transcendentalists were so independent minded, it's hard to nail transcendentalism
down to a definite set of ideas, but they did share these beliefs:
•
Emphasis on THE OVERSOUL: All creation is united in the Oversoul. Individuals are part
of the Oversoul, but through society we have lost an understanding of our own divinity (In
Nature, Emerson writes: "Man is a God in ruins").
•
Emphasis on the importance of the INDIVIDUAL. The divinity of man (or rather, the belief
that divinity is within man); everything in the world contains the world in microcosm within
it; the individual's soul is a part of the Oversoul ("Part and particle of God"). This Oversoul
or Life Force or God can be found everywhere. The primary faith of the transcendentalists
was a faith in intuition: Through intuition, the individual is able to join the Oversoul, the life
force of the universe.
•
NATURE as the symbol of the Oversoul.
37
•
It is a form of IDEALISM that includes belief in intuitive (non-sensory) knowledge, the
presence of divinity in man and nature, and the consequent worth of man.
•
Transcendentalism, like other romantic movements, proposes that the essential nature of
human beings is good and that, left in a state of nature, human beings would seek the
good. Society is to blame for the corruption that mankind endures. Evil is a negative-merely an absence of good.
RALPH W. EMERSON (1803-1882). Although he wrote no fiction and less poetry than many
other poets, he is perhaps the most important figure in the history of American literature. As a
writer of essays and lectures, he was a master stylist, renowned for the clarity and rhythms of his
prose. Several of his essays—notably Nature, "Self-Reliance," and "The American Scholar"—are
among the finest in English. `Self-Reliance´ (1841) is a manifesto of what has come to be called
ROMANTIC INDIVIDUALISM. Romantic Individualism asserts that every individual is endowed
with not only reason but also an intuition that allows him to receive and interpret spiritual truths.
Individuals thus have a responsibility to throw off the shackles of traditions and inherited
conventions in order to live creatively according to their unique perception of truth.
RALPH W. EMERSON (1803-1882)
From Nature (1836)
Chapter I.
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I
read and write, though nobody is with me37. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come
from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was
made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. […]
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural
objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance38.
Neither does the wisest man extort39 her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection40. […]
When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the
integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. […]
To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very
superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The
lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit
of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the
presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man […] Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight,
under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect
exhilaration41. I am glad to the brink of fear […] In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a
37
Emerson is not alone whenever he reads, because he is with those who have written before him. Whenever he writes
he is communicating with his future readers.
38
Nothing that is natural can be ugly.
39
Obtain by force.
40
Emerson insisted that curiosity is important in order to find new insights because those who think they know
everything deprive themselves of the experience of wonder.
41
Emerson here describes a moment of intense communion which some scholars have identified as a kind of mystical
ecstasy.
38
decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a
thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. […] Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by
the blithe42 air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball43; I am
nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.[…] I am the
lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or
villages.
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister44, is the suggestion of an occult relation between
man and the vegetable. […]
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of
both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. […] Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
‫٭٭٭٭٭‬
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862) exemplified in his life and expressed in his work
the characteristically American struggle for moral independence within a business society. His
most famous essay, `Civil Disobedience´ was published anonimously as `Resistance to Civil
Government´ in 1849. Civil Disobedience is a thorough-going application of Transcendentalism
to politics, for it places the individual conscience above institutional formulas and traditions, and
supposes an absolute morality higher than the mere relative morality of conforming to whatever
is established. He asks “can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually
decide right and wrong, but conscience?— in which majorities decide only those
questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a
moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?”. His theory
proclaims philosophic anarchy. If government must exists, its basis shouldn´t be laws or
bureaucracy but the good will of each person, `The only obligation which I have a right to
assume is to do at any time what I think right´. If an individual believes that his rights have
been abused, he shouldn´t riot but calmly refuse all support of the government, impeding the
functions of government agencies peacefully, eventually arousing the citizenry to correct the evil.
The effectiveness of this exhortation lies in Thoreau´s living by his principles and in his striking
phrases: "(If any form of government)...is of such a nature that it requires you to be the
agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law; [...] I heartily accept the motto-- `That
government is best which governs least´; […] I think we should be men first, and subjects
afterwards; […] An undue respect for law (will make a man) a mere shadow and
reminiscence of humanity…
Walden is his most important book. It covers one year, moving through the seasons. It
begins on July 4th, moves through fall and winter, and ends after “Spring”, when Thoreau decides
it is time to leave Walden Pond. The book´s organization also follows one of Thoreau´s main
themes—awakening from a sleep—by moving from the asleep condition of Thoreau´s neighbors
42
Happy.
The transparent eye/I ball is the perfect sphere which gives him a sense of wholeness. Here Emerson describes a
mystical experience, in which he attained a feeling of oneness with the divine.
44
Give.
43
39
in “Economy” to the revitalized, fully awake condition described at the end of the book in “Spring”
and “Conclusion”.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817-1862)
From WALDEN, or, Life in the Woods (1854)
Economy
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any
neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned
my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in
civilized life again.
…men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a
seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed… laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt
and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.…
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with
the factitious45 cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them….Actually,
the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest46 relations to
men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine …
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.... A
stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
There is no play in them, for this comes after work …
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how
much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier
life… if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them…
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive
hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more
simple and meagre life than the poor. […] Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce,
or literature, or art... To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to
love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve
some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live
what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live
deep and suck out all the marrow of life […] to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it
proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if
it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion…
Still we live meanly, like ants …like pygmies we fight with cranes…. Our life is frittered away by detail. An
honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump
the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand;
instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail….Simplify, simplify. Instead of
three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in
proportion …The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and
superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own
traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the
land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and
elevation of purpose.
Conclusion
45
46
False, artificial.
Strongest.
40
…I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He
will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to
establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal
sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of
the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, nor weakness. If you have built
castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
…..Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not
keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he
hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak.
Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any
reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of
blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as
if the former were not?
‫٭ ٭ ٭ ٭ ٭ ٭‬
41
IV. 3. Edgar A. Poe (1809-1849)
Edgar Allan Poe, a southerner, shares with Hawhtorne and Melville a darkly metaphysical
vision mixed with elements of realism, parody, and burlesque. He refined the short story genre
and invented detective fiction. Many of his stories prefigure the genres of science fiction, horror,
and fantasy so popular today.
Poe believed that strangeness was an essential ingredient of beauty, and his writing is
often exotic. His stories and poems are populated with doomed, introspective aristocrats.These
gloomy characters never seem to work or socialize; instead they bury themselves in dark,
moldering castles symbolically decorated with bizarre rugs and draperies that hide the real world
of sun, windows, walls, and floors. The hidden rooms reveal ancient libraries, strange art works,
and eclectic oriental objects. The aristocrats play musical instruments or read ancient books
while they brood on tragedies, often the deaths of loved ones. Themes of death-in-life, especially
being buried alive or returning like a vampire from the grave, appear in many of his works,
including “The Premature Burial,” “Ligeia,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Fall of the House
of Usher.” Poe’s twilight realm between life and death and his gaudy, Gothic settings are not
merely decorative. They reflect the overcivilized yet deathly interior of his characters’ disturbed
psyches. They are symbolic expressions of the unconscious, and thus are central to his art.
►
Poetry: Poe published the following books of poems:
Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829)
Poems (1831)
The Raven and Other Poems (1845).
Poe firmly believed in the Platonic idea of the world as an imperfect copy of the eternal
beauty in a higher sphere. Poetry deals exclusively with BEAUTY, the Ideal. Like the English
Romantics Poe insisted that this beauty, the taste that apprehends it, and the pleasure it
produces are the main business of the poet. Poetry is the highest literary expression that tries to
reproduce that eternal beauty that exists in a different place from this world. “The Poetic Principle
is the Human Aspiration for Supernal Beauty", he says, and for the ideal poet the contemplation
of this beauty produces an elevation of the soul, but of that beauty the poet can only give sudden
flashes, “brief and indeterminate glimpses”.
His poetic principles can be summarized as follows:
Aesthetic truth versus scientific truth.
The musical quality of verse.
“Indefiniteness” “Vagueness”.
42
The necessity of the short poem.
The unity of effect or the `Totality of effect or impression´.
`Heresy of the Didactic´.
Poetry as the elevation of the soul to ideal beauty.
Lament for a lost lady as the most suitable subject of poetry. In `The Philosophy of
Composition´ Poe explains how he wrote `The Raven´, his best known poem. Incorporating
all the ideas above, Poe maintains that melancholy evokes the supreme and concludes,
“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the
sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical
tones…The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic
topic in the world—and equally it is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a
topic are those of a bereaved lover”. Examples of this can be found in `The Raven´,
´Lenore´, `The Sleeper´, and `Annabel Lee´, as the most known.
►
Tales:
Although Poe preferred verse, he actually holds a much firmer position in the short
story. He is eminent for his THEORY OF THE SHORT STORY. In his 1842 Review of
Hawthorne´s Twice-Told Tales, Poe explains his critical ideas about fiction. He praises the
imaginative and story-telling ability of Hawthorne, and then explains what makes a great story. All
excellent fiction must
(1) have a central “effect”; the very first sentence ought to help to bring out the
"single effect" of the story.
(2) have an organically developed plot where every aspect of the story
(characterization, setting, symbolism, etc.) drives toward the “effect”; No word
should be used which does not contribute to the "pre-established" design of the
work (compression), and
(3) must be short enough to be read in one sitting so that the effect is not lost or
spoiled by interruption.
In the space of seventeen years, 1832 to 1849, Poe published sixty-eight tales,
which we may divide into three categories—`grotesque´, `arabesque´, and `ratiocinative´
or `tales of ratiocination´—corresponding roughly to the early, middle and late periods of
his career.
The grotesques, written mostly between 1832 and 1837, were primarily apprentice work.
During that period Poe learned to write fiction by parodying the type of `sensational´ story that
had become popular in British and American journals. The grotesque is characterized by
macabre Gothicism. Remember: a gothic tale is a story of the ghastly and horrible, filled with old,
decaying castles, rattling chains, ghosts, zombies, mutilations, premature entombments, and
other elements that we associate with the supernatural. Examples of this type, an inferior
category of his fiction, are `King Pest´, `Hop-Frog´, `The Devil in the Belfry´…
In contrast, the arabesques, written mainly between 1838 and 1844, were fanciful in tone
but somber in meaning. It implies few people but many ideas are set in abstract locations. What
43
characterizes them is their exploitation of extreme psychological states—the narrator or chief
characters are of the madmen, or persons who undergo some excruciating suffering of the soul.
The arabesque deals with `the terror of the soul´ where Poe distorts the mental, emotional and
spiritual nature of the person. In the grotesque the emphasis is on physical suffering; in the
arabesque, on spiritual agony. Most of Poe´s tales have elements of both. Examples of
arabesque are `Ligeia´, `The Fall of the House´, `The Cask of Amontillado´, `The Black Cat´…
The tales of ratiocination, of which `The Murders in the Rue Morgue´, `The Purloined
Letter´, `The Mystery of Marie Roget´ are the best known, were written between 1841 and 1845.
The ratiocinative hero is an intriguing mixture of sense and sensibility, reason and imagination.
Faced with a difficult crime or puzzle, he swiftly unlocks the mystery with a series of brilliant
deductions. These tales are forerunners of modern `detective´ fiction.
‫٭٭٭٭٭‬
SONNET TO SCIENCE
SONETO A LA CIENCIA
SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana47 from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad48 from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad49 from her flood,
The Elfin50 from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind51 tree?
¡Ciencia! ¡verdadera hija del tiempo tú eres!
que alteras todas las cosas con tus escrutadores ojos.
¿Por qué devoras así el corazón del poeta
buitre, cuyas alas son obtusas realidades?
¿Cómo debería él amarte? o ¿cómo puede juzgarte sabia
aquel a quien no dejas en su vagar
buscar un tesoro en los enjoyados cielos
aunque se elevara con intrépida ala?
¿No has arrebatado a Diana de su carro?
¿Ni expulsado a las Hamadríades del bosque
para buscar abrigo en alguna feliz estrella?
¿No has arrancado a las Náyades de la inundación
al Elfo de la verde hierba, y a mí
del sueño de verano bajo el tamarindo?
47
Roman goddess who drove the cart to heaven.
Nymph who lived in trees.
49
The naiads of classical myth were nymphs associated with fresh water (lakes, rivers, fountains).
50
Lived in forests.
51
Huge tropical tree, suggesting an exotic location for a dream.
48
44
A''ABEL LEE
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;—
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
She was a child and I was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud by night chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me: —
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of a cloud, by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we—
Of many far wiser than we—
And neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea—
In her tomb by the side of the sea.
45
THE RAVE'
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"'Tis some visiter entreating52 entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more."
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”-- here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"
Merely this and nothing more.
Then into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; —
'Tis the wind and nothing more!"
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore53;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas54 just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven55,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian56 shore!"
52
Asking humbly.
Long ago.
54
Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom.
55
A thorough coward.
53
46
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
50
55
60
65
70
75
80
85
90
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no sublunary57 being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered— not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Quoth the raven "Nevermore."
Wondering at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster—so, when Hope he would adjure,
Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure—
That sad answer, “Nevermore.”
But the raven still beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated58 o'er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Let me quaff59 this kind Nepenthe60 and forget this lost Lenore!''
Quoth the raven "Nevermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!— prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted— tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?61 —tell me—tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."
"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! —prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
56
Black, as in the underworld of Greek mythology.
Eartly, beneath the moon.
58
Reflected.
59
Drink quickly.
60
A drink supposed to end sorrow.
61
Gilead is a mountainous area east of the Jordan River between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea; evergreens
growing there were an ample source of medicinal resins.
57
47
95
100
105
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn62,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the raven "Nevermore."
"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting—
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! —quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the raven "Nevermore."
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
‫٭٭٭٭٭‬
62
Eden.
48
Edgar A. Poe (1809-1849)
The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed
revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At
length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled -- but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved
precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution
overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has
done the wrong.
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I
continued as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile NOW was at the thought of his
immolation.
He had a weak point -- this Fortunato -- although in other regards he was a man to be respected and even
feared. He prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part
their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity to practise imposture upon the British and Austrian
millionaires. In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he
was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him materially; I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought
largely whenever I could.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the carnival season, that I encountered my
friend. He accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley63. He had on a
tight-fitting parti-striped dress and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him,
that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand.
I said to him -- "My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably well you are looking to-day! But I
have received a pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts."
"How?" said he, "Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible ? And in the middle of the carnival?"
"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the
matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain."
"Amontillado!"
"I have my doubts."
"Amontillado!"
"And I must satisfy them."
"Amontillado!"
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchresi. If any one has a critical turn, it is he. He will tell me" -"Luchresi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."
"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own."
"Come let us go."
"Whither?"
"To your vaults."
"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you have an engagement Luchresi" -"I have no engagement; come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted . The
vaults are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre64."
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You have been imposed upon; and as for
Luchresi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado."
Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk and drawing a
roquelaire65 closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.
There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honour of the time. I had told them
that I should not return until the morning and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders
were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance , one and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato bowed him through several suites of
rooms to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be
cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and stood together on the damp ground of the
catacombs of the Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as he strode.
"The pipe," said he.
63
Fool´s varicolored costume.
Saltpeter, the whitish mineral potassium nitrate.
65
A short cloak.
64
49
"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white webwork which gleams from these cavern walls."
He turned towards me and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication .
"Nitre?" he asked, at length
"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough!"
"Ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh! -- ugh! ugh! ugh!
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
"It is nothing," he said, at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired,
beloved; you are happy as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will
be ill and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchresi" -"Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough."
"True -- true," I replied; "and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you unnecessarily -- but you should use
all proper caution. A draught of this Medoc will defend us from the damps."
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould.
"Drink," I said, presenting him the wine.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled.
"I drink," he said, "to the buried that repose around us."
"And I to your long life."
He again took my arm and we proceeded.
"These vaults," he said, are extensive."
"The Montresors," I replied, "were a great numerous family."
"I forget your arms."
"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the
heel66."
"And the motto?"
"emo me impune lacessit.67"
"Good!" he said.
The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had
passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the
catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.
"The nitre!" I said: see it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The
drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough" -"It is nothing" he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc."
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light.
He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement -- a grotesque one.
"You do not comprehend?" he said.
"Not I," I replied.
"Then you are not of the brotherhood."
"How?"
"You are not of the masons."
"Yes, yes," I said "yes! yes."
"You? Impossible! A mason?"
"A mason," I replied.
"A sign," he said.
"It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my roquelaire.
"You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado."
"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it
heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended,
passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather
to glow than flame.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human
remains piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt
were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon
the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we
perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been
constructed for no especial use in itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the
roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
66
67
On the coat of arms the golden foot is in a blue background; the foot crushes a serpent whose head is reared up.
No one insults me without impunity.
50
It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavoured to pry into the depths of the recess. Its
termination the feeble light did not enable us to see.
"Proceed," I said; "herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchresi" -"He is an ignoramus," interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily forward, while I followed immediately
at his heels. In an instant he had reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the rock, stood
stupidly bewildered . A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant
from each other about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain. from the other a padlock.
Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to
resist . Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
"Pass your hand," I said, "over the wall; you cannot help feeling the nitre. Indeed it is very damp. Once more
let me implore you to return. No? Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little attentions
in my power."
"The Amontillado!" ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his astonishment.
"True," I replied; "the Amontillado."
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I have before spoken. Throwing them
aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my trowel, I
began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of my masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a
great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was
NOT the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and
the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that
I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased my labours and sat down upon the bones. When at last the
clanking subsided , I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier. The
wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work,
threw a few feeble rays upon the figure within.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to
thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated -- I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it
about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs ,
and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I reechoed -- I aided -- I
surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still.
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth
tier. I had finished a portion of the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and plastered in.
I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined position. But now there came from out the niche a low
laugh that erected the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had difficulty in recognising as
that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said -"Ha! ha! ha! -- he! he! -- a very good joke indeed -- an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it
at the palazzo -- he! he! he! -- over our wine -- he! he! he!"
"The Amontillado!" I said.
"He! he! he! -- he! he! he! -- yes, the Amontillado . But is it not getting late? Will not they be awaiting us at
the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the rest? Let us be gone."
"Yes," I said "let us be gone."
"For the love of God, Montresor!"
"Yes," I said, "for the love of God!"
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I called aloud -"Fortunato!"
No answer. I called again -"Fortunato!"
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it fall within. There came forth in
return only a jingling of the bells. My heart grew sick -- on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to
make an end of my labour. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered it up. Against the new masonry I
reerected the old rampart of bones. For the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!
‫٭٭٭٭٭‬
51
IV.4. The American Romance: Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman
Melville
In the case of the novelists, the Romantic vision tended to express itself in the form
Hawthorne called the “romance,” a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel.
Instead of carefully defining realistic characters through a wealth of detail, as most English or
continental novelists did, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe shaped heroic figures larger than life,
burning with mythic significance. The typical protagonists of the American Romance are
haunted, alienated individuals. Hawthorne’s Arthur Dimmesdale or Hester Prynne in The
Scarlet Letter, Melville’s Ahab in Moby-Dick, and the many isolated and obsessed characters of
Poe’s tales are lonely protagonists pitted against unknowable, dark fates that, in some
mysterious way, grow out of their deepest unconscious selves. The symbolic plots reveal hidden
actions of the anguished spirit.
One reason for this fictional exploration into the hidden recesses of the soul is the
absence of settled, traditional community life in America. English novelists — Jane Austen,
Charles Dickens (the great favorite), Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, William Thackeray — lived
in a complex, well-articulated, traditional society and shared with their readers attitudes that
informed their realistic fiction. American novelists were faced with a history of strife and
revolution, a geography of vast wilderness, and a fluid and relatively classless democratic
society. American novels frequently reveal a revolutionary absence of tradition. Many English
novels show a poor main character rising on the economic and social ladder, perhaps because of
a good marriage or the discovery of a hidden aristocratic past. But this buried plot does not
challenge the aristocratic social structure of England. On the contrary, it confirms it. The rise of
the main character satisfies the wish fulfillment of the mainly middle-class readers.
In contrast, the American novelist had to depend on his or her own devices. America was,
in part, an undefined, constantly moving frontier populated by immigrants speaking foreign
languages and following strange and crude ways of life. Thus the main character in American
literature might find himself alone among cannibal tribes, as in Melville’s Typee, or exploring a
wilderness like James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking, or witnessing lonely visions from the
grave, like Poe’s solitary individuals, or meeting the devil walking in the forest, like Hawthorne’s
Young Goodman Brown. Virtually all the great American protagonists have been “loners.”
The democratic American individual had, asit were, to invent himself.
The serious American novelist had to invent new forms as well — hence the sprawling,
idiosyncratic shape of Melville’s novel Moby-Dick, and Poe’s dreamlike, wandering Narrative of
Arthur Gordon Pym. Instead of borrowing tested literary methods, Americans tend to Invent new
creative techniques.
Definiton: The Romance versus the Novel
52
A Handbook of Literature gives a useful definition of romance:"Romance is now frequently
used as a term to designate a kind of fiction that differs from the novel in being more freely the
product of the author's imagination than the product of an effort to represent the actual world with
verisimilitude”.
Richard Chase in The American Novel and its Tradition (1959) makes an important
distinction: `The word `romance´ must signify, besides the more obvious qualities of the
picturesque and the heroic, an assumed freedom from the ordinary novelistic requirements of
verosimilitude, development and continuity; a tendency towards melodrama and idyll; a more or
less formal abstractness and, on the other hand, a tendency to plunge into the underside of
consciousness; a willingness to abandon moral questions or to ignore the spectacle of man in
society, or to consider these things only indirectly or abstractly.´
Hawthorne wrote over a hundred short stories, essays, and four long works of fiction: The
Scarlet Letter (1850). The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852),
and The Marble Faun (1860). Though they are called novels, Hawthorne insisted that they should
be judged as romances, that is, as examples of a genre he would call “psychological romance”.
The distinction between the concepts of romance and novel was important for him. Hawthorne
defined romance in the Preface to The House of the Seven Gables:
When a writer calls his work Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both
as to its fashion and material, which he should not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be
writing a 'ovel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the
possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man´s experience. The former—while, as a work of art, it must
rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the
human heart—has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer´s own
choosing or creation. If he thinks fit, also, he may so manage his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow
the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be wise, no doubt, to make a moderate use of
the privileges here stated, and, especially, to mingle the Marvellous rather as a slight, delicate, and evanescent
flavor, than as any portion of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. …
The Romance tends to recreate through a physical setting the state of mind of the
characters. This means that romances are not mimetic, they do not represent society as it is,
but represent a closed space that is a recreation of the psychological world of their characters.
Therefore, in the romance the individual is not defined by his interrelationship with other
characters who represent various social classes and their values. He is defined by his relations to
characters representing the contending forces in his own inner world. At the same time, the
Romance is not just escapism. It creates fictional worlds deeply concerned with real and
historical problems. Hawthorne says that the romancer tried to create a realm midway between
private thought and the objective world, and Herman Melville said in The Confidence Man : “It is
with fiction as with religion; it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie”.
Just as Hawthorne classified his works of long fiction as romances, Melville originally intended
Moby-Dick to be a romance of adventure. He described it to his British publisher: “The book is a
53
romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Fisheries, and
illustrated by the author´s own personal experience, of two years & more, as a harpooner”.
The Romance form is dark and forbidding, indicating how difficult it is to create an identity
without a stable society. Most of the Romantic heroes die in the end: All the sailors except
Ishmael are drowned in Moby- Dick, and the sensitive but sinful minister Arthur Dimmesdale dies
at the end of The Scarlet Letter. The self-divided, tragic note in American literature becomes
dominant in the novels, even before the Civil War of the 1860s manifested the greater social
tragedy of a society at war with itself.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864) succeeded in setting his stories in a dream-like
realm in which the historical past acquires a mythical dimension. Some of his stories are like
straightforward parables. “The Birthmark”, for example, dramatizes how the pursuit of perfection
may result in destruction. In his most famous tales and romances Hawthorne explores both the
attempt and the impossibility to leave the past behind by making use of the Puritan history of
New England. His attitude to the Puritans is deeply ambivalent. He found a certain greatness in
them, but was appalled by the intolerance and self-righteousness which led them to persecute
dissenters. He profoundly disliked the rigid and merciless Puritan minds that were incapable of
dealing with transgressors. In his works, he also sought to demonstrate the damaging effect that
certain Puritan teachings had on common people, for he believed that morbid instropection led to
an excessive preoccupation with sinfulness, whether real or imagined, and this made ordinary
people more vulnerable to temptation. Focusing on the Puritan past, Hawthorne on the one hand
confronted a dark period of American history, characterized by intolerance and persecution. On
the other hand, Hawthorne´s focus on the Puritan past singles it out as a period of American
history particularly worth remembering not only because it gives an example of how the attempt
to create a perfect society leads to violence and lovelessness but also because the Puritans,
unlike the transcendentalists, acknowledged the fundamental sinfulness of human nature. The
inevitability of guilt and the loss of love and affection are central to many of his fictions. For
example, in “Roger Malvin´s Burial” (1832), “Young Goodman Brown” (1835) or “The Minister´s
Black Veil” (1836), a story that anticipates Hawthorne´s most famous work, The Scarlet Letter
(1850).
Hawthorne usually dipped into the past for his settings and into the depth of human evil,
sin, guilt, and moral distortion for his main subjects. Then he tended to subtle symbolic or
allegorical patterns. He attacked self-righteousness, proud isolation, and perverted idealism,
faults usually seen in personalities infected by Puritanism but in others as well. One of his
distinctive concerns is that of separating head and heart, intellect and soul. In his notebooks, he
wrote that an unpardonable sin is "a want of love and reverence for the Human Soul; in
54
consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths, not with a hope or purpose of
making it better, but from a cold philosophical curiosity,--content that it should be wicked in
whatever kind or degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the
separation of the intellect from the heart." Hawthorne explored these ideas extensively in the
short story "Ethan Brand," The Scarlet Letter, "The Artist of the Beautiful," and "Rappaccini's
Daughter." Hawthorne´s best work is carefully and tightly organized, blending elements of
realism, allegory and symbolism. He uses a limited number of themes and character types in
situations concerned with intricate moral problems whose resolution is often intentionally
ambiguous. His complex techniques include symbolism, irony and `multiple choice´. His use of
allegory and symbol help disclose without much didacticism his truth, which is psychological and
universally human rather than religious and theological. Hawthorne was fond of color symbolism
but achieved his best effect with the interplay of light and dark, faith and doubt, heart and mind,
internal and external worlds. With his use of ambiguity or `multiple choice´ Hawthorne casts
doubt on his own story as he has told it, and he suggests that an incident may have happened in
quite a different way, if at all.
Hawthorne's literary world is a most disturbed, tormented and problematical one mostly
because of his "black" vision of life and human beings. He seems to be haunted by his sense
of sin and evil in life. Evil exists in the core of the human heart as is evident, and everyone
possesses some evil secret as tales like "Young Goodman Brown" set out to prove. Everyone
seems to cover up his innermost "evil" in the way the minister tries to convince his people with his
black veil ("The Minister's Black Veil"). Evil seems to be man's birthmark ("The Birthmark"). The
blackness of vision has become his trade mark. It illustrates to some extent the influence that the
Calvinist doctrine of "original sin" and total depravity had upon his mind. In 1850, Melville and
Hawthorne became very good friends. In his essay, "Hawthorne and His Mosses," Melville
showed his own fascination with the darkness in Hawthorne’s work when he writes that
Hawthorne is "shrouded in a blackness, ten times black". Melville found Hawthorne's
understanding of evil, that blackness of vision, very impressive. Both Hawthorne and Melville
shared a profound skepticism of the idealist philosophy of Emerson and his followers. They
doubted the essential goodness of nature and didn´t believe that self-reliance was an expression
of a soul in harmony with divinity. Above all, they considered the transcendentalist faith in a unity
of self (soul), nature and divinity too optimistic, ignoring the presence of evil and guilt in the
world. Whereas the transcendentalist celebrated the individual´s intuitive capacity to grasp the
spiritual essence of the world and to create the world anew, for Hawthorne and Melville the world
was already old with inherited guilt and its spiritual core was inevitably tinged with evil. This
sense of the inevitability of evil expresses itself in tragic visions that Hawthorne and Melville
accentuate by filling their fictions with echoes of a historical and mythical past. Their fiction has a
55
somber tone, and it raises more questions than it answers. It is difficult and challenging, in part
because of its many symbols.
Some major themes in Hawthorne´s fiction:
Alienation—a character is in a state of isolation because of self-cause or cause of society or a
combination of both.
• Initiation—involves the attempts of an alienated character to get rid of his isolated condition.
• The New England past or the heritage of Puritanism in the present. The past is, therefore, a
force living in the present.
•
Sin an evil are analyzed not as static abstractions but as they develop in the human psyche.
• Problem of guilt--a character´s sense of guilt forced by the puritanical heritage or by society;
also guilt vs. innocence.
• Pride— For Hawthorne pride is evil. He illustrates the following aspects of pride in various
characters: physical pride, spiritual pride, and intellectual pride. The Unpardonable Sin is the
invasion of the sanctity of another person´s soul and through that invasion to bend the person
to our will.
• Other themes include individual vs. society, self-fulfillment vs. accommodation or frustration,
hypocrisy vs. integrity, love vs. hated, fate vs. free will.
• Hawthorne specialized in psychological topics and frequently dealt with morbid states of mind.
What the New England setting close to his home was to Hawthorne, the sea was to
HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891), some of whose fiction takes place in nautical settings, using
the confined spaces of boats as the stage for a drama with the sea as its background. Melville´s
career was an unresolved search for a moral vision that could make sense of the perplexities and
injustices that bedevil human existence. While Hawthorne inquired how evil can subtly manifest
itself in human character, Melville asked why evil is a cosmic reality. He wished to decipher the
meanings of things behind the appearance; he consciously created poetic figures rather than
realistic characters; above all, he ignored the novel´s traditional foundation upon a social milieu in
favor of myth and symbolism. His literary and philosophical vision was strongly influenced by
Hawthorne and by his reading of Shakespeare, the Bible and the English Romantics. While
Hawthorne found inspiration for his fiction in Puritan history, Melville´s stories and novels
frequently draw on tragic interpretations of Biblical and classical myths of the fall of man, in
which the themes of disobedience, rebellion, and man´s distance from God are central. Melville
began his literary career with several successful novels that depicted adventures in the South
Seas loosely based on his own experiences: Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), Redburn (1849) and
White-Jacket (1850) Although these novels were commercially successful, Melville was
56
unsatisfied, so much that in the middle of writing his next novel, Moby Dick (1851), he
transformed it from a traditional sea adventure into a mythic and symbolic epic. In this novel,
Melville draws on resources as varied as scientific treatises on whaling and the Bible, and the
novel incorporates elements of many literary forms, such as the essay, drama, myth, and epic. In
mixing such genres and influences in a radically innovative fashion, the novel achieves a
grandeur of scope and depth as it explores the extremes of human potential in the face of
overwhelming external conditions. Apart from the literal reading of the book, Ahab´s vengeful
search could also be interpreted as a deeper level, just like any allegory. The Pequod, with its
polyglot crew, would represent the Ship of the World navigating on the Sea of Unpredictability,
where Good and Evil are permanently confronted. Ishmael, however, warns readers who are
ignorant of “the most palpable wonders of the world”, in case they “might scout at Moby Dick as a
monstruous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory” (chapter
45). This warning is directed readers lest they be misled into thinking that the novel articulates a
strict unequivocal correspondence between the abstract and the concrete, as conventional
allegories do. The whale is cosmic inscrutability, the unsearchable infinite, but can be seen as
representing many things, such as nature or evil, but the most compelling interpretation is that he
suggests the ultimate mysteries of the cosmos. The men on board apply their various
perspectives to such mysteries, thus constituting a kind of symposium on the subject. For
example, Ahab hates the whale because he cannot tolerate the human position of ignorance of
those mysteries. In contrast, Ishmael, faced with the ultimate mystery embodied in Queequeg
and the sea, responds by accepting and even embracing the mystery. In typically Romantic
fashion, the novel places humans, in this case not an individual but an ensemble, within nature
and then uses their encounter with nature to speculate on such metaphysical issues as the
existence of good and evil, the nature of the individual, the realm of the spiritual versus the realm
of the material, and how we as humans comprehend and interpret all things. In Moby-Dick,
Captain Ahab´s obsessive pursuit of the white whale amounts to a challenge of God. Ahab sees
the whale as the incarnation of evil and is determined to risk (and in fact loses) his life, his ship
and his crew in the attempt to destroy the whale. There is something heroic about Ahab hurling
his anger at a God who allows evil to exist, but in his hatred of the whale Ahab also appears
demoniac, if not evil himself. The story is told by Ishmael, the only survivor of the immense
whiteness, associated with nothingness, indifference and death, as a symbol of the “demonism of
the world”.
After Moby-Dick, Melville continued to write fiction as well as poetry. Three of Melville’s
fictional works have themes especially similar to those of Moby-Dick. In "Bartleby, the
Scrivener," the unnamed narrator is confronted with the inexplicable behavior of his employee,
Bartleby. He moves through many reactions--including frustration, anger, empathy, and love--but,
like Moby-Dick, Bartleby eludes any final or complete interpretation. Similarly, in "Benito
57
Cereno," the American Captain Delano is forced to try to decipher the contradictory and
ambiguous situation aboard a stranded slave-carrying ship. In this case, the mystery is
superficially clarified, but the closing court depositions leave the reader unclear about Melville’s
attitudes, especially about the vexing issues surrounding slavery in this country. Finally, in "Billy
Budd" Melville depicts an archetypal struggle between good (Billy Budd) and evil (Claggart) and
focuses on the nearly impossible ethical and legal decision that Captain Vere must make
regarding Billy’s guilt in the death of Claggart.
58
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Young Goodman Brown (1835)
Young Goodman Brown68 came forth, at sunset, into the street of Salem village69, but put his head back, after
crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust
her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap, while she called to Goodman
Brown.
“Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, “pr'y thee70, put
off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and
such thoughts, that she's afeard71 of herself, sometimes. Pray, tarry72 with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in
the year!”73
“My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry
away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What,
my sweet, pretty wife, cost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married!”
“Then, God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons, “and may you find all well, when you come back.”
“Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come
to thee.”
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way, until, being about to turn the corner by the meetinghouse, he looked back, and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him, with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink
ribbons.
“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote74 him. “What a wretch am I, to leave her on such an
75
errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought76, as she spoke, there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned
her what work is to be done to-night. But, no, no! 'twould kill her to think it. Well; she's a blessed angel on earth; and
after this one night, I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.”
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his
present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood
aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is
this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and
the thick boughs overhead; so that, with lonely footsteps, he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.
“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown, to himself; and he glanced
fearfully behind him, as he added, “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and looking forward again, beheld the figure of a
man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose, at Goodman Brown’s approach, and walked
onward, side by side with him.
“You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through
Boston; and that is full fifteen minutes agone.”
“Faith kept me back awhile,” replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden
appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were journeying. As nearly
as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman
Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still, they
might have been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad77 as the younger, and as
68
“Goodman” was a polite term of address for a man of humble status. Brown´s name suggests that he represents
“Anybody” or “Everyman”.
69
Salem village is modern Danvers, contiguous with Salem. In the 17th century it was a Puritan settlement. The
witchcraft delusion of 1692 started in Salem village.
70
Please.
71
Afraid.
72
Stay.
73
It is probable October 31, when evil influences are known to be abroad.
74
Strike; affect strongly.
75
The word “errand”, that Brown uses 3 times, evokes the concept of “errand into the wilderness”, the phrtase used by
the 17th century colonists to refer to their journey to America.
76
It seemed to me.
77
Dressed.
59
simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and would not have felt abashed78 at the
governor's dinner-table, or in King William's court79, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither80. But the
only thing about him, that could be fixed upon as remarkable, was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black
snake81, so curiously wrought82, that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself, like a living serpent. This, of
course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
“Come, Goodman Brown!” cried his fellow-traveller, “this is a dull pace for the beginning of a journey. Take
my staff, if you are so soon weary.”
“Friend,” said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, “having kept covenant by meeting thee here,
it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples, touching the matter thou wot'st83 of.”
“Sayest thou so?” replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. “Let us walk on, nevertheless, reasoning as we go,
and if I convince thee not, thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the forest, yet.”
“Too far, too far!” exclaimed the goodman unconsciously resuming his walk. “My father never went into the
woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians, since the
days of the martyrs84. And shall I be the first of the name of Brown, that ever took this path, and kept—”
“Such company, thou wouldst say,” observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. “Well said, Goodman
Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among the Puritans; and that's no trifle to
say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of
Salem85. And it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian
village, in King Philip's war86. They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this
path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain87 be friends with you, for their sake.”
“If it be as thou sayest,” replied Goodman Brown, “I marvel they never spoke of these matters. Or, verily, I
marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from New-England. We are a people of
prayer, and good works, to boot88, and abide no such wickedness.”
“Wickedness or not,” said the. traveller with the twisted staff, “I have a very general acquaintance here in
New-England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion wine with me; the selectmen, of divers
towns, make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The
governor and I, too—but these are state-secrets.”
“Can this be so!” cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed companion.
“Howbeit89, I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple
husbandman90, like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister,
at Salem village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble, both Sabbath-day and lecture-day!”
Thus far, the elder traveller had listened with due gravity, but now burst into a fit of irrepressible mirth,
shaking himself so violently, that his snake-like staff actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.
“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted he, again and again; then composing himself, “Well, go on, Goodman Brown, go on;
but pr'y thee, don't kill me with laughing!”
“Well, then, to end the matter at once,” said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled91, “there is my wife, Faith.
It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own!”
“Nay, if that be the case,” answered the other, “e'en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would not, for twenty
old women like the one hobbling92 before us, that Faith should come to any harm.”
As he spoke, he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very
pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism, in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser,
jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.
78
Embarrassed.
William III (1650-1702).
80
There.
81
Satan took the form of a snake to tempt Eve (Genesis 3)
82
Shaped.
83
Know.
84
Allusion to the Protestants martyrs during the reign of Mary Tudor (1523-58), called “Bloody Mary”.
85
In 1659 Ann Coleman and four other Quakers were whipped through Salem by order of William Hathorne, a
magistrate in Salem and the author´s first male ancestor in America. In the opposition between the Quaker conscience
and the Puritan theocracy, Nathaniel Hawthorne sided with the Quakers.
86
Between New England colonists and Indians, in 1676.
87
Want to.
88
Besides.
89
Nevertheless.
90
Farmer; also, man of ordinary status.
91
Irritated.
92
Limping.
79
60
“A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse93 should be so far in the wilderness, at night-fall!” said he. “But, with
your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods, until we have left this Christian woman behind. Bring a
stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with, and whither I was going.”
“Be it so,” said his fellow-traveller. “Betake94 you to the woods, and let me keep the path.”
Accordingly, the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who advanced softly along
the road, until he had come within a staff's length of the old dame. She, meanwhile, was making the best of her way,
with singular speed for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words, a prayer, doubtless, as she went. The
traveller put forth his staff, and touched her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail.
“The devil!” screamed the pious old lady.
“Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?” observed the traveller, confronting her, and leaning on his
writhing95 stick.
“Ah, forsooth96, and is it your worship, indeed?” cried the good dame. “Yea, truly is it, and in the very image
of my odd gossip97, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But—would your worship believe
it?—my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory98, and that,
too, when I was all anointed with the juice of smallage and cinque-foil and wolf's-bane—”99
“Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe,” said the shape of old Goodman Brown.
“Ah, your worship knows the receipt,” cried the old lady, cackling aloud. “So, as I was saying, being all ready
for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for they tell me, there is a nice young man to be
taken into communion to-night. But now your good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a
twinkling.”
“That can hardly be,” answered her friend. “I may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse, but here is my staff,
if you will.”
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods which its owner
had formerly lent to the Egyptian Magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown could not take cognizance100. He had
cast up his eyes in astonishment, and looking down again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his
fellow-traveller alone, who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
“That old woman taught me my catechism!” said the young man; and there was a world of meaning in this
simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion to make good speed and
persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly, that his arguments seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor,
than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked a branch of maple, to serve for a walking-stick, and began to
strip it of the twigs and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them, they
became strangely withered and dried up, as with a week's sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace, until
suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree, and refused to go
any farther.
“Friend,” said he, stubbornly, “my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge101 on this errand. What if a
wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil, when I thought she was going to Heaven! Is that any reason why I
should quit my dear Faith, and go after her?”
“You will think better of this, by-and-by,” said his acquaintance, composedly. “Sit here and rest yourself
awhile; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along.”
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of sight, as if he had
vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments, by the road-side, applauding himself greatly,
and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the minister, in his morning-walk, nor shrink from the eye of
good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his, that very night, which was to have been spent so
wickedly, but purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations,
Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal himself within the
verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though now so happily turned from it.
On came the hoof-tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices, conversing soberly as they drew
near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a few yards of the young man's hiding-place; but
93
“Goody” was the abbreviation of “Goodwife”, a polite form of address for a married woman of humble status. Sarah
Cloyse was accused of witchcraft and sent to prison.
94
Go.
95
Twisting.
96
In truth.
97
Friend.
98
Martha Cory was sentenced to death at the Salem witchcraft trials and hanged in 1692.
99
Plants associated with witchcraft.
100
Notice.
101
Move.
61
owing, doubtless, to the depth of the gloom, at that particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds102 were
visible. Though their figures brushed the small boughs by the way-side, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even
for a moment, the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky, athwart103 which they must have passed. Goodman Brown
alternately crouched and stood on tip-toe, pulling aside the branches, and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst104,
without discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could have sworn, were such a thing
possible, that he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont105
to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to
pluck a switch.
“Of the two, reverend Sir,” said the voice like the deacon's, “I had rather miss an ordination-dinner than tonight's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from Falmouth and beyond, and others from
Connecticut and Rhode-Island; besides several of the Indian powows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much
deviltry as the best of us. Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion.”
“Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!” replied the solemn old tones of the minister. “Spur up, or we shall be late.
Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground.”
The hoofs clattered again, and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on through the forest,
where no church had ever been gathered, nor solitary Christian prayed. Whither, then, could these holy men be
journeying, so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree, for support, being
ready to sink down on the ground, faint and overburthened106 with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the
sky, doubting whether there really was a Heaven above him. Yet, there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in
it.
“With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!” cried Goodman Brown.
While he still gazed upward, into the deep arch of the firmament, and had lifted his hands to pray, a cloud,
though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith, and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible,
except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from
the depths of the cloud, came a confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once, the listener fancied that he could
distinguish the accents of town's-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had
met at the communion-table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct were the sounds,
he doubted whether he had heard aught107 but the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a
stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine, at Salem village, but never, until now, from a cloud
of night. There was one voice, of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating
for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain. And all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners,
seemed to encourage her onward.
“Faith!” shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the echoes of the forest mocked
him, crying—“Faith! Faith!” as if bewildered wretches were seeking her, all through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror, was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held his breath for a
response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the
dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down
through the air, and caught on the branch of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon108.
“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name.
Come, devil! for to thee is this world given.”
And maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp his staff and set
forth again, at such a rate, that he seemed to fly along the forest-path, rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder
and drearier, and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still
rushing onward, with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds;
the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while, sometimes, the wind tolled like a
distant church-bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn.
But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.
“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Goodman Brown, when the wind laughed at him. “Let us hear which will laugh loudest!
Think not to frighten me with your deviltry! Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powow, come devil himself! and
here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you!”
102
Riding horses.
Across.
104
Pared.
105
Accustomed.
106
Overburdened.
107
Anything.
108
This pink ribbon becomes for Goodman Brown a clear piece of evidence of his wife´s corruption because it
connects the woman at the witches´ sabbath with Faith, whose pink ribbons had been mentioned three times in the first
part of the story.
103
62
In truth, all through the haunted forest, there could be nothing more frightful than the figure of Goodman
Brown. On he flew, among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied gestures, now giving vent to an
inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such laughter, as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like
demons around him. The fiend in his own shape is less hideous, than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the
demoniac on his course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks and
branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He
paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling
solemnly from a distance, with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the
village meeting-house. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all
the sounds of the benighted wilderness, pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out; and his cry was
lost to his own ear, by its unison with the cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence, he stole forward, until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one extremity of an
open space, hemmed in109 by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some rude, natural resemblance either to
an altar or a pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles at an
evening meeting. The mass of foliage, that had overgrown the summit of the rock, was all on fire, blazing high into the
night, and fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light
arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it
were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
“A grave and dark-clad company!” quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth, they were such. Among them, quivering to-and-fro, between gloom and splendor, appeared faces that
would be seen, next day, at the council-board of the province, and others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked
devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm, that
the lady of the governor was there. At least, there were high dames well known to her, and wives of honored husbands,
and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled, lest
their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light, flashing over the obscure field, bedazzled110
Goodman Brown, or he recognized a score of the church-members of Salem village, famous for their especial sanctity.
Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But,
irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames
and dewy111 virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean
and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see, that the good shrank not from the wicked,
nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered, also, among their pale-faced enemies, were the Indian priests, or
powows, who had often scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English
witchcraft.
“But, where is Faith?” thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but joined to words
which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more. Unfathomable112 to mere
mortals is the lore of fiends verse after verse was sung, and still the chorus of the desert swelled between, like the
deepest tone of a mighty organ. And, with the final peal113 of that dreadful anthem, there came a sound, as if the
roaring wind, the rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconverted wilderness, were
mingling and according with the voice of guilty man, in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a
loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke-wreaths, above the impious
assembly. At the same moment, the fire on the rock shot redly forth, and formed a glowing arch above its base, where
now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to
some grave divine of the New-England churches.
“Bring forth the converts!” cried a voice, that echoed through the field and rolled into the forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown steps forth from the shadow of the trees, and approached the congregation,
with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood, by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart. He could have well nigh
sworn, that the shape of his own dead father beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke-wreath, while
a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power
to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin seized his arms, and
led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse, that
pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier114, who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A
rampant hag was she! And there stood the proselytes, beneath the canopy of fire.
109
Surrounded.
Impressed.
111
Pure.
112
Incomprehensible.
113
Loud sound.
114
Hanged as witch in Salem in 1692.
110
63
“Welcome, my children,” said the dark figure, “to the communion of your race! Ye have found, thus young,
your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!”
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend-worshippers were seen; the smile of
welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.
“There,” resumed the sable115 form, “are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier
than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness, and prayerful
aspirations heavenward. Yet, here are they all, in my worshipping assembly! This night it shall be granted you to know
their secret deeds; how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton116 words to the young maids of
their households; how many a woman, eager for widow's weeds117, has given her husband a drink at bedtime, and let
him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers' wealth; and how
fair damsels—blush not, sweet ones!—have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest, to an infant's
funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin, ye shall scent out all the places—whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest—where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain
of guilt, one mighty blood-spot. Far more than this! It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of
sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power—than my
power, at its utmost!—can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each other.”
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith, and the wife her
husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
“Lo118! there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and solemn torte, almost sad, with its
despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. “Depending upon one
another's hearts, ye had still hoped, that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of
mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!”
“Welcome!” repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness, in this
dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it
blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark of
baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of
others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and
Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance shew them to each other, shuddering alike at what they
disclosed and what they saw!
“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband. “Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!”
Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he found himself amid calm night and
solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the forest. He staggered against the rock and
felt it chill and damp, while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew119.
The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village, staring around him
like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the grave-yard, to get an appetite for breakfast
and meditate his sermon, and bestowed120 a blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable
saint, as if to avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were
heard through the open window. “What God cloth the wizard pray to?” quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that
excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at her own lattice, catechising a little girl, who had brought her a
pint of morning's milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child, as from the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the
corner by the meetinghouse, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into
such joy at sight of him, that she skipt121 along the street, and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But,
Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?
Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern, a sad, a
darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the night of that fearful dream. On the
Sabbath-day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem of sin rushed
loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit, with power and
fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and
triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading, lest the
roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awakening suddenly at midnight, he
115
Black.
Malicious.
117
Black mourning clothes worn by a widow.
118
Look!
119
The dew awakens Goodman Brown from his dream or vision. Hawthorne may have used the drops of “the coldest
dew” to make a contrast with the warm tears of repentance which are absent from Brown´s cheeks.
120
Gave.
121
Moved as if she were dancing.
116
64
shrank from the bosom of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled122, and
muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his
grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and children and grand-children, a goodly procession,
besides neighbors, not a few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tomb-stone; for his dying hour was gloom.
‫٭٭٭٭٭‬
122
Frowned, looking angry and irritated.
65
HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891)
FROM MOBY DICK
Chapter I
LOOMINGS
Call me Ishmael123. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse,
and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.
It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about
the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before
coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an
upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my
substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the
ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish
very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs - commerce
surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme down-town is the battery, where
that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.
Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from
thence, by Whitehall northward. What do you see? - Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands
upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pierheads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still
better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster - tied to counters, nailed to
benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will
content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice.
No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand - miles of them leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues, - north, east, south, and west. Yet here
they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
Once more. Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten
to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most
absent- minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries - stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will
infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert,
try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows,
meditation and water are wedded for ever.
But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic
landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow
trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from
yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of
mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes
down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the
magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among
Tiger- lilies - what is the one charm wanting? - Water - there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract
of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving
two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a
pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some
time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical
vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea
holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning.
And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he
saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It
is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
123
The name of the narrator implies he is an outcast son of a great family. The biblical Ishmael was the oldest son of
Abraham by Hagar, a servant to the patriach´s childless wife Sarah, who used her maid to conceive an heir.
66
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and
begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go
as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides,
passengers get sea-sick - grow quarrelsome - don't sleep of nights - do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing; no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain,
or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all
honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care
of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook, - though I
confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board - yet, somehow, I never fancied
broiling fowls; - though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who
will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of
the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge
bake-houses the pyramids.
No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there
to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a
grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor,
particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes.
And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country
schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from the
schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But
even this wears off in time.
What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What
does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular
instance? Who aint a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about - however they
may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or
other served in much the same way - either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal
thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.
Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay
passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the
difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction
that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, - what will compare with it? The urbane activity with
which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all
earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to
perdition!
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the forecastle deck.
For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the
Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand
from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty
lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after
having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this
the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences
me in some unaccountable way - he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling
voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of
brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run
something like this:
“Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States
“Whaling Voyage by one Ishmael
“BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.”
Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part
of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in
genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces - though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the
circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under
various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a
choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious
monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable,
nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped
to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am
tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not
67
ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it - would they let me - since it is
but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.
By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world
swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul,
endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.
68
IV.5. The Romantic Poetry: Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson
WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)
Whitman himself termed his collected verse “an epic of Democracy”, “the song of a great
composite democratic individual”. He fully realized that he lived through one of the most brutal
periods of American history, but it was the potential ideality of America that he extolled. Whitman
saw the American democracy as leading to the brotherhood of all men. His celebration of the
fecundity of earth, of cosmic energy, and of universal rebirth lifted him from the position of
national poet to world poet. Leaves of Grass is the title under which virtually all of Whitman´s
poetry was published. From 1855 to 1892 nine editions of the book appeared, each longer than
the one before, each signaling Whitman´s resistance to completion.
Major themes: Leaves of Grass is poetry that celebrates all the dimensions of “self”,
America, love, life, death, the material and the spiritual. For all these, Whitman becomes the
poetic spokesman.
•
One great America: the geographic immensity and the rich diversity of peoples in the
USA thrilled him. The United States was a supreme example to all mankind.
•
Democracy: liberty and equality are key words for Whitman. He is an egalitarian and he
opposed any tyranny, any discrimination. He encourages independence and self-reliance
and asserts that love is a essential force in the universe.
•
Individualism: for Whitman the highest praise of democracy was its opportunity for the
fullest development of the self.
•
Glorification of the common man: He sees him as a noble part of humanity, and he finds
no one, regardless of occupation or condition, unworthy of being saluted in his poetry.
•
The body and the soul: he asserts the equality of all things, of all people, and of the body
with the soul. As the body is as precious as the spirit, so he finds the material as sacred
as the spiritual. Pantheistically, he gives his idea of deity material presence in , and
identity with, everything in the world. Whitman denies evil in the traditional sense.
•
Sexual frankness.
•
Pursuit of love and happiness.
‫٭٭٭٭‬
69
LEAVES OF GRASS
INSCRIPTIONS
One´s Self I Sing
One's-self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse,
I say the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine,
The Modern Man I sing.
I Hear America Singing
5
10
15
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on his way in the morning,
or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work,
or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day--at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
SONG OF MYSELF
1
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.
70
5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to
my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the
argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters
and lovers,
And that a kelson 124of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and
poke-weed.
BY THE ROADSIDE
When I Heard the Learn´d Astronomer
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide,
and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause
in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
124
A basic structural unit; a reinforcing timber bolted to the keel (backbone) of a ship.
71
I Sit and Look Out
I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon
all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves,
remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous
seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted
to be hid, I see these sights on the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see
martyrs and prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea—I observe the sailors casting lots
who shall be kill’d, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers,
the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these—all the meanness and agony without end, I sitting,
look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.
DRUM TAPS
Cavalry Crossing a Ford
A line in long array where they wind betwixt green islands,
They take a serpentine course, their arms flash in the sun—hark to
the musical clank,
Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing horses loitering stop to drink,
Behold the brown-faced men, each group, each person a picture, the
negligent rest on the saddles,
Some emerge on the opposite bank, others are just entering the ford—
while,
Scarlet and blue and snowy white,
The guidon flags flutter gayly in the wind.
A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,
Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift
the blanket;
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd hair,
and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step--and who are you my child and darling?
72
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third--a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man I think I know you--I think this face is the face of the
Christ himself,
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.
AUTUMN RIVULETS
There Was A Child Went Forth
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of
the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red
clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,
And the Third-month lambs and the sow's pink-faint litter,
and the mare's foal and the cow's calf,
And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the
pond-side,
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there,
and the beautiful curious liquid,
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part
of him.
The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part
of him,
Winter-grain sprouts and those of the light-yellow corn, and
the esculent roots of the garden,
And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms and the fruit afterward,
and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road,
And the old drunkard staggering home from the outhouse of the
tavern whence he had lately risen,
And the schoolmistress that pass'd on her way to the school,
And the friendly boys that pass'd, and the quarrelsome boys,
And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls, and the barefoot negro boy
and girl,
And all the changes of city and country wherever he went.
His own parents, he that had father'd him and she that had conceiv'd
him in her womb and birth'd him,
They gave this child more of themselves than that,
They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him.
The mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table,
The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown,
a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by,
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust,
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty
lure,
The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture,
the yearning and swelling heart,
Affection that will not be gainsay'd, the sense of what is real,
the thought if after all it should prove unreal,
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of night-time, the
73
curious whether and how,
Whether that which appears so is so, or is it all flashes and
specks?
Men and women crowding fast in the streets, if they are not
flashes and specks what are they?
The streets themselves and the facades of houses, and goods in the
windows,
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, the huge crossing
at the ferries,
The village on the highland seen from afar at sunset, the river
between,
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling on roofs and gables of
white or brown two miles off,
The schooner near by sleepily dropping down the tide, the little
boat slack-tow'd astern,
The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken crests, slapping,
The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away
solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in,
The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt
marsh and shore mud,
These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who
now goes, and will always go forth every day.
WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY DEATH
A 'oiseless Patient Spider
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detatched, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect
them.
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
74
EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)
The most important poet to emerge in the age was unknown during her lifetime. Emily Dickinson
was born in the western Massachusetts village of Amherst, and except for brief visits to Boston
or Washington, D.C. she spent her life there, mainly within the grounds of the family mansion.
Despite such limited experience she produced over 1700 short poems, only seven of which were
published during her lifetime. For the first two or three years of her career, she wrote nearly a
poem a day, and altogether, she produced verse of such quality that she is placed with Whitman
in the first rank of 19th century American poets.
Themes:
• Nature: as a source of simple delight recurs as a theme in many of her poems.
• God, Death, Faith, Doubt: her theological orientation was Puritan-- she was taught all the
premises of Calvinistic dogma-- but she reacted against the Calvinistic deity. Another force
alive in her time that competed for her insterests was the force of literary transcendentalism.
This explains a kind of paradoxical attitude toward matters of religion: she loved to speak of a
compassionate Savior and the grandeur of the Scriptures, but she disliked the hypocrisy and
arbitrariness of institutional church. Sometimes in her poems she came to God in great
confidence, and other times she addresses Him as `Burglar, Banker, Father´, or still in others
she expresses grave doubts. Skepticism and anxiety, doubt and belief, hope and despair,
resignation and protest continuously fight within her. Sometimes she adopts the pose of
•
having died before she writes her lyric; or she can look straight at approaching death.
Pain and Suffering: she displays an obsession with pain and suffering; there is an eagerness
in her to examine pain, to measure it, to calculate it, to intellectuallize it as fully as possible.
•
Love: though she was lonely and isolated, Emily Dickinson appears to have loved deeply,
perhaps only those who have `loved and lost´ can love, with an intensity and desire which can
never be fulfilled in the reality of the lovers´ touch.
•
Death: Many readers have been intrigued by Dickinson's ability to probe the fact of human
death. She often adopts the pose of having already died before she writes her lyric - #712
and 465.
IN CLASS GROUP ACTIVITY
1.- Contrast Whitman vs. Dickinson
75
EMILY DICKI'SO'
214
I taste a liquor never brewed—
From Tankards125 scooped in Pearl—
Not all the Vats126 upon the Rhine
Yield such an Alcohol!
Inebriate of Air—am I—
And Debauchee127 of Dew—
Reeling128—thro endless summer days—
From inns of Molten Blue129—
When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove´s130 door—
When Butterflies—renounce their “drams” —
I shall but drink the more!
Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats—
And Saints—to windows run—
To see the little Tippler131
Leaning against the —Sun—
216
Safe in their Alabaster Chambers—
Untouched by Morning
And untouched by Noon—
Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection—
Rafter of satin,
And Roof of stone.
Light laughs the breeze
In her Castle above them—
Babbles the Bee in a stolid Ear,
Pipe the Sweet Birds in ignorant cadence—
Ah, what sagacity perished here!
125
Large drinking cups with a andel.
Large containers for holding liquids.
127
Dissipated.
128
Swaying.
129
The skies.
130
A plant. The poet imagines the foxglove as a tavern whose door is closed by the landlords so as not tol et the
drunken bee in.
131
Drinker.
126
76
303
The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the door—
On her divine Majority—
Present no more—
Unmoved— she notes the Chariots—pausing—
At her low Gate—
Unmoved— an Emperor is kneeling
Upon her Mat—
I've known her—from an ample nation—
Choose One—
Then—close the Valves of her attention—
Like Stone—
341
After great pain a formal feeling comes—
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round—
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought—
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—
441
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me—
The simple News that Nature told—
With tender Majesty
Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see—
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—
Judge tenderly—of Me
465
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air—
Between the Heaves132 of Storm—
The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset—when the King
Be witnessed—in the Room—
I willed my Keepsakes133—Signed away
132
Rising and falling movements.
77
What portion of me be
Assignable—and then it was
There interposed a Fly—
With Blue134—uncertain stumbling Buzz—
Between the light—and me—
And then the Windows135 failed— and then
I could not see to see—
712
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—
We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—
Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—
We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—
Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity—
133
Mementoes kept in memory of the dead person.
The adjective Blue is connected to Buzz and creates the illusion of blurred perception because sight and sound are
confused.
135
The eyes.
134
78
V
THE AGE OF REALISM AND
NATURALISM
(1865-1914)
79
V. 1.The Rise of Realism and Naturalism. The historical context:
The U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) between the industrial North and the agricultural, slaveowning South was a watershed in American history. The Civil War changed American society in
a number of important ways. The innocent optimism of the young democratic nation gave way,
after the war, to a period of exhaustion. The war weakened the optimism and confident idealism
that had characterized much of Romantic thought. Other factors, such as Darwinian doubts
about the divinity of human origins and scientific attacks on religious orthodoxy may have
brought a new cynicism anyway, but the war accelerated the collapse of old ways. The war
cleared the way for a period of explosive INDUSTRIAL GROWTH and unprecedented prosperity.
It was the age of inventions and staggering productivity. Steel production increased enormously
between 1870 and 1900, while the invention of the telephone and the electric light altered the
way people communicated with each other and the manner in which they lived. An important
consequence of northern industrialization during the Civil War was the creation of an enormously
wealthy class of industrialists who had grown rich on war contracts that very often had been
granted through bribes and conncetions with influential politicians. After the war, these
opportunists extended their corrupt business practices. Thus, the so-called GILDED AGE was
born. The phrase was taken from the novel of the same name by Mark Twain and Charles
Dudley Warner. It signified an age entirely given over to questionable business ethics, the singleminded pursuit and blatant display of wealth, and a government indifferent to, when not
implicated in, exploitation of the nation´s resources. Quickly there arose a class of fabulously
wealthy industrialists who came to be known as robber barons (Jay Gould, J.Morgan, John D.
Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, William Vanderbilt…) that monopolized banks, oil production,
steel industry and railways. The new power and wealth was increasingly concentrated in fewer
hands, and was enjoyed by a few at the expense of many. The CULT OF WEALTH AND
SUCCESS was a topic the Realists turned in their novels and stories. The protagonist of the
novel The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) by William D. Howells was a humble farmer who
becomes a millionaire when he discovers a unique mineral composition on his farm that
produces a famous brand of paint, and Mark Twain mocked the human desire to sacrifice
happiness for the dream of boundless riches in his story “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”.
Between 1865 and 1914 the United States transformed from a country just emerging from
a destructive civil war to an imperial nation with overseas possessions and coasts on both the
Atlantic and Pacific. The end of the Civil War allowed the nation to turn its attention to settling the
vast territories west of the Mississippi River. This process had slowed dramatically during the
1850s and the war, but the domination of the Native Americans in the western territories and
80
their removal from their lands began in the 1870s. By the 1880s, the greater part of the United
States had been transformed by mining operations, ranching ventures and farming settlements.
Accompanying industralization, the postwar development of an EXTENSIVE NATIONAL
NETWORK OF RAILWAYS had a tremendous impact on the settlement of the western
territories. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the concept of a nation
spanning the cocntinent from the Atlantic to the Pacific entered the national imagination for the
first time. Increasingly, the diverse states were reconceived in the public imagination as parts of a
fully unified, ever-expanding nation with almost limitless potential. By 1893, so many Americans
had moved westward that the historian Frederick Jackson Turner declared the frontier closed.
Americans subsequently turned their attentions overseas, toward new territories in Samoa and
Hawaii and former Spanish possessions in Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, in an attempt
to join the European empires on the world stage.
The most remarkable change during these years was the RAPID GROWTH OF CITIES, fed
by immigrants and farm and village people from the countryside. Between 1865 and 1914 the
United States exploded from a population of about 35 million to about 100 million. Many farm
communities actually declined in population, while cities mushroomed to enormous dimensions:
New York, with a population of 3 million, was the second largest in the world. Chicago expanded
even more spectacularly, swelling this period from 100,000 to over a million. In the four decades
after 1860, more than 14 million immigrants entered the USA, plus an additional 5 million in the
opening decade of the new century. Problems of urbanization and industrialization appeared:
poor and overcrowded housing, unsanitary conditions, low pay (called "wage slavery"), difficult
working conditions, and inadequate restraints on business. Labor unions grew, and strikes
brought the plight of working people to national awareness. Immigrants from countries as diverse
as Italy, Greece and Poland were viewed with both hostility and fear, and American cities
became polarized not only by wealth and social status, but by race and ethnicity. Slum housing,
crime, and the segmentation of cities into immigrant ghettos, middle class suburbs, and exclusive
neighborhoods for the rich became facts of urban life. American cities came to fascinate the
Realists and later the Naturalists. Cities seemed to perfectly embody the Darwinian idea of
existence as a savage, purposeless struggle for survival, in which the strongest and most
adaptable survived while the weak went under. Suddenly it seemed no great imaginative leap for
the Naturalists to link the drama of the city to struggles and hierarchies of the primitive jungle that
civilization confidently believed it half evolved away from. Three classic works by early American
Naturalism— Stephen Crane´s Maggie (1895), Frank Norris´s McTeague (1899), and Thodore
Dreiser´s Sister Carrie (1900— all take the city as their setting, whether it is New York, San
Francisco or Chicago.
To face the challenge of representing these dynamic cultural changes, American authors
turned to the international aesthetic of realism, whose European practitioners include Leo
81
Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen, and Gustave Flaubert. American realism was an attempt to accurately
represent life as authors saw it through the use of concrete descriptive details that readers
would recognize from their own lives. The most significant literary movement between the Civil
War and World War I was realism. Literary realism was the natural development of an age forced
to acknowledge a number of new realities. It was an outgrowth of a people less ready to accept
the old optimism and affirmations of the prewar transcendentalists, a people who, in the scientific
and perhaps skeptical spirit of the day, were ready to accept only what could be observed and
verified with the senses. The major spokesman for literary realism was William Dean Howells,
whose influence as a novelist, editor, and critic was powerful. Other major writers who are usually
considered realists were Mark Twain and Henry James, although their realism often differs from
that of Howells, and even more significantly from each other.
82
V. 2. Local Color Fiction & Women Writers at the Turn of the Century
During the same period in which the first generation of realist writers wrote (William Dean
Howells, Mark Twain and Henry James), a number of writers chose to assert the importance of
the nation´s diverse regions. Stories that emphasize setting are often classified as local-color or
regional fiction. Although there is considerable dispute about how this school of writing should be
defined and exactly who should be included within it, “local color” is a convenient designation for
a literary movement that between 1870 and the end of the century dominated in American
literature, especially in the magazines, and the short story proved the best medium for the localcolorists. They display a careful fidelity to the landscape, customs, dialect, and thought of their
chose area. Often the life-style of this area appears to be vanishing, and the author sees himself
as its first, last, or only recorder. With such emphasis on faithful depiction, these stories
obviously belong to the realistic movement; yet many also contain such romantic ingredients as
sentimentality and primitivism.
Several factors brought about the great vogue of local color literature during the late
nineteenth century. Regionalism was often a reaction AGAINST the economic impact of
INDUSTRIALIZATION AND MODERNIZATION after the Civil War. Regionalist writers began to
produce a literature that celebrated the unique language, rituals, and other cultural traits of their
part of the country. Regionalism also served a kind of nostalgic function: As more and more
Americans moved to the city and lost their regional identities, they sought out a literature that
reminded them of their lost origins. The critic Eric Sunquist notes about local color that it is a
literature of memory and as such it has elements of the historical novel, i.e. local color will always
have a heavy dose of nostalgia, of turning backwards when life was so much simpler and better
and well ... not so complicated. Local color, however, never depicts the major, the great figures
of history but instead takes glimpses on small details which show how time has gone by and a
simpler way of life succumbs to one more complex.
Influenced by the realism of Old Southwest humor sketches and tales, regionalism and
local color fiction in the United States emerged around the time of the American Civil War. By the
end of the nineteenth century, these literary movements had become the dominant form of short
story writing in the country and contributed to the building of a national and literary identity. Critics
agree that regionalism and local color fiction played a noteworthy role in healing the divisions of
the Civil War and disseminated valuable information about the diversity and richness of American
culture.
83
Definitions:
Local color or regional literature is fiction and poetry that focuses on the characters,
dialect, customs, topography, and other features particular to a specific region. Between the Civil
War and the end of the nineteenth century this mode of writing became dominant in American
Literature. According to The Oxford Companion to American Literature, ¨In local-color literature
one finds the DUAL INFLUENCE OF ROMANTICISM AND REALISM, since the author
frequently looks away from ordinary life to distant lands, strange customs, or exotic scenes, but
retains through minute detail a sense of fidelity and accuracy of description´. Its weaknesses may
include NOSTALGIA OR SENTIMENTALITY. Its customary form is the sketch or short story,
although Hamlin Garland argued for the novel of local color.
Characteristics:
•
Setting: The emphasis is frequently on nature and the limitations it imposes; settings are
frequently remote and inaccessible. The setting is integral to the story and may sometimes
become a character in itself.
•
Characters: Local color stories tend to be concerned with the character of the district or
region rather than with the individual; characters may become character types, sometimes
quaint or stereotypical. The characters are marked by their adherence to the old ways, by
dialect, and by particular personality traits central to the region. In women´s local color fiction,
the heroines are often unmarried women or young girls.
•
Narrator: The narrator is typically an educated observer from the world beyond who learns
something from the characters while preserving a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes ironic
distance from t hem. The narrator serves as mediator between the rural folk of the tale and
the urban audience to whom the tale is directed.
•
Plots: It has been said that `nothing happens´ in local color stories by women authors, and
often very little does happen. Stories may include lots of storytelling and revolve around the
community and its rituals.
•
Themes: Many local color stories share an antipathy to change and a certain degree of
nostalgia for an always-past golden age. A celebration of community and acceptance in the
face of adversity characterizes women´s local color fiction. Thematic tension or conflict
between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values is often symbolized by the intrusion of an
outsider or interloper who seeks something from the community.
Techniques:
Use of dialect to establish credibility and authenticity of regional characters.
Use of detailed description, especially of small, seemingly insignificant details central to an
understanding of the region.
Frequent use of a frame story in which the narrator hears some tale of the region.
84
Practitioners:
Many critics trace the origins of local color fiction to the 1868 publication of the story “The
Luck of Roaring Camp,” by Bret Harte. This story, set in a California mining town, was soon
followed by his popular tale “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1870). Elements of Harte's work—
especially its regional flavor, use of stereotypical characters, and portrayal of ethnic groups—
influenced many of his contemporaries in the American West. Though scholars stress the
story's origins in Southwestern folklore and its relationship to the work of other authors in the
same genre, Mark Twain's sketch “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865)
utilizes a primary characteristic of local fiction—the use of a narrator, typically an educated
observer from the world beyond who serves as mediator between the rural folk of the tale and
the urban audience to whom the tale is directed.
In New England, regional fiction was most notably the province of female authors, such
as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Rose Terry
Cooke. Stowe's characteristic use of New England village scenery and Yankee dialect is evident
in her short story collection Oldtown Fireside Stories (1871). Jewett's masterwork, The Country of
the Pointed Firs (1896), a short story cycle set in the deteriorating maritime communities of
coastal Maine, is the most celebrated work of New England local color fiction. The device of
spectator-narrator, an outsider from the city, provides the frame for the collection. Similar to
Jewett's works, Wilkins Freeman's short story collections were written with a female readership in
mind, depicting New England women whose vocational choices were largely limited to marriage
or spinsterhood.
In the Midwest, Hamlin Garland was the most prolific regional writer of the nineteenth
century. His stories, especially the initial collection Main-Travelled Roads (1891), proved
influential because of his use of descriptive detail, the inclusion of social and political
commentary regarding oppressed Midwestern farmers, and the omission of the sentimental
characters and plot devices that were common in the literature of the late nineteenth century.
Constance Fenimore Woolson is commonly described as a local colorist, due to her vivid
evocations of such settings as the Great Lakes and her strong character development.
The South has undoubtedly produced the largest body of regional and local color fiction.
Joel Chandler Harris is credited as one of the earliest writers to record and utilize African
American dialect and folklore in his tales of the fictional character Uncle Remus. Thomas Nelson
Page penned nostalgic, detailed stories in the plantation tradition, capturing the imagination of a
war-torn nation disillusioned by the struggles of Reconstruction. George Washington Cable is
lauded for his accurate portrayal of post-Civil War society and honest treatment of the complex
racial issues of the Creole people, descendants of the French and Spanish colonists of
Louisiana. In Kate Chopin's short story collections, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie
85
(1897), she transcends simple regionalism and portrays Creole and Acadian women who sought
spiritual and sexual freedom amid the restrictive mores of nineteenth-century Southern society.
Charles W. Chesnutt, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson are the three
most prominent African American local fiction writers of this era. Chesnutt's writings about
slavery and mulattos living on the “color line” convey implicit denunciations of the institution. At
times overtly didactic, these stories are Chesnutt's attempts to humanize African American
literary characters. However, the adverse reaction to his fiction virtually ended his literary career.
Many of Dunbar's short stories, often following the plantation tradition of Thomas Nelson Page,
were written at a time when appeasing white audiences was crucial to the literary success of
black authors. Accordingly, many reviewers have labeled Dunbar an accommodationist, yet
recent criticism has focused more on his compromises.
Women writers at the turn of the century
The nineteenth century saw a tremendous growth in writing by women. Prior to the civil
war women´s involvement in literature had been markedly on the rise both as writers and
readers. Authors such as Susan Warner (The Wide, Wide World (1850), Harriet Beecher Stowe
(Uncle´s Tom Cabin (1852), Maria Susanna Cummins (The Lamplighter (1854), E.D.E.N.
Southworth (The Hidden Hand (1859), and many more, enjoyed immense popularity. These
novels are known as “sentimental novels” or “domestic novels” and were largely written by
women for wormen. They dominated the U.S. market from the 1840s until the 1880s. In general,
the sentimental novel is didactic in form, “artless” in style, sincere in its tone, melodramatic in its
plotting, and addressed overwhelmingly to a female readership. In the U.S. the sentimental form
was largely influenced by 18th-century British novels of sentiment. However, American
sentimental narratives tended to be more didactic, even propagandistic, than the British versions,
largely in an effort to counter the tradition of Puritanical disapproval of fiction. Writers of
sentimental novels emphasized the usefulness of their fictions by trying to provide upright moral
examples and positive social values to the new society of the republic. Such messages, usually
targeted at women (but also intended for men), included the dangers of seduction, the
importance of choosing a dependable marriage partner, the consequences of sexual
transgression, and the need for female education.
So prolific and successful were women writers that in the mid 1850s, Nathaniel
Hawthorne wrote a letter to his publisher angrily criticizing the fact that “America is now wholly
given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while
the public taste is occupied with their trash—and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed”.
He thought that they were very serious competitors because their books were sold in the
86
thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, driving more deserving writers (like himself) out
of the literary marketplace. However, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a
dramatic reconfiguration of the role of women in society. The ideal woman of 1850s culture had
been portrayed as pious, submissive, and nurturing, a figure who asserted her personality and
gained identity by cultivating domestic perfection.
After the Civil War, though, women gained unprecedented access to higher education,
and economic expansion after 1865 led to more job opportunities. Whether through the medium
of education, work, reform organizations, or women´s clubs, there is no question that the Age of
Realism coincided with a broad struggle on the part of women to move out of the private and into
the public arena. As in the mid-century, the high presence of women on the literary scene
continued to be judged ambivalently well into the second half of the 19th century. Female
creativity was considered a contradiction in terms, since creativity itself appeared to be
incompatible with a woman’s prescribed gender roles. The four feminine virtues originated from
the conviction that women were basically reproductive by nature, whereas men were productive.
Along this line, creativity was, by definition, ascribed to masculinity, whereas procreation was
ascribed to femininity. Little by little a NEW TYPE OF FEMININITY emblematized by the NEW
WOMAN evolved as a reaction to the cult of domesticity. The New Woman was encouraged to
liberate herself from male domination, take her life into her own hands and pursue happiness and
self-fulfillment. Rather than submitting herself to circumstance, the New Woman wished to probe
into possibilities of self-realization. Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary E. Wilkins
Freeman, and Edith Wharton began to incorporate a feminist point of view, often subtly, but
sometimes quite openly, in their work. These writers portrayed a universal condition in women
as they struggled for independence among hardship or convention, and helped to push the novel
in new directions, although their efforts were often viewed pejoratively. They fully documented
the complex challenges facing women. Later novelists such as Willa Cather and Ellen Glasgow
further developed the concerns initiated by the first generation of women Realists. All explore the
contradictions of a society that both offered and withheld opportunities and freedoms for women.
Change was no doubt occurring, but beneath the surface of social change, a prevailing desire on
the part of men and traditional institutions to reaffirm make dominance of the public sphere and
women´s `place´ in the home continued to assert itself.
Responding to the call of the times and also molding it, a new body of American women’s
literature emerged which utilized the genre of female Bildungsroman (the female novel of
development rendering the spiritual, moral and psychological progress of a young woman).
Contrary to their male counterparts, these female novels of development represented the
heroines’ confrontation not only with their restrictive environment but also with their gender
identity as women. (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915); Rebecca Harding Davis, “The
87
Wife’s Story,” (1864). A recurring theme in these narratives was awakening that foregrounded
the heroine’s dawning realization of entrapment and imminent liberation. (Kate Chopin, The
Awakening, 1899; “The Story of an Hour,” 1894; Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow
Wallpaper,” 1911; Edith Wharton, “Roman Fever,” 1934). Within novels of female development,
the female artist novel constitute a distinct group, dramatizing the apparently insurmountable
difficulties that hurdled the artistic development and maturation of a talented woman whose
ambitions proved incompatible with her gender (Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Story of Avis, 1877;
Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 1899). Women writers also experimented with the imaginary
construction of alternative female worlds that facilitated women’s self-fulfillment untroubled by
patriarchy in stories of isolation (Sarah Orne Jewett, A White Heron (1886); Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, Herland (1915).
Given the new questions surrounding women´s relationships with men, it is not surprising
that the institution of marriage, sexual freedom, individual identity, and the female
subconscious are closely scrutinized in the best work of women Realists. Kate Chopin ´s “The
Story of an Hour,” (1894) or The Awakening (1899), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman´s story “The
Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) explore the consequences of marital frustration and the desire to break
free of marriage´s oppressive expectations. Chopin´s heroine in The Awakening ultimately seeks
escape from her predicament by drowning herself, while the female narrator of Gilman´s story
descends into madness. The tragic endings of these narratives tend tro suggest that many
women held out little hope of reshaping their lives and their roles as women in society, either
because the institution of marriage was simply too monolithic or because society would not allow
such freedom and independence. The picture painted by women writers was not entirely bleak,
however. Mary Wilkins Freeman´s female characters often succeed in asserting their will and
making free choices within their restricted surroundings.
‫٭ ٭ ٭ ٭ ٭‬
88
KATE CHOPI' (1850-1904)
The Story of an Hour (1894)
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently
as possible the news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing.
Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when
intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had
only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful,
less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its
significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had
spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical
exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring
life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a
distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other
in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came
up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now
there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was
not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it
was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds,
the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching
to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will --as powerless as her two white slender hands would
have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and
over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her
eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of
her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception
enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender
hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw
beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened
and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no
powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a
private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she
looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the
unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the
strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission.
"Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door-- you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's
sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open
window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of
days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had
thought with a shudder that life might be long.
89
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her
eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they
descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travelstained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not
even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him
from the view of his wife.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease --of the joy that kills.
90
V. 3. American Realism (1870-1890): Mark Twain, William D. Howells
and Henry James
In American literature, the term `realism´ encompasses the period of time from the Civil
War to the turn of the century during which William Dean Howells, Henry James, Mark Twain,
and others wrote fiction devoted to accurate representation and an exploration of American lives
in various contexts. As the United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the increasing rates of
democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization, an expanding
population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence provided a fertile
literary environment for readers interested in understanding these rapid shifts in culture.
Both DISILLUSIONMENT AND PROSPERITY, two important characteristics of this
period, gave a new shape to serious American literature. The best writers felt strongly a decline
of traditional values and loss of easy optimism. Many looked at the sordidness beneath the gilt
coating of the age. The result was turn away from romanticism toward realism; that is, the
representation in literary works of the world as it actually was. To the realists, the Romantic vision
was a deceptive construct of inspiration and hope. Let us, the realists said, present the world as
it is, with all its warts.
Having different assumptions, realism brought different methods. Most noticeably, prose
fiction became the dominant medium, especially in the late nineteenth century. The novel offered
the space and adaptability to allow a full and balanced picture of the world. Writing style changed
too. Realism stressed impersonality rather than personal response, cool perception rather than
heated involvement or flashing insight, documentation rather than lyrical elaboration, a
concentration on contemporary life rather than escape into the past or to distant lands, and
natural rather than elevated dialogue.
Definitions:
“Realistic fiction is often opposed to romantic fiction: the romance is said to present life as
we would have it be, more picturesque, more adventurous, more heroic, than the actual; realism,
to present an accurate imitation of life as it is….The typical realist sets out to write a fiction which
will give the illusion that it reflects life as it seems to the common reader. To achieve this effect
the author prefers as protagonist an ordinary citizen…The realist, in other words, is deliberately
selective in his material and prefers the average, the commonplace, and the everyday over the
rarer aspect of the contemporary scene. The characters, therefore, are usually of the middle
class or (less frequently) the working class-people without highly exceptional endowments, who
live through ordinary experiences of childhood, adolescence, love, marriage, parenthood,
infidelity, and death; who find life rather dull and often unhappy, though it may be brightened by
91
touches of beauty and joy; but who may, under special circumstances, display something akin to
heroism. A thoroughgoing realism involves not only a selection of subject matter but, more
important, a special literary manner as well: the subject is presented, or “rendered”, in such a
way as to give the reader the illusion of actual and ordinary experience”. (A Glossary of Literary
Terms)
“Realism, term applied to literary composition that aims at an interpretation of the
actualities of any aspect of life, free from subjective prejudice, idealism, or romantic color. It is
opposed to the concern with the unusual which forms the basis of romance, but it does not
proceed, as does naturalism, to the philosophy of determinism and a completely amoral attitude.
[…] The example of science, the influence of rational philosophy, the use of documentation in
historical study, as well as the reaction against attenuated romanticisim, all had their effect in
creating the dominance of realism in thesecond half of the 19th century. Although influenced by
English and foreign authors, to a great extent the American transition from romance to realism in
fiction was indigenous, but it occurred gradually” (The Oxford Companion to American Literature)
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS, the most prominent man of letters of his generation,
helped introduce a new REALISM into late nineteenth-century American writing both through
his own fiction and as a champion of the European writers who were then being translated
into English. He radically opposed the prevalent sentimentality and idealization in fiction, and
campaigned for fiction that was true to life, that dealt with everyday experiences in
ordinary lives: “Let fiction cease to lie about life; let it portray men and women as they
are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the measure we all know; let it leave
off painting dolls […] Let it speak the dialect, the language, that most Americans
know—the language of unaffected people everywhere […] [Realism is] nothing more
and nothing less than the truthful treatment of materials…We must ask ourselves
before we ask anything else, Is it true?—true to the motives, the impulses, the
principles that shape the life of actual men and women? ”
Realism emerged as a REACTION TO ROMANTICISM, for the proponents of realism felt
that romantic fiction was too idealized, too neatly patterned, too grandly tragic or heroic to reflect
real life. They DISTRUSTED the IDEALISM, EMOTIONALISM, EXOTICISM of the previous era,
and reacted against the sentimental novel that in the 1870s and 1880s had degenerated into
espapist displays of false, overblown emotions, communicated through an array of predictably
stereotyped characters. Yet their sales and influence were such that Realists felt obliged to
spend a great deal of time and energy critizicing them.
92
The realists felt also an obligation to distinguish themselves from the the symbolic but not
“real” visions of the romace writers. Henry James wrote the best response to the romance in his
book Nathaniel Hawthorne (1879). In his opinion Hawthorne´s faults-- one-dimensional
characters, overuse of symbolism and allegorical plots—had to be rejected because they
diverged from the complex characters, the everyday, recognizable settings and the less
sensational plots that characterized realist fiction. Mark Twain also often attacked the influence
Sentimental culture and the Romance had in the South. They encouraged, according to his
opinion, a misguided and damaging view of life.
Outstanding characteristics of realistic fiction:
•
The world experienced by the author himself, portrayed without glamour.
•
Truthful treatment of material—verisimilitude.
•
Characters tend to be less extraordinary. Settings are more familiar. Believable people.
•
The normal expectancies of middle class life in settings, happenings, and viewpoint.
Instead of the heroic and extraordinary characters treated in romanticism, the realist
concentrates on the commonplace mediocrity.
•
Social orientation. The major problem by the realistic writer is the social adjustment of an
individual to his community.
•
An essentially optimistic, comic view of life. Human nature is assumed to be
fundamentally good, and man possesses free will.
•
Realists are believers in democracy. As a result, they generally describe the common, the
average, and the everyday—not in a heroic sense, but as these elements really are.
•
Present day American life. The realist centers his attention on the immediate, the here
and now, the specific action, and the verifiable consequence.
•
Realism subject matter: the surface details, the common actions, and the minor
catastrophes of a middle class society are the main subject matter: most of the ralists
avoid situations with tragic implications; their general attitude is optimistic since they feel
that humanity can learn ethical lessons and improve; however, some wtiters, like Twain,
found that humanity´s ability to imrpove is limited to humanity´s being able to accept its
limitations and working within them.
Varied types of Realism:
The 1870s and 1880s marked the high point of American Realism, decades dominated by
the fiction and criticism of Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and Henry James. They represent
the first generation of American Realists and they also illustrate the variety of American Realism.
They were realists in different senses in theory and practice. They generally AGREED that
realistic fiction truly presented `actuality´-- `real life´-- and that it was concerned with the near,
93
rather the distant, in time and space. Realism´s task was to take commonplace subjects and
individual experience seriously, and treat them faithfully, making fiction not a source of symbolic
or transcendental truths but of its own specific truth. Therefore, they believed that the probability
of happenings in novels might properly be tested, not by rules set up by the inventor of an
imaginative world but by what was likely in the actions of living men and women. The realists
turned to the practical, the reasonable, the everyday, and the here and now. They wanted to
represent contemporary American experience in stories and novels. It is a mimetic art: that is, it
turned away from some of the more imaginative, unrealistic elements found in Romanticism, and
tried to depict the types of characters and stories found in actual American settings. Like a
photograph, it sought to capture American life with accurate detail. Rejecting idealism, they were
pragmatists—what mattered was not what one could imagine but what one could literally sense
and actually do. They were interested in the material, not the spiritual or the transcendent.
DISAGREEMENT arose when they tried to define `actuality´. Where was the `real´ to be
found-- in the world itself, in the discovered scientific truths about the nature of the world, in the
impression which the world made on the observer´s mind, or in a combination of these?. The
methods of authors depended on their answers to this question and on their ability to portray
what they considered to be reality. There were many breeds of realists. Some regional writers or
local colorists, as we have seen, showed the world in sharp detail but tended to sentimentalize it;
others, like William Dean Howells, tried to create a pure realism, affected as little as possible by
the author´s attidudes. Henry James specialized in psychological realism, the interplay of motives
and inhibitions.
MARK TWAIN (1835-1910) was the most popular of the three. He achieved his realism
through humor, through satire. Much of his writing was humorous and used the dialect of the
region he was portraying. Twain put a truly distinctive stamp on American fiction. As a typical
realist, he aimed at accurately portraying the daily life of common people. In his truthful rendering
of reality, one of his main concerns was to record precisely the way he heard ordinary people
talk. He did not simply use slang and dialect words, but strove to reproduce in print the sounds
as they were pronounced in order to suggest authentic regional accents. Although he satirized
Romanticism, he had a yearning for the simplicities of nature and for primitive virtues in people,
revealing a Romantic temper beneath the surface. His early satiric view of organized religions
later became a dark skepticism. In short, his realism is sometimes gentled by Romanticism, at
other times hardened by bitter doubt concerning the nature of the world.
The material for all of Twain´s best narratives was his boyhood home and the prewar
Mississippi Valley. More accurately, the stuff of his best books was not the actuality but his
memory of the scenes and of the life he had known in childhood and youth. With The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer (1876) he found his essential subject matter, the pastoral days of the Mississippi
94
Valley before the Civil War, the homeland of American energy and innocent childhood simplicity.
In a century whose literature commonly used children as an excuse for sentimental gushing or
moralistic opinions, Twain is almost unique. His portrait of Tom is virtually untouched by
sentimentality or consciousness and charms the reader by the continual truth of his observations.
Tom is the living embodiment of an anarchic love of freedom and fun. Twain conceived The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) as the successor to Tom Sawyer, but the most obvious
change from this book is a shift of narrative viewpoint. The story of Tom Sawyer was told in the
third person, but Huck recounts his own story. His narrative is a superb rendering of dialect
speech and idiom. One of the attractions of this novel is Huck as the hero. Where Tom is the
conventional high-spirited child-- bad but always lovable, Huck is an outlaw: he is dirty, nearilliterate, indifferent to the religious teachings of his elders and eternally itching to `light out for the
Territory´-- to break away from restraints of civilization. Another attraction is the image of his
long, comradely journey down the Mississippi with Jim, through a sequence of towns and
villages, colorful encounters and narrow escapes. Along the river banks the American dream has
declined to the perverted moral and legal values of slavery, strong religious attitudes, cowardly
ambushes and murders. Huck is the quintessential American hero, an updated Natty Bumppo,
the lone individual male setting out to find himself. Twain objectively presents the events of the
novel and the growing relationship between Huck and the runaway slave Jim to make a point
about a problematic social issue. Although he warns us at the beginning of the novel against
finding a moral in the story, there is clearly one to be had but it is not one that is delivered
through preaching, didacticism or allegory. Instead, as we get to know Huck and Jim, as we pay
attention to their conversations, as we see Huck´s growing understanding of Jim as a human
being, we are challenged to consider how we stereotype and interact with people different from
us.
HENRY JAMES (1843-1916). His realism is characterized by his psychological approach
to his subject matter. His fictional world is concerned more with the inner life of human beings
than with overt human actions. His best and most mature works will render the drama of
individual consciousness and convey the moment-to-moment sense of human experience as
bewilderment and discovery. And we observe people and events filtering through the individual
consciousness and participate in his experience. This emphasis on psychology and on the
human consciousness proves to be a big breakthrough in novel writing and has great influence
on the coming generations. James is generally regarded as the forerunner of the 20th century
"stream-of-consciousness" novels and the founder of PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM. James is
one of the first innovators in point of view. One of James's literary techniques innovated to cater
for this psychological emphasis is his narrative “point of view.” James avoids the authorial
omniscience as much as possible and makes his characters reveal themselves with his minimal
intervention. So it is often the case that in his novels we usually learn the main story by reading
95
through one or severa1 minds and share their perspectives. This narrative method proves to be
successful in bringing out his themes.
In striving for a realistic narrative technique, James achieves extraordinary objectivity by
allowing the story to unfold through a center of intelligence, often a minor character who simply
reports in the story what he observes. The author never intrudes, is more or less objective; the
reader must then decide for himself what to think about characters, theme, etc. As his work `The
Art of Fiction´ (1884) shows, James was a careful thinker about the nature of reality, the nature
of art, and the relationship between the two. For him “a novel in its broadest definition a
personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is
greater or less according to the intensity of the impression´. He accepted the obligation of
the novelist to transcribe `experience´, but he defined that term by reference to perception,
consciousness, and sensibility:
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life… the strange,
irregular rhythm of life … without arrangement […] It goes without saying that you will not write a good
novel unless you possess the sense of reality […]. Humanity is immense, and reality has a myriad forms.
[…] It is equally excellent and inconclusive to say that one must write from experience […] What kind
of experience is intended, and where does it begin and end? Experience is never limited, and it is never
complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web ...suspended in the chamber of
consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind;
and the mind is imaginative […] it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of
the air into revelations.
His interest was not in incident but in analysis: he cared passionately for what he
called `the handling´ of his materials, the problem of giving his fiction `that air of reality
(solidity of specification)´ which was `the supreme virtue of the novel´. James was aware
that to achieve this end through artistry was a highly complicated and delicate business.
Such a conception of fiction clearly sets James off from those novelists who believed that
the best fiction was the exact reproduction of life as well as from those who believed that
it was an embodiment of naturalistic generalizations about life. Since he saw reality as a
series of impressions, and since he saw fiction as the artistic rendition of such
impressions, his sort of realism was essentially a complicated psychological process.
James´ literary career:
His literary career is generally divided into three periods.
(1)
In the first period (1865-1882), James took great interest in international themes: his
treatment with the clashes between two different cultures and the emotional and moral problems
of Americans in Europe, or Europeans in America. His early works include The American (1877),
The Europeans (1878), Daisy Miller (1879), and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). All of them
develop the `INTERNATIONAL THEME´. Compared to Europe, America was still a new,
96
innocent country. European subtleties of manners and morality, evolved over many centuries,
baffled the visiting American, who was accustomed to more direct behaviour and clearer
demarcations of right and wrong. He shows Americans, admirable though unsophisticated, in the
process of exposure to European influences. These influences make for social and aesthetic
enrichment; they are, at the same time, often questionable morally.
(2)
The second period (1885-1897) is a period of different themes and forms, focusing on
inter-personal relationships. The Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886), What
Maisie Knew (1897), The Spoils of Poynton (1897), The Turn of the Screw (1898) and The
Awkward Age (1899) are his most characteristics novels.
(3)
In his last and major period (1897-1916) James returned to his "international theme." The
three novels, The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl
(1904), considered to be James's most influential contribution to literature. The treatment of the
international theme is characrerized hy the richness of syntax and characterization and the
originality in point of view, symbolism, metaphoric texture, and organizing rhythm. James is now
more mature as an artist, more at home in the craft of fiction.
97
MARK TWAIN (1835-1910)
From Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
NOTICE
PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral
in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR,
Per G.G.,Chief of Ordnance.
EXPLANATORY
IN this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the
backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary "Pike County" dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The
shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy
guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters
were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.
THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER I
YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but
that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he
stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it
was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow
Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
Now the way that the book winds up, is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave,
and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece -- all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled
up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round -more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would
sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was
in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again,
and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I
might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but
she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat,
and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to
come to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck
down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them, -- that
is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and
the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to
find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't
care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean
practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down
on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and
no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in
it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.
Her sister,
Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with
a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't
stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, "Don't put your
feet up there, Huckleberry;" and "Don't scrunch up like that, Huckleberry -- set up straight;" and pretty soon she would
say, "Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry -- why don't you try to behave?" Then she told me all about the bad
place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go
somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't
say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in
98
going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only
make trouble, and wouldn't do no good.
Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have
to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. But I
never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was
glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.
Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the niggers in
and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the
table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so
lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and
I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about
somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it
was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost
makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy
in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some
company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I
could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch
me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three
times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away.
But I hadn't no confidence. You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over
the door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed a spider.
I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death
now, and so the widow wouldn't know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom -- boom
-- boom -- twelve licks; and all still again -- stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst
the trees -- something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!"
down there. That was good! Says I,"me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled
out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure
enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.
CHAPTER XV
WE judged that three nights more would fetch us to Cairo, at the bottom of Illinois, where the Ohio River
comes in, and that was what we was after. We would sell the raft and get on a steamboat and go way up the Ohio
amongst the free States, and then be out of trouble.
Well, the second night a fog begun to come on, and we made for a towhead to tie to, for it wouldn't do to try
to run in a fog; but when I paddled ahead in the canoe, with the line to make fast, there warn't anything but little
saplings to tie to. I passed the line around one of them right on the edge of the cut bank, but there was a stiff current,
and the raft come booming down so lively she tore it out by the roots and away she went. I see the fog closing down,
and it made me so sick and scared I couldn't budge for most a half a minute it seemed to me -- and then there warn't no
raft in sight; you couldn't see twenty yards. I jumped into the canoe and run back to the stern, and grabbed the paddle
and set her back a stroke. But she didn't come. I was in such a hurry I hadn't untied her. I got up and tried to untie her,
but I was so excited my hands shook so I couldn't hardly do anything with them.
As soon as I got started I took out after the raft, hot and heavy, right down the towhead. That was all right as
far as it went, but the towhead warn't sixty yards long, and the minute I flew by the foot of it I shot out into the solid
white fog, and hadn't no more idea which way I was going than a dead man.
Thinks I, it won't do to paddle; first I know I'll run into the bank or a towhead or something; I got to set still
and float, and yet it's mighty fidgety business to have to hold your hands still at such a time. I whooped and listened.
Away down there somewheres I hears a small whoop, and up comes my spirits. I went tearing after it, listening sharp
to hear it again. The next time it come I see I warn't heading for it, but heading away to the right of it. And the next
time I was heading away to the left of it -- and not gaining on it much either, for I was flying around, this way and that
and t'other, but it was going straight ahead all the time.
I did wish the fool would think to beat a tin pan, and beat it all the time, but he never did, and it was the still
places between the whoops that was making the trouble for me. Well, I fought along, and directly I hears the whoop
behind me. I was tangled good now. That was somebody else's whoop, or else I was turned around.
I throwed the paddle down. I heard the whoop again; it was behind me yet, but in a different place; it kept
coming, and kept changing its place, and I kept answering, till by and by it was in front of me again, and I knowed the
current had swung the canoe's head down-stream, and I was all right if that was Jim and not some other raftsman
hollering. I couldn't tell nothing about voices in a fog, for nothing don't look natural nor sound natural in a fog.
99
The whooping went on, and in about a minute I come a-booming down on a cut bank with smoky ghosts of
big trees on it, and the current throwed me off to the left and shot by, amongst a lot of snags that fairly roared, the
currrent was tearing by them so swift.
In another second or two it was solid white and still again. I set perfectly still then, listening to my heart
thump, and I reckon I didn't draw a breath while it thumped a hundred.
I just give up then. I knowed what the matter was. That cut bank was an island, and Jim had gone down t'other
side of it. It warn't no towhead that you could float by in ten minutes. It had the big timber of a regular island; it might
be five or six miles long and more than half a mile wide.
I kept quiet, with my ears cocked, about fifteen minutes, I reckon. I was floating along, of course, four or five
miles an hour; but you don't ever think of that. No, you feel like you are laying dead still on the water; and if a little
glimpse of a snag slips by you don't think to yourself how fast you're going, but you catch your breath and think, my!
how that snag's tearing along. If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night,
you try it once -- you'll see.
Next, for about a half an hour, I whoops now and then; at last I hears the answer a long ways off, and tries to
follow it, but I couldn't do it, and directly I judged I'd got into a nest of towheads, for I had little dim glimpses of them
on both sides of me -- sometimes just a narrow channel between, and some that I couldn't see I knowed was there
because I'd hear the wash of the current against the old dead brush and trash that hung over the banks. Well, I warn't
long loosing the whoops down amongst the towheads; and I only tried to chase them a little while, anyway, because it
was worse than chasing a Jack-o'-lantern. You never knowed a sound dodge around so, and swap places so quick and
so much.
I had to claw away from the bank pretty lively four or five times, to keep from knocking the islands out of the
river; and so I judged the raft must be butting into the bank every now and then, or else it would get further ahead and
clear out of hearing -- it was floating a little faster than what I was.
Well, I seemed to be in the open river again by and by, but I couldn't hear no sign of a whoop nowheres. I reckoned
Jim had fetched up on a snag, maybe, and it was all up with him. I was good and tired, so I laid down in the canoe and
said I wouldn't bother no more. I didn't want to go to sleep, of course; but I was so sleepy I couldn't help it; so I
thought I would take jest one little cat-nap.
But I reckon it was more than a cat-nap, for when I waked up the stars was shining bright, the fog was all
gone, and I was spinning down a big bend stern first. First I didn't know where I was; I thought I was dreaming; and
when things began to come back to me they seemed to come up dim out of last week.
It was a monstrous big river here, with the tallest and the thickest kind of timber on both banks; just a solid
wall, as well as I could see by the stars. I looked away down-stream, and seen a black speck on the water. I took after
it; but when I got to it it warn't nothing but a couple of sawlogs made fast together. Then I see another speck, and
chased that; then another, and this time I was right. It was the raft.
When I got to it Jim was setting there with his head down between his knees, asleep, with his right arm
hanging over the steering-oar. The other oar was smashed off, and the raft was littered up with leaves and branches and
dirt. So she'd had a rough time.
I made fast and laid down under Jim's nose on the raft, and began to gap, and stretch my fists out against Jim,
and says:
"Hello, Jim, have I been asleep? Why didn't you stir me up?"
"Goodness gracious, is dat you, Huck? En you ain' dead -- you ain' drownded -- you's back agin? It's too good
for true, honey, it's too good for true. Lemme look at you chile, lemme feel o' you. No, you ain' dead! you's back agin,
'live en soun', jis de same ole Huck -- de same ole Huck, thanks to goodness!"
"What's the matter with you, Jim? You been a-drinking?
"Drinkin'? Has I ben a-drinkin'? Has I had a chance to be a-drinkin'?"
"Well, then, what makes you talk so wild?"
"How does I talk wild?"
"How? Why, hain't you been talking about my coming back, and all that stuff, as if I'd been gone away?"
"Huck -- Huck Finn, you look me in de eye; look me in de eye. Hain't you ben gone away?"
"Gone away? Why, what in the nation do you mean? I hain't been gone anywheres. Where would I go to?"
"Well, looky here, boss, dey's sumf'n wrong, dey is. Is I me, or who is I? Is I heah, or whah is I? Now dat's
what I wants to know."
"Well, I think you're here, plain enough, but I think you're a tangle-headed old fool, Jim."
"I is, is I? Well, you answer me dis: Didn't you tote out de line in de canoe fer to make fas' to de tow-head?"
"No, I didn't. What tow-head? I hain't see no tow-head."
"You hain't seen no towhead? Looky here, didn't de line pull loose en de raf' go a-hummin' down de river, en
leave you en de canoe behine in de fog?"
"What fog?"
"Why, de fog! -- de fog dat's been aroun' all night. En didn't you whoop, en didn't I whoop, tell we got mix' up
in de islands en one un us got los' en t'other one was jis' as good as los', 'kase he didn' know whah he wuz? En didn't I
100
bust up agin a lot er dem islands en have a turrible time en mos' git drownded? Now ain' dat so, boss -- ain't it so? You
answer me dat."
"Well, this is too many for me, Jim. I hain't seen no fog, nor no islands, nor no troubles, nor nothing. I been
setting here talking with you all night till you went to sleep about ten minutes ago, and I reckon I done the same. You
couldn't a got drunk in that time, so of course you've been dreaming."
"Dad fetch it, how is I gwyne to dream all dat in ten minutes?"
"Well, hang it all, you did dream it, because there didn't any of it happen."
"But, Huck, it's all jis' as plain to me as -- "
"It don't make no difference how plain it is; there ain't nothing in it. I know, because I've been here all the
time."
Jim didn't say nothing for about five minutes, but set there studying over it. Then he says:
"Well, den, I reck'n I did dream it, Huck; but dog my cats ef it ain't de powerfullest dream I ever see. En I
hain't ever had no dream b'fo' dat's tired me like dis one."
"Oh, well, that's all right, because a dream does tire a body like everything sometimes. But this one was a
staving dream; tell me all about it, Jim."
So Jim went to work and told me the whole thing right through, just as it happened, only he painted it up
considerable. Then he said he must start in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the first towhead
stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him.
The whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to
understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it. The lot of towheads was troubles we
was going to get into with quarrelsome people and all kinds of mean folks, but if we minded our business and didn't
talk back and aggravate them, we would pull through and get out of the fog and into the big clear river, which was the
free States, and wouldn't have no more trouble.
It had clouded up pretty dark just after I got on to the raft, but it was clearing up again now.
"Oh, well, that's all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim," I says; "but what does these things stand
for?"
It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could see them first-rate now.
Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his
head that he couldn't seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get
the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says:
"What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en
went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en de raf'. En
when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo'
foot, I's so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is
trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed."
Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was
enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back.
It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I
warn't ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn't do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn't done that one if I'd a
knowed it would make him feel that way.
101
V. 4. American Naturalism (1890-1914): Frank Norris, Stephen Crane
and Jack London
Backgrounds:
By the end of the 1890s, a younger generation of writers emerged from the shadow of
Howells, Twain and James, and attempted to offer a MORE RADICAL VISION of and
explanation for the changes sweeping the United States. For writers such as Frank Norris,
Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser the kind of realism practised by Howells and James was seen
as too soft, that it was a pale realism, a surface realism, too accommodating to middle-class
aspirations, and therefore not “realistic” enough. These young writers wanted the dark and
unspoken of the "real" world to be the subject of literature--the outcasts, the down-trodden,
prostitutes, the depraved to be the characters to fill the pages of their books and poems.
Naturalism was an OUTGROWTH OF REALISM that responded to theories in science,
psychology, human behavior and social thought current in the late nineteenth century. It had
been shaped by the war, by the social upheavals that undermined the comforting faith of an
earlier age, and by the disturbing teachings of Darwinism. America’s literary naturalists dismissed
the validity of comforting moral truths. They attempted to achieve extreme objectivity and
frankness, presenting characters of low social and economic classes who were determined by
their environment and heredity. The PESSIMISM AND DETERMINISTIC IDEAS of naturalism
pervaded the works of such American writers as Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London and
Theodore Dreiser.
Drawing on the ideas set forth
(a) by the French philosopher Auguste Comte and the historian Hippolyte Taine,
(b) the evolution theories of the English scientist Charles Darwin, and
(c) the French novelist Emile Zola, the philosophy of American literary Naturalism was
born.
If Comte was the first to see the impact of scientific thinking on society, and Taine
developed his theory of character shaped by race, moment and milieu, demonstrating the
importance of hereditary and environmental influences in human development, CHARLES
DARWIN argued in On the Origins of the Species (1859) that all animal and human behavior was
determined by biological impulses rather than divinely inspired reason. He characterized the
natural world as a constant struggle for survival and from this vision came the principle of natural
selection. Darwin´s controversial findings undermined the biblical explanation for existence.
Though the phrase “the survival of the fittest” is not Darwin´s, many thinkers and writers began to
view modern society in terms of Darwinian philosophy. Somehow Darwin´s theory of natural
selection seemed to offer a rationale for the widening disparity between wealthy and successful
102
members of society and the struggling, wretchedly poor underclass.
Zola applied Comte´s thinking and Darwin´s philosophy to literature in his essay “Le
Roman Experimental”. For Zola the word “experimental” had scientific analogies; the novelist´s
task was to undertake a social and scientific study, recording facts, styles and systems of
behavior, living conditions, the working of institutions, and deducing the underlying processes of
environmental, genetic and historical development. He believed that novelists should think of
their fiction as a scientifically controlled experiment, where characters´behaviors are closely
observed as they interact with the forces of nature and society. Thus the study of human nature
and society became something of a science in itself in a typical Naturalist novel.
Definitions:
The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific
principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which
focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers,
since humans beings are, in Emile Zola´s phrase, `human beasts´, characters can be studied
through their relationships to their surroundings.
Through this objective study of human beings, naturalistic writers believed that the laws
behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood. Naturalistic writers
thus used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings
governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters´ lives were
governed by forces of heredity and environment. Although they used the techniques of
accumulating detail pioneered by the realists, the naturalists thus had a specific object in mind
when they chose the segment of reality that they wished to convey.
The definition found in A Glossary of Literary Terms by Greig E. Henderson and C. Brown
is fundamental: “[Naturalism is] a term used by Zola to describe the application of the clinical
method of emprirical science to all of life… If a writer wishes to depict life as it really is, he or she
must be rigorously deterministic in the representation of the characters´ thoughts and actions in
order to show forth the casual factors that have made the characters inevitably what they are…
Unlike realism, which also seeks to represent human life as it is actually lived, naturalism
specifically connects itself to the philosophical doctrine of biological and social determinism,
according to which human beings are devoid of free will”.
103
In George Becker´s famous definition (Documents of Modern Literary Realism) Naturalism
is `...no more than an emphatic and explicit philosophical position taken by some Realists
(that position being of) a pessimistic materialistic determinism´.
Lars Ahnebrink (The Beginnings of Naturalism in American Fiction) explicitly says that in
contrast to a realist, a naturalist believes that a character is fundamentally an animal,
without free will. To a naturalistic writer, a character can be explained in terms of the forces,
usually heredity and environment, which operate on him/her:
"Realism is a manner and method of composition by which the author describes normal,
average life, in an accurate, truthful way." [while] "'aturalism is a manner and method of
composition by which the author portrays `life as it is´ in accordance with the philosophic
theory of determinism."
DETERMINISM: the philosophical belief that events are determined by forces beyond the
control of human beings; characters don´t have free will, external and
internal forces (environment, heredity, society, etc) control their behavior.
Biological determinism: man is an animal endlessly engaged in a brutal
struggle for
survival (Darwin).
Socio-economic determinism: Man is victim of environment and has little control
over social & economic factors (Marx).
Psycological
determinism: Man can´t control his emotions and actions. Man is an
animal dominated by fundamental needs: fear, hunger,…(Freud).
Naturalistic fiction. Characteristics:
•
Characters: Frequently but not invariably ill-educated or lower class characters (they are
poor, uneducated and unsophisticated) whose lives are governed by the forces of
heredity, instinct, chance, and passion. Their attempts at exercising free will or choice are
dominated by forces beyond their control; social Darwinism and other theories help to
expxlain their fates to the reader. They view life as hopeless; they have a depressed
mood and are driven by basic needs. They are sometimes brutal people and often
failures.
•
Typical settings: Frequently urban setting (the ghettos, depressed homesteads, the
104
skyscrapers, corporations, and department stores, the slums, the sweatshops or
factories).
•
Techniques and plots: The naturalistic novel offers `clinical, panoramic, slice-of-life´
drama that is often a `chronicle of despair´. The novel of degeneration-- Norris´s
Vandover and the Brute, for example-- is also a common type.
Themes:
•
Survival (often survival in brutal nature), violence, and social taboo as key themes:
poverty, crime, madness, incest, adultery, alcoholism, sex deviation, etc. Sordid
language. Life as a trap.
•
Prostitution and seduction (as in Maggie, Vandover and the Brute, The Octopus, and
Sister Carrie), and exposure of social conditions and social evils (as in McTeague, and
The Octopus) were two new topics introduced by the naturalists.
•
The `brute within´ each individual, comprised of strong and often warring emotions:
passions, such as lust, greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure; and the fight for
survival in an amoral, indifferent universe. The conflict in naturalistic novels is often `man
against nature´ or `man against himself´ as characters struggle to retain a `veneer of
civilization´ despite external pressures that threaten to release the `brute within´.
•
Nature as an indifferent force acting on the lives of human beings. Nature (and the city)
is shown as being a kind of jungle, hostile to the men who live there.
•
Lower class life instead of middle class, and society is divided into the have and the
have-nots, predator and prey.
•
Pessimistic view of life: Man is pictured as an organism influenced by external forces.
The forces of heredity and environment as they manipulate the human destiny, or affect-and afflict-- individual lives.
•
Survival orientation: the concerns of middle class about social status and social
behavior are substituted by hunger, sex, fear…
•
An indifferent, deterministic universe. Naturalistic texts often describe the futile attempts
of human beings to exercise free will, often ironically presented, in this universe that
reveals free will as an illusion.
105
In class group activity
1.-
Differences between Realism vs Naturalism
2:
MAN
SOCIETY
NATURE
GOD
Varieties of Naturalism
For this new generation of writers, confronting a new American social experience,
naturalism offered a view which questioned the conviction that man was a conscious and rational
creature, that happiness is secured by virtuous behavior, that the landscape of familiar
experience offered all the moral pointers men needed. Their world is not a world of culture and
morals, or of individual hopes and satisfactions. It is a world of iron forces that `really´ determine
existence: the biological constituents of man, the impersonal, machine-like operations of society,
engaged in a climatic warfare seen at an analitic distance. Each American naturalist, on the basis
of his own reading and thinking, created characters and plots illustrative of his own `scientific´
convictions. American Naturalism can be divided into two camps:
First were those writers who emphasized the biological nature of humans and showed
them attempting to utilize their instincts to survive in a hostile natural world. These characters are
prone to what Frank Norris (1870-1902) called in McTeague (1899) “the foul stream of
hereditary evil”, and what Theodore Dreiser called “chemical compulsions” (Hurstwood in Sister
Carrie (1900). McTeague is the story of a rough and unschooled dentist and his young wife. An
envious rival, fate, greed and atavistic reversion to type in both husband and wife lead to his
hitting her to death and the the double death of McTeague and his rival. Dreiser pictured
situations and happenings which made clear that characters had no control over their actions.
For him freedom of the will is an illusion. Believing that “the race was to the swift and the battle to
the strong”, he devised plots which showed weak characters conquered by ruthless and powerful
opponents. In both cases, this irrational, innately primitive impulse leads to the destruction of the
character in question. Another example of this kind of Naturalism is found in the character of
Wolf Larsen in the novel The Sea Wolf (1904) by Jack London (1876-1910). London´s allegorical
portraits of human and animal struggles, The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906),
106
concentrate on how the natural environment determines both human and animal behavior, and
won him enormous popularity. Both novels illustrate the appeal of animal primitivism and the law
of “tooth and claw” for nineteenth century readers, who were all too aware of how close London´s
depiction of human and animal nature was to the facts of survival in the modern America society.
In The Call of the Wild, Buck, a huge dog, must retrieve ancient instincts in order to survive; he
answers the call of the wild and becomes the leader of a wolf pack, but in White Fang the
process is reversed , and the little Alaskan pup, half dog and half wolf, undergoes the pain that
accompanies his civilizing. Jack London wrote fifty books in sixteen years. To the general public
he is first of all the chronicler of the Klondike, of man and brute against the frozen north. He was
influenced from many sources including Nietzsche, Comte, and Karl Marx. His chief borrowing
from Nietzsche and Spencer was the idea of the superman, seen in its evil aspect of the Wolf
Larsen of The Sea Wolf. After his master´s murder, Buck, the dog in The Call of the Wild,
abandons civilization to lead a Klondike wolf pack. Atavistic adaptation to survival has seldom
been so convincingly portrayed in fiction. For him, men and women are animals whose behavior
is determined by the laws of nature, where the fittest thrive best and individual claims on life must
be subordinated to the survival of the species. In order to survive in a changed environment,
animals, including mankind, can regress from the level of behavior to which evolution has
brought them to more primitive levels. Aside from London´s achievements, nature´s hostility and
indifference to human survival is brilliantly illustrated in Stephen Crane´s short story “The Open
Boat” (1898), his best known. The subject grew out of the sinking of a ship which Crane had
experienced first-hand in 1896. In the story the account is restricted to the thirty hourse that
Crane and his three companions spent in the boat. The cook, the injured captain, the oiler and
the correspondent are representatives of mankind in the same boat together. The characters of
this story are all unnamed, an important detail for the kind of universe Crane evokes: they find
themselves alone and in danger, and they are forced to realize their insignificance in the face of
an indifferent nature. The sea is not gangerous. Nature is indifferent, not hostile. The threat of
death is present in each mind, and a sense of brotherhood grows among them.
The second kind of Naturalism is more common and less “programmatic” in its approach
to characters and action. Writers in this camp adopt a “softer” kind of Naturalism, more
concerned with humans in their social environment, and present them as products of
socioeconomic (rather than natural) forces against which they struggle but can hardly hope to
prevail. Examples of this kind of Naturalism can be found in Hamlin Garland´s Main Travelled
Roads (1891), Stephen Crane´s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) and Norris´s later two
novels, The Octopus (1901) and The Pit (1903). The fact that Norris freely adopted both forms of
Naturalism in his three novels illustrates the flexibility of the genre, and how it was viewed as a
starting point for a novel rather than a rigid form into which characters and action had to be filled.
107
Norris excitedly perceiving both unconquerable forces of Nature and the relentless man-made
power of the soulless railroad, devised in The Octopus a plot which showed Force at work:
Men were mere nothings, mere animalculae, mere ephemeredes that fluttered and fell and were forgotten
between dawn and dusk…Men were noght, death was nought, life wads nought. Force only existed—Force
that brought men into the world—…
STEPHEN CRANE (1871-1900) was led to naturalism almost entirely by European literary
influence, mainly that of Zola. Maggie has been called the first naturalistic American novel. In his
presentation copies of the novel, Crane wrote that in this novel he intended to show `that
environment is a tremendous thing in the world, and frequently shapes lives regardless´. It
abounds in the language of determinism-- of tenement society as a war or jungle; of social
organization as a Darwinian struggle; of the powers of instinct pulling at and toppling the moral
conventions; of the claims of raw `life´. The physical and psychic filth of the New York slums
inevitably dumps Maggie into prostitution and eventually into suicide. Maggie attempts to apply a
sentimental code to a world of amoral energies and misfortunes, the world of the modern city
where survival depends only on strength and fitness. She falls between the forces of genteel
hypocrisy on the one hand and evolutionary vitalism on the other. Crane's fictional world is a
naturalistic one in which man is deprived of free will and expects no help from any quarter
whatever. It is a world in which "God is cold" as shown vividly in some of his poems. "A Man Said
to the Universe" is revealing enough:
A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.
The universe does not care about man, who is submerged by forces like environment and
heredity. Such is the world in which Maggie finds herself. The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is a
story set in the period of the Civil War. The basic theme of the animal man in a cold,
manipulating world runs through the whole book. Here Crane is looking into man's primitive
emotions and trying to tell the elemental truth about human life. A boy-soldier is enlisted and
dispatched with his untried regiment to the front. In face of danger he is imperceptibly seized with
panic. He finds himself asking the question, "Will I run from a battle?" And he does run away.
War is seen as a force moving men ruthlessly and blindly as if they were pawns on a chessboard. The young soldier is moved about as if in a box with no free will, serving as an instrument
of blind fate. (And men fighting are so many helpless animals.) Crane's debunking of war has a
singularly modern touch about it. Against the romantic view of war as a symbol of courage and
heroism, Crane talks about war in alarming honesty. War in this novel is a plain slaughter-house.
There is nothing like valor or heroism on the battlefield, and if there is anything, it is fear of death,
cowardice, the natural instinct of man to run from danger. The corpses of the dead are seen
108
without its traditional sheen of glory but quite literally rotting where they are left. By thus deromanticizing war and heroism, Crane initiated the modern tradition of telling the truth at all costs
about the elemental human situation, and writing about war as a real human experience. Many
critics refer to Crane as `impressionist´. It seems that he was influenced by the French
impressionistic school of painting. He learned from them the significance of colors, the process of
over-simplification, of reduction to essentials which takes place before Life becomes Art, and the
necessity for an illusion of simplicity and casualness which is obtained only through the most
careful attention to detail. He is impressionist in the sense that he sought to break away from the
accurate impersonal photography-like prose of his time. He focused on the crucial moments of
the protagonist´s existence and converted the cause-and-effect sequence of his plots into a
sucession of seemingly disconnected episode, fragmented memories and changing moods.
Crane's best short stories include "The Open Boat," "The Blue Hotel," and "An Experiment in
Misery," all reinforcing the basic Crane motif of environment and heredity overwhelming man.
This second kind of Naturalism was widely adopted and endured well into the twentieth
century, largely because the specter of “socioeconomic forces” could take many forms. In Kate
Chopin´s The Awakening (1899) and Edith Wharton´s The House of Mirth (1905), female
characters struggle against and are ultimately consumed by a powerful unyielding social code
that stipulates women must be either nurturing mothers or objects of male desire. Other writers
like Upton Sinclair, whose popular novel The Jungle (1906) led to reform of the meatpacking
industry, also created a Naturalistic framework within which the injustices of society could be
questioned and explored.
Later in the twentieth century, Naturalism was adopted by the school of Social Realism,
which emerged as a response to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the perceived need to
communicate the plight of the poor and effect social change. Naturalaistic influence is seen in the
novels of James T. Farrell, in The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by J. Steinbeck , Native Son (1940) by
Richard Wright, and even William Faulkner´s great Modernist novels, The Sound and the Fury
(1929) and Absalom! Absalom! (1936) utilized strains of Naturalism.
109
I'-CLASS GROUP ACTIVITY
BRIEF OUTLINE GUIDE TO FORMS OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION
ROMANCE
1830-1865
LOCAL COLOR
FICTION
1865-1890
Definition
Character
.
Plot
Techniques
Setting
Practitioners
REALISM
NATURALISM