Chapter 4 The Age of Realism (1)

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Chapter 4 The Age of Realism (1)

• Representatives
• William Dean Howells
• Henry James
• Mark Twain

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realistic american landscape By waltcurlee on
Flickr
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Contents

• Historical background
• The Civil War
• Post-war development
• In literary scene

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Assignments

• Tell the nature of American realism
• What are the common features shared by then
  American realists?
• What is William Dean Howells definition for
  realism?
• State the symbolic meanings of the house in The
  Rise of Silas Lapham.
• Tell the range of Henry James international
  theme.
• List the themes in The Jolly Coner.
• The three questions on P100 of the Selected
  Readings of American Literature.

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Historical background

• The Civil War
• With the development of Northern
  industrialization, the conflict between the North
  and South was becoming more and more fierce, and
  finally the Civil War broke out. As a result, the
  factory defeated the farm, and the United States
  headed toward capitalism. The war made many
  people question the assumption shared be
  Transcendentalists, and marked a change in the
  quality of American life, a deterioration of
  American moral values.

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II. Post-war development

• After the Civil War, commerce took the lead on
  the national economy.
• Railroads tripled in 15 years and multiplied five
  times in 25, and petroleum was discovered in
  sizeable quantities. Industrialization and
  mechanization of the country were fully
  developing.
• Wealth and power were more and more concentrated
  in the hands of the few captains of industry
  and robber barons, such as, John D.
  Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P.Morgan.
  When young, they tried to avoided military
  service and made great fortune during the war.
  The spirit of self-reliance by Emerson was
  perverted into admiration for driving ambition,
  and a lust for money and power. Children now were
  brought up on the idea that a person with
  ambition could make his own world.
• The frontier was closing. The worth of American
  dream, the idealized romantic view of man and his
  life in the New world, began to lose its hold in
  the imagination of the people.

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III. In literary scene

• The age of Romanticism and Transcendentalism were
  ended Younger writers appeared on the scene.
  William Dean Howells, Henry James, and Mark Twain
  were becoming established as novelists of no
  small talent.
• Nature of American realism As a literary movement
  realism came in the latter half of the 19th
  century as a reaction against the lie of
  romanticism and transcendentalism. It expressed
  the concern for the world of experience, of the
  commonplace, and for the familiar and the low.
• The common features of the realists
  verisimilitude of detail derived from
  observation, the efforts to approach the norm of
  experiencea reliance on the representative in
  plot, setting and character, and to offer an
  objective rather than an ideal view of human
  nature and experience.

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William Dean Howells(1837-1920 )

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Contents

• His life experience (p118)
• His literary position
• His ideas on realism
• His ideas on literary criticism
• His masterpieceThe Rise of Silas Lapham
  (p121-p123)

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• His life experience (p118)
• His literary position He was a prolific writer,
  writing volumes of drama, poetry, and novels in
  addition to criticism, travelogues, and
  autobiography, As a critic of eminent standing
  and as a prolific writer, he helped to mould
  public taste and became the champion of literary
  realism of America. It is estimated that he
  wrote, in addition to the great number of social
  novels, 8 critical books and about 1,700book
  reviews to spread the credo of realism.

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His ideas on realism

• His definition of realism He defines realism as
  fidelity to experience and probability of
  motive, as a quest of the average and the
  habitual rather than the exceptional or the
  uniquely high or low.
• His aim of realism
• to do nothing more than talk of some ordinary
  traits of American life
• to interpret sympathetically the common feelings
  of the common people
• to seek man not in his heroic or occasional
  phase, but in his habitual moods of vacancy and
  tiresomeness
• Thus man in his natural and unaffected dullness
  was the object of his fictional representatives.
  To him, realism is by no means mere photographic
  pictures of externals but includes a central
  concern with motives and psychological
  conflicts.
• Defects in his realism
• much of his realism was external characters and
  events viewed from without
• rarely achieved or sought to achieve
  psychological depth
• his realism having a smiling aspect, only
  saving himself from pessimistic defeatism by his
  constructive use of novel to promote brotherly
  love .

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His ideas on literary criticism

• The literary critic should not try to impose
  arbitrary or subjective evaluations on books but
  should follow the detached scientists in accurate
  description, interpretation, and classification.
  The critics job is to identify the literary
  species and explain the weaknesses of a work in
  the light of the authors intentions.

