The rise of American realism.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) created the first theory for American realism. He had many important followers. Under him, realism became the “mainstream” of American literature. In 1891, he became the editor of Harper’s Monthly in New York City. He made Harper’s into a weapon against literary “romanticism”. He felt that such works created false views about life. And as editor, he was able to help younger novelists like Halin Galand and Stephen Crane. He was also a friend and supporter of Mark Twain and Henry James.

Howells put his realist theories into practice in his novels. The theme of A Modern Instance (1882), one of his earlier novels, shocked the public. It was about Divorce, a subject which was not talked and written about openly. His characters are very complex and very unromantic. The author blames society for their troubles. This is a position he took in many of his later novels as well.

Howells’s next novel, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), is about an ordinary, uneducated man who becomes rich in the paint business. It describes his unsuccessful attempt to join Boston’s “high society”. In the end, his paint business is ruined because he refuses to cheat other people. The novel contains a famous scene at a dinner party, in which the characters discuss literature.

Howells hates the romantic literature of such popular writers as Frank Stockton (1834-1902) and such historical romances as Ben-Hur (1880, by Lew Wallace). Such novels “make one forget life and all its cares and duties”, he wrote. He realized that business and businessmen were at the center of the society, and felt that novels should depict them. The good realist should be interested in “the common feelings of commonplace people”.

However, in A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890), Howells seems to turn away from the “smiling aspects” of society. It is the story of a man who learns about the terrible suffering of poor people in society. From about this time, Howells himself was becoming a kind of socialist. This new outlook made him add a new law to his ideology of realism: art and the artist must serve the poor people of society. From then on, he began attacking the evils of American capitalism. Like Tolstoy, he argued for kindness and the unity of all people in society, rather than selfish competition. A little later, Howells began to write “utopian” novels about an ideal society with perfect justice and happiness. These included A Traveler from Altruria (1894) and Through the Eye of the Needle (1907).

Naturalism

In the 1890s, many realists became “naturalists”. “Naturalism” was a term created by the French novelist, Emile Zola. In studying human life, the naturalist used the discoveries and knowledge of modern science. He believed people were not really “free». Rather, their lives, opinions and morality were all controlled by social, economic and psychological causes.

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) wrote the most famous American “utopian” novels. In his Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888), a man goes to sleep and wakes up in the year 2000. He finds an entirely new society which is much better than his own. The author’s purpose is really to criticize capitalist America of the 1880s. He is showing his fellow Americans a picture of how society could be. Today, the book seems a little too optimistic. Bellamy was sure society’s problems could be solved by a higher level of industrialization.

Stephen Crane (1871-1900), the first American naturalist, was not much influenced by the scientific approach. He was a genius with amazing sympathy and imagination. He became famous as the author of the novel Maggie: A girl of the Streets (1893). It is a sad story of a girl brought up in a poor area of New York City. She is betrayed by her family and friends and finally has to become a prostitute.

In his short story The Open Boat (1898) Crane shows how even life and death are determined by fate. After a shipwreck, four men struggle to stay alive. In the end, three live and one dies; but again, there is no pattern. Crane was also a good poet. In 1899 he wrote a collection of poems called War Is Kind.

Crane’s naturalism caused him to move far away from Howells’s “more smiling aspects of life”. In fact, this was the trend for all of the realists. One very important group went in the direction of social criticism. In The Damnation of Theron Ware (1896), for example, Harold Frederic (1856-1898) attacks contemporary religion. Like other novels written in the 1890s, this one expresses deep doubts about the progress of American society.

The naturalism of Hamlin Garland (1860-1940) was filled with a deep sympathy for the common people. His literature was a form of social protest. In such books as Main-Travelled Roads (1891), Garland protests against the conditions which made the lives of Mid-Western farmers so painful and unhappy. At the end of the nineteenth century, Hamlin Garland was describing the failure of the “American Dream”.

Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) was one of America’s greatest writers, and its greatest naturalist writers. He and his characters did not attack the nation’s puritanical moral code: they simply ignored it. This attitude shocked the reading public when his first novel, Sister Carrie, came out in 1900 and which was suppressed until 1912. The heroine, Carrie Meeber, leaves the poverty of the country home and moves to Chicago. She is completely honest about her desire for a better life. Dreiser himself was born in poverty, and therefore doesn’t criticize her for this. Nor does he criticize her relationship with men. Carrie is quite modern in the way she moves from one relationship to another. She tries to be faithful to them, but circumstances make this impossible. Almost by accident, she becomes a success as an actress. In the end, she learns that even money and success are not the keys to true happiness. As in all of his novels, Dreiser’s real theme in Sister Carrie is the purposelessness of life.

Dreiser’s “ Trilogy of Dreiser ” – The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (published in 1947) - shows a new development in his thinking. He had already found life to be meaningless, and morals to be absurd. Now under the influence of Niezshe, he stressed “the will of power”. The trilogy tells the story of F.A. Cowperwood, a superman of the modern business world. Although he is writing about the achievements of a single, powerful individual, Dreiser does not forget the basic principles of his naturalism. On the one hand, the author says that “the world only moves forward because of the services of the exceptional individual”. But on the other hand, Cowperwood is also a “chessman” of fate. Like Carrie, his success is mostly the result of chance.

Dreiser’s greatest novel, An American Tragedy (1925), reveals a third stage in his thinking: social consciousness. Much more than in Sister Carrie, he sees his characters as victims of society. Clyde Griffiths, the main hero (or anti-hero), has the same dream as Carrie: he thinks money and success will bring him happiness. When a pregnant girlfriend threatens to destroy his dreams, he plans to kill her. At the last moment he changes his mind, but the girl dies accidentally anyway. The question is if Clyde is responsible for her death. This becomes the main point during his trial. The trial itself is not really fair. The newspapers stir up public anger against him. In the end, Clyde is executed. Dreiser believes that Clyde is not really guilty. Dreiser calls his novel a tragedy, and in certain ways it is similar to classical Greek tragedy.

Dreiser’s novels were very long. They were filled with details about factories, banks, cities and business life. Some people complained about his style. There were too many details, they said and the language was not clear.

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was more conservative. She disagreed with Dreiser’s criticism of the society and hated his “detail-piling”. She believed the novel should be without “social furniture” (details about business and politics). The author and reader should concentrate on the emotional life of the central character. Cather’s speciality was portraits of the pioneer men and women of Nebraska. She had grown up there, and the values of the old pioneer people were her values. Her famous short story Neighbor Rossicky is about the last days of a simple, hard-working immigrant farmer. After much struggle, he has a successful farm and a loving family. Then he dies and is buried in the Nebraska land he had loved so much. Cather’s most famous novels- O Pioneers! The Song of the Lark and My Antonia -all have the same Nebraska setting. Each is a success story. Between 1923 and 1925- in A Lost Lady and The Professor’s House- Cather describes the decline and fall of the great pioneer tradition. It is being defeated by a new spirit of commerce and the new kind of man: the businessman. The greed of such people is destroying. After 1927, with her famous Death Comes for the Archbishop, Cather turned to historical fiction. In writing of the past she was trying to escape from the ugliness of the present.

Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945) is often compared with Willa Cather. Both novelists examined the problem of change. Glasgow, who grew up in Virginia, spent her life writing novels about her state’s past. The Battle-Ground (1902), The Deliverance (1904), Virginia (1913) and Life and Gabriella.

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