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His masterpieceThe Rise of Silas Lapham

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Outline

• Literary position the fine specimen of American
  realistic writing.
• The symbolic meanings of the house in the novel
  (p121-p122)
• Understanding of the love subplot (p122-p123)

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Henry James
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Contents

• His life experience
• His literary career
• The influence from other writers on him
• The range of his international theme
• His contributions to literary criticism
• His political and social ideas (p128-p129)
• His political and social ideas (p128-p129)
• Appreciation of his The Jolly Corner

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• His life experience
• His literary career Generally speaking,his
  literary career can be divided into 3 periods
• In the first period (1865-82), he produced a
  number of novels that won him fame and reputation
  and reveals his fascination with his
  international theme.(The portrait of a Lady)
• The second period extends from 1882 to 1895,
  in which he dropped his international theme
  and wrote his tales of subtle studies of
  inter-personal relationships, and plays, which
  proved to be failure.
• Between 1895 and 1900 he wrote a few novellas
  and tales dealing with childhood and
  adolescences, which was a revival of his earlier
  theme.

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The influence from other writers on him

• George Eliot his ideal of the philosophical
  novelist, impressed him by her looking into the
  minds and soul of her characters
• Turgenev served as a guide for him.
• The French writer, Flaubert and his masterpiece,
  Madame Bovary
• Hawthorne whose insight into human psyche
  impressed him deeply

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The range of his international theme

• the meeting of America and Europe
• American innocence in contact and contrast with
  European decadence, and its moral and
  psychological complications.

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His contributions to literary criticism

• He developed gradually from early evaluation in
  terms of stiff moral standards to inductive
  inquiry, flexibility, and a subtle perception of
  aesthetic nuances.
• Novel primarily has a large, free character of
  an immense and exquisite correspondence with
  life. The aim of the novel is to represent life.
  The air of reality seems to be the supreme
  virtue of a novel.
• Art without life is a poor affair. The
  province of art is all life, all feeling, all
  observation, all vision. Though art must be
  related to life, art is important in its own way.
  It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes
  importance. A work of art must lift up the
  heart there is no substitute for the force and
  beauty of its process.
• He was concerned with point of view which is at
  the center of his aesthetic of the novel. He just
  used this method to emphasize the inner awareness
  and inward movements of his characters in face of
  outside occurrences rather than merely
  delineating their environment in any detail. He
  was probably the first of the modern
  psychological analysts in the novel and
  anticipated in his works the modern
  stream-of-consciousness technique.

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Appreciation of his The Jolly Corner
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Outline

• Plot summary
• Main Characters Analysis
• Themes
• Style
• Symbol and Images
• Critical Overview
• How Alice is characterized by the narrator
• Alice is considered an enigmatic figure in the
  story

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Plot summary

• Spencer Brydon returns to New York City after
  more than thirty years abroad. He has agreed to
  tear down his old family house to build a more
  lucrative apartment building. Before the wreckers
  move in, he starts to prowl the house at night.
  Brydon has begun to realize that he might have
  been an astute businessman if he hadn't turned
  his back on moneymaking for a more leisurely
  life. He discusses this possibility with Alice
  Staverton, his woman friend who has always lived
  in New York.

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Plot summary

• Meanwhile Brydon begins to believe that his alter
  egothe ghost of the man he might have beenis
  haunting the "jolly corner," his nickname for the
  old family house. After a harrowing night of
  pursuit in the house, Brydon finally confronts
  the ghost, who advances on him and overpowers him
  with "a rage of personality before which his own
  collapsed." Brydon eventually awakens with his
  head pillowed on Alice Staverton's lap. It is
  arguable to whether or not Spencer had actually
  "passed out" or whether he had died and has
  awoken in an afterlife. She had come to the house
  because she sensed he was in danger. She tells
  him that she pities the ghost of his alter ego,
  who has suffered and lost two fingers from his
  right hand. But she also embraces and accepts
  Brydon as he is.

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Main Characters

• Spencer Brydon
• A wealthy, cultured man, Spencer Brydon returns
  to New York City after spending thirty-three
  years living in Europe and pursuing an interest
  in art. He is overwhelmed by the changes he finds
  in the city.
• Now fifty-six, Spencer revisits the house on the
  jolly corner of Manhattan where he grew up. His
  parents, sister, and two brothers have passed
  away, leaving him the sole owner of his childhood
  home and another property.
• While Spencer oversees the renovation of one of
  his properties, he discovers an affinity for
  project management and negotiating a business
  deal. Surprised by his natural business acumen,
  he wonders what his life would have been if he
  had stayed in New York. Soon is obsessed with
  thoughts of what he has missed.

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• Alice Staverton
• Alice is a childhood acquaintance of
  Spencers. She accompanies him on his business
  trips and listens to him reflect on his past. She
  seems to be the only person who enjoys listening
  to his reminiscences.
• A single, middle-aged woman, Alice seems
  lonely and suggests that Spencer move back to New
  York City for good. At the storys end, Alice
  confirms that she is not only very fond of
  Spencer but possibly in love with him.

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Themes

• Memory and Reminiscence
• Alienation and Loneliness
• Art and Money
• Gender Roles
• Transformation and Change

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• Memory and Reminiscence
• Spencer Brydons return to New York, his
  friendship with Alice Staverton, and his
  attraction to the house of his youth illustrate
  his overwhelming need to analyze his past. He
  needs to reflect on past events in order to
  understand who he is now. In particular, Spencer
  needs to come to terms with what he could have
  been had he remained in New York in that way he
  can accept himself and move on with his life.

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• Alienation and Loneliness
• When Spencer left New York as a young man, he
  was rejecting a life in business and embracing a
  career in art. Upon his return, he discovers the
  full implications of his decision. He has he lost
  his family also, New York City has irrevocably
  changed to the point where he hardly recognizes
  it. In some ways, Spencers experience is
  universal in an attempt to recapture the past,
  he discovers that the world he remembers does not
  exist anymore. As a result, he feels alienated,
  cut off from his past and his own identity.

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• Art and Money
• Spencer rejects a career in business and
  escapes by pursuing a career in art in Europe.
  Yet while Spencer vilifies the American scene as
  materialistic and obsessed with money, he
  continues to live off the profits of that world.
  The rents from his properties make it possible
  for him to travel without financial restriction
  and to live abroad without having to work. The
  story implies that the pursuit of art is
  inextricably linked with money to deny the
  connection is hypocritical.

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• Gender RolesSpencers rejection of a business
  career raises questions about what it means to be
  a powerful man in the early twentieth century.
  When he leaves New York City, he seems to have
  left behind the opportunity to marry and have a
  family as well as a thriving business career. By
  linking Spencers rejection of business to his
  absence of family, the story implies that
  personal choices are related to public pressures.
  In a sense, Spencers pursuit of art is a protest
  against one-dimensional concepts of masculinity
  concepts that relate economic power to ones
  worth as a man.
• Alice also raises questions about how women are
  supposed to live their lives. While she stays in
  Manhattan her entire life, she never marries. The
  reader learns little about her life apart from
  her relationship to Spencer. Is her final embrace
  of Spencer a strong assertion of her will or a
  late and failed capitulation to the stereotypic
  womans role of passive and dutiful wife?

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• Transformation and Change
• The story hinges on Spencer confronting his
  alter ego. The storys conclusion suggests
  Spencer and Alice will end up together and that
  Spencers wandering has ended. But what has
  Spencer learned? It is an open question whether
  Spencer has accepted his past and truly been
  transformed.

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Style

• Point of View and Narration
• In The Jolly Corner, the narrator is nearly
  omniscient, relating exactly what Spencer sees,
  thinks, and feels. However, this perspective is a
  limited one. For example, Alices opinions are
  presented by Spencer all impressions of her
  character as well as others are presented
  through him.
• At a few points in the story the narrator
  addresses the reader directly, implying perhaps
  collaboration between the reader and narrator.

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answer to question 1 in the selected readings

• Another narrative technique utilized by James is
  the slightly different narrative tone used for
  the different sections of the story. In the
  second section, Spencer wanders the house alone
  and the narrative voice nearly becomes his point
  of view. In the first and third sections, the
  narrator is more objective in explaining not only
  Spencers impressions but other characters
  actions and opinions. The second section
  chronicles Spencers attempt to track down his
  alter ego and is characterized by dense narrative
  description

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Symbol and Images

• Spencers childhood house is the most fully
  developed image in the story.
• As a symbol of his past While walking in the
  rooms of the house Spencer recalls the time when
  the building was his home.
• As a symbol of his economic circumstances his
  choice to protect the building as a sacred space
  is enabled by his wealth, partially generated
  from the rents he collects on the other property.
  Spencers personal quest to revisit the past is
  connected to the business operations he has
  attempted to avoid.

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• In Henry James other writings, he utilizes
  architectural metaphors including the house,
  and the window metaphorically, symbolizing
  the structure that organizes and communicates
  meaning in fiction. In the preface to his novel
  The Portrait of a Lady (1881), James describes
  the ideal house of fiction as having millions
  of windows, each representing distinct
  perspectives on the world.

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Critical Overview (how to understand Spencers
alter ego)

• The Jolly Corner has generated much critical
  commentary. On one level, Spencer Brydons
  experience is quite familiar and represents a
  painful but inevitable aspect of the human
  condition. Critics explore the implications of
  his self-doubt and insecurity as well as the
  meaning of the storys conclusion. Is the final
  scene a moment of redemption for Spencer or, is
  Spencer incapable of really coming to terms with
  his past?
• Some commentators view the story as
  autobiographical. Like Spencer, James left the
  United States (in 1875), lived in Europe for a
  long period of time, and returned to find America
  much changed. Spencers conflict between Europe
  and America is subject of much of Jamess
  fiction, literary criticism and diary entries.
  Moreover, Alice Stavertons name echoes Jamess
  beloved younger sister.

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• Spencers alter ego represents a personal and
  philosophical crisis that Jamess father often
  spoke about the vastation. Henry James, Sr.
  was influenced by the moral philosopher Emmanuel
  Swedenborg, whose ideas explored the unmanageable
  energies of nature and the extremes of human
  consciousness. The vastation was a visitation
  by ones evil self that forced one to confront
  their most sensitive weakness.

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• One well-established view is that by facing the
  black stranger, Spencer confronts Henry Jamess
  alter ego. Leon Edel, Jamess most meticulous and
  authoritative biographer, considered Spencers
  conflict emblematic of whether James regarded the
  United States or England as the source of his
  fiction. Brook charged James with turning his
  back on the United States in an ineffective
  attempt to associate with the more highly
  esteemed, genteel class literary tradition of
  England.

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• Keenly aware of his alter egos presence, he
  holds to the conviction to show himself, in a
  word, that he wasnt afraid. While walking down
  the stairs he imagines himself a physical image,
  an image almost worthy of an age of greater
  romance.

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• Spencer masters a threatening adversary. His
  alter ego is a personification of this violent
  opposition some erect confronting presence,
  something planted in the middle of the place and
  facing him through the dusk. Spencer yearns to
  win, to turn the table on the apparition,
  proving again that he is not scared by scaring
  someone else.

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• In the end, the plots thickening depends on
  questioning the way Spencer has lived his life.
  As Spencer stands at the window, he realizes the
  full force of his isolation. Instead of seeing a
  vulgar world against which he can elevate
  himself, he sees a void. The void lacks any
  sense of proportion or measure and reflects a
  deeper crisis in Spencers perspective on the
  world. His confusion at the window represents his
  final inability to separate himself from the
  world he had believed himself to have
  transcended.

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How Alice is characterized by the narrator

• The narrator characterizes Alice as listening
  to everything and as a woman who answered
  intimately but who utterly didnt chatter. In
  these terms, Alice seems to be a mere complement
  to Spencers heroic musings.
• The narrator characterizes her in a static,
  one-dimensional fashion as you were born to be
  what you are, youre a person whom nothing can
  have altered. Such terms erase Alices entire
  life experience and feeling through a gross
  generalization in contrast to which Spencer fills
  his own crisis with dramatic depth.

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Alice is considered an enigmatic figure in the
story

• A few critics have examined the character of
  Alice with interesting results. InDoing Good by
  Stealth Alice Staverton and Womens Politics
  inThe Jolly Corner (1992), Russell Reising
  views Alice as a major character. Within the
  context of her time, Alice seems to be an anomaly
  or outcast unmarried, no children and
  self-supporting.

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• However, instead of symbolizing failed
  femininity, Alice is viewed by some critics as
  manipulative and deceptive. Some have even
  characterized her as an artful liar. It is a bit
  disconcerting, however, that despite Alices
  apparent strength and independence she is so set
  on marriage to Spencer. Has she spent
  thirty-three years merely waiting for her man to
  come home?

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• Recent criticism has both emphasized Spencers
  egotism and attempted to uncover the full role of
  Alice in Spencers resurrection. In A New
  Reading of Henry Jamess The Jolly Corner
  (1987), Daniel Mark Fogel contends that as the
  story ends Spencer realizes that the monstrous
  stranger is his alter ego. Only Alices love will
  save him. In Alices embrace and Spencers
  return, Spencer saves himself from tragic fate.
  At the storys end, Spencer is loving and
  beloved, enjoying at last a blessed state the
  beauty of which the black stranger had never
  tasted or could never taste